Where next?

It seems to be common ground that the government's withdrawal deal will hit the buffers early next week if the PM does not withdraw the proposal before then. Unprecedented times follow with all sorts of options as the Independent sets out.

We seem to have a choice between:

• No deal: chaos at ports, shortage of food and medicines, economic meltdown ... 
• The PM's deal - semi-permanent rule-taking with no say in the content of those rules unless we want to ditch Northern Ireland (who would be closely followed by Scotland) and a long-drawn out process of negotiation on a new trade agreement (which has not even started yet) 
• Norway (with as many pluses as you care to add) - which solves none of the migration problems and leaves us as a rule-taker ... lifebelt being thrown into the mix and likely to be rejected by Norway 
• Canada (ditto pluses and minuses) - which no one much understands 
• Remaining in the EU

And, to make things merry at Christmastime, there is no majority in either the country or parliament for any of them.

Fun eh?

Not that we know why we are doing it of course.

We are being told that 'we should get behind the PM to reflect the "will of the people"'.

As a democrat, should I change my views because the majority has said that they want to leave the EU or am I right to stick to my views and allow others to make the compromises?

If I do change my mind then who will make the case for remaining?

If I supported the deal, would I be merely colluding in declaring:

Isn't it grand! Isn't it fine! Look at the cut, the style, the line! 
The suit of clothes is altogether, but altogether it's altogether 
The most remarkable suit of clothes that I have ever seen. 
These eyes of mine at once determined 
The sleeves are velvet, the cape is ermine 
The hose are blue and the doublet is a lovely shade of green 
Somebody send for the Queen ... 
... who would then to dissolve parliament and make Theresa May dictator-for-life.

What are you for?

As we reach the climax - or is that nadir - of the government's attempt to get us all to sign up to their dodgy Brexit deal, a few wisps of sanity are wafting around. One came from a tweet, via the Guardian and asks:

Is it possible that I’m the only British person alive today that has no clue as to what we’re meant to be fighting for? I literally have no idea what you brexiters want.

I know what we’re meant to be against, but not one positive thing we’re meant to be striving towards in this new non European Britain. It seems to be something to do with Churchill but other than than not a clue. It also seems that as I don’t know what this shared dream is meant to be then somehow you believe I’m now a traitor, why?

So brexiters please tell us all what you’re for, what you want? What is this “control” you claim to want so badly? What is it control over?

I’m not sure you actually understand yourselves. I think it’s a feeling you’re craving, a feeling of control over a world that is passing you by. I don’t think it amounts to any more than that. You want our country to bend to feelings and that’s it. You’re after obtaining the intangible and ephemeral by dismantling the real and permanent.

So please brexiters if you want me to pronounce shibboleth can you please have the decency of saying it out loud first. Give me a clue as to what you want us to be?”

Raphael Behr picked up the theme a few days later, saying:

We conspired to hold a referendum on leaving the EU without a serious conversation about what the EU even is, let alone what it does. Then, a year later, we got through a general election campaign with little mention of Europe at all. Another year has passed and, despite the urgency of the article 50 clock running out, politics still manages to distract itself with arguments other than the only one worth having, which is this: given what we now know about Brexit that we didn’t know then, should we still do it?

Should we indeed?

A fragile democracy

It is not often that I agree with my MP - certainly not recently - but I was pleased to be able to agree with her comment in a recent email: I greatly value democracy and understand how fragile it is. 

Yes, democracy is fragile. We have heard much about it recently, usually from people using as a hammer to beat others into submission: We voted out, get over it: that is how democracy works.

But are the rules of democracy written down or are they, like most things in the UK, based on sound British common sense: something we all took in with our mothers' milk?

One dictionary defines it as the belief in freedom and equality between people, or a system of government based on this belief, in which power is either held by elected representatives or directly by the people themselves.

The drafting of this is good as it starts with people and their freedom and equality, not simply with the mechanism. It also includes the word 'belief' suggesting that democracy is not a set of rules but comes from an attitude.

The Brits delight in boasting that we 'invented' modern parliamentary democracy: a boast that is probably as thin as many of our other claims to pre-eminence. It is simply one of those boasts used to underpin British exceptionalism. 

But how do I reconcile my MP's views with what is going on now?

A referendum was held with a binary question so, for once, we were asked what we wanted on a specific question (let's set aside the lies, confused messages and dissembling that the campaign involved). We apparently said what we wanted.

The government of the day has then studiously ignored the views of the people thereafter - despite strong evidence that those views have changed - putting words into our mouths whenever necessary. It is what the people voted for is a useful refrain when there was only one actual question: I don't remember migrants, sovereignty or trade deals with dubious regimes being mentioned on the ballot paper.

It also refuses to consult with the people again. How can this be right?

Either we are a representative democracy - power held by elected representatives - or we are a Swiss democracy with the major issues being decided by the populace. It appears we live in a halfway house: we will ask you when you are likely to give the right answer, otherwise we will just get on with things and ignore your views.

In two weeks time, MPs will vote on the Prime Minister's withdrawal deal. Currently, its future looks bleak and so she has gone over MPs' heads to write a letter to all of us (or, more likely to Tory supporters).

Why bother? We have no power. She has told us that decisions will be taken by our representatives. All we can do is tell our MPs what we think and mine does not seem prepared to listen or debate the issues.

Meanwhile, the whips will start the usual arm-twisting, cajoling, bribery - offers of knighthoods, peerages, promotions, parliamentary time - and use of 'the little black book' to get MPs to fall into line behind the PM. As Giles Brandreth, a former whip, said on the Today programme there are always toilets into which MPs can be locked if they look likely to turn the wrong way.

Is this really the best way to run a democracy? I have argued before that we have a C19 parliamentary system which is long past its sell-buy date. If the PM's withdrawal deal goes through then we will not only have undermined the future for our young but any credibility as a successful democracy: how to manipulate a democracy perhaps but run one, no.

Populists from another age?

Writing about the Russian Revolution in Natasha's Dance, Orlando Figes says:

'Popularly seen as a war against all privilege, the practical ideology of the Russian Revolution owed less to Marx - whose works were hardly known by the semi-literate masses - than to the egalitarian customs and utopian yearnings of the peasantry. Long before it was written down by Marx, the Russian people had lived by the idea that surplus wealth was immoral, all property was theft, and that normal labour was the only true source of value.

'By giving institutional form to this crusade, the Bolsheviks were able to draw on the revolutionary energies of those numerous elements among the poor who derived satisfaction from seeing the rich and mighty destroyed, regardless of whether such destruction brought about any improvement to their own lot.' ... which we now know it did not.

Current heroes?

The list of political heroes has just increased by one: Jo Johnson for his incredibly well-crafted resignation letter (see below). He can now take his place alongside Anna Soubry, Dominic Grieve, Keir Starmer, Nicky Morgan and others who still seem to have retained a degree of independent spirit.

Then there are non MPs like Simon Coveney (the 'Foreign Minister' of Ireland) who seems incapable of opening his mouth without making sense, Seb Dance (MEP Labour) whose quiet good sense is equally admirable and almost any non-British journalist writing for a leading newspaper or magazine. such as Jan Fleischhauer with his piece Britain has never looked so foolish in the world’s eyes.

Could it be that we are seeing the beginnings of a central grouping which might form the core of the coalition that will follow Theresa May's inevitable resignation when her deal is rejected? The relentless logic of Brexit points to this as the inevitable solution.

Anyway, to Jo Johnson. Read and enjoy:

Why I cannot support the Government’s proposed Brexit deal

Brexit has divided the country. It has divided political parties. And it has divided families too. Although I voted Remain, I have desperately wanted the Government, in which I have been proud to serve, to make a success of Brexit: to reunite our country, our party and, yes, my family too. At times, I believed this was possible. That’s why I voted to start the Article 50 process and for two years have backed the Prime Minister in her efforts to secure the best deal for the country. But it has become increasingly clear to me that the Withdrawal Agreement, which is being finalised in Brussels and Whitehall even as I write, will be a terrible mistake.

Indeed, the choice being presented to the British people is no choice at all. The first option is the one the Government is proposing: an agreement that will leave our country economically weakened, with no say in the EU rules it must follow and years of uncertainty for business. The second option is a “no deal” Brexit that I know as a Transport Minister will inflict untold damage on our nation. To present the nation with a choice between two deeply unattractive outcomes, vassalage and chaos, is a failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez crisis. My constituents in Orpington deserve better than this from their Government.

What is now being proposed won’t be anything like what was promised two years ago.

Hopes for “the easiest trade deal in history” have proved to be delusions. Contrary to promises, there is in fact no deal at all on our future trading relationship with the EU which the government can present to the country. Still less anything that offers the “exact same benefits” as the Single Market, as David Davis promised, or the “precise guarantees of frictionless trade” that the Prime Minister assured us would be available. All that is now being finalised is the agreement to pay the EU tens of billions of pounds. All that may be on offer on trade is the potential for an agreement to stay in a temporary customs arrangement while we discuss the possibility of an EU trade deal that all experience shows will take many years to negotiate.

Even if we eventually secure a customs arrangement for trade in goods, it will be bad news for the service sector — for firms in finance, in IT, in communications and digital technology. Maintaining access to EU markets for goods is important, but we are fundamentally a services economy. Many in Orpington, for example, are among the two million Britons employed in financial services, commuting into the centre of London to jobs of all kinds in the City. Countries across the world go to great lengths to attract financial and professional services jobs from our shores. An agreement that sharply reduces access to EU markets for financial services — or leaves us vulnerable to regulatory change over which we will have no influence — will hurt my constituents and damage one of our most successful sectors.

While we wait to negotiate trading terms, the rules of the game will be set solely by the EU. Britain will lose its seat at the table and its ability to amend or vote down rules it opposes. Instead of Britain “taking back control”, we will cede control to other European countries. This democratic deficit inherent in the Prime Minister’s proposal is a travesty of Brexit. When we were told Brexit meant taking back powers for Parliament, no one told my constituents this meant the French parliament and the German parliament, not our own. In these circumstances, we must ask what we are achieving. William Hague once described the goal of Conservative policy as being “in Europe, but not run by Europe”. The government’s proposals will see us out of Europe, yet run by Europe, bound by rules which we will have lost a hand in shaping.

Worse still, there is no real clarity about how this situation will ever end. The proposed Withdrawal Agreement parks many of the biggest issues about our future relationship with Europe into a boundless transitionary period. This is a con on the British people: there is no evidence that the kind of Brexit that we’ve failed to negotiate while we are still members can be magically agreed once the UK has lost its seat at the table. The leverage we have as a full member of the EU will have gone. We will be in a far worse negotiating position than we are today. And we will have still failed to resolve the fundamental questions that are ramping up uncertainties for businesses and stopping them investing for the future.

My brother Boris, who led the leave campaign, is as unhappy with the Government’s proposals as I am. Indeed he recently observed that the proposed arrangements were “substantially worse than staying in the EU”. On that he is unquestionably right. If these negotiations have achieved little else, they have at least united us in fraternal dismay.

The argument that the government will present for the Withdrawal Agreement ‘deal’ is not that it is better for Britain than our current membership. The Prime Minister knows that she cannot honestly make the claim that the deal is an improvement on Britain’s current arrangements with the EU and, to her credit, refuses to do so. The only case she can try to make is that it is better than the alternative of leaving the EU with no deal at all.

Certainly, I know from my own work at the Department of Transport the potential chaos that will follow a “no deal” Brexit. It will cause disruption, delay and deep damage to our economy. There are real questions about how we will be able to guarantee access to fresh food and medicine if the crucial Dover-Calais trade route is clogged up. The government may have to take control of prioritising which lorries and which goods are allowed in and out of the country, an extraordinary and surely unworkable intervention for a government in an advanced capitalist economy. The prospect of Kent becoming the Lorry Park of England is very real in a no deal scenario. Orpington residents bordering Kent face disruption from plans to use the nearby M26, connecting the M25 to the M20, as an additional queuing area for heavy goods vehicles backed up all the way from the channel ports. This prospect alone would be a resigning matter for me as a constituency MP, but it is just a facet of a far greater problem facing the nation.

Yet for all its challenges and for all the real pain it would cause us as we adapt to new barriers to trade with our biggest market, we can ultimately survive these difficulties. I believe it would be a grave mistake for the government to ram through this deal by once again unleashing Project Fear. A “no deal” outcome of this sort may well be better than the never ending purgatory the Prime Minister is offering the country. But my message to my brother and to all Leave campaigners is that inflicting such serious economic and political harm on the country will leave an indelible impression of incompetence in the minds of the public. It cannot be what you wanted nor did the 2016 referendum provide any mandate for it.

Given that the reality of Brexit has turned out to be so far from what was once promised, the democratic thing to do is to give the public the final say. This would not be about re-running the 2016 referendum, but about asking people whether they want to go ahead with Brexit now that we know the deal that is actually available to us, whether we should leave without any deal at all or whether people on balance would rather stick with the deal we already have inside the European Union.

To those who say that is an affront to democracy given the 2016 result, I ask this. Is it more democratic to rely on a three year old vote based on what an idealised Brexit might offer, or to have a vote based on what we know it does actually entail?

A majority of Orpington voters chose to leave the EU in 2016 and many of the close friends I have there, among them hard-working local Conservative Party members, are passionately pro-Brexit. I respect their position. But I know from meetings I have had with local members that many are as dismayed as me by the course of negotiations and about the actual choice now on offer. Two and a half years on, the practical Brexit options are now clear and the public should be asked to choose between the different paths facing our country: we will all have different positions on that choice, but I think many in my local party, in the Orpington constituency and around the country would welcome having the last word on the Government’s Brexit proposals.

Britain stands on the brink of the greatest crisis since the Second World War. My loyalty to my party is undimmed. I have never rebelled on any issue before now. But my duty to my constituents and our great nation has forced me to act. I have today written to the Prime Minister asking her to accept my resignation from the Government. It is now my intention to vote against this Withdrawal Agreement. I reject this false choice between the PM’s deal and “no deal” chaos. On this most crucial of questions, I believe it is entirely right to go back to the people and ask them to confirm their decision to leave the EU and, if they choose to do that, to give them the final say on whether we leave with the Prime Minister’s deal or without it.

The televised interview

We have had a masterclass this week on how (not) to avoid a car crash when faced with a difficult interview.

Aaron Banks should never have been invited onto the Andrew Marr Show when his case had recently been passed to the NCA. As Caroline Lucas remarked, it might well have prejudiced his ability to get a fair trial. He would be delighted with this of course.

The interview was not Andrew Marr's greatest moment. He is not a Paxman who can ask the same question 13 times, nor is he an accountant. Banks said nothing and dodged every question, merely trotting out the old populist lines that everyone is corrupt (except him of course).

But then we had the hapless Caroline Nokes, Minister of State for Immigration: not once but twice.

Her appearance before the Home Affairs Committee chaired by Yvette Cooper was a simple car crash which reduced Yvette Cooper to putting her head in her hands. Dramatic stuff indeed.

OK, let's give the Minister the benefit of the doubt: she was up against a seasoned parliamentary performer from the other side. Her performance required her boss, the Home Secretary, to issue all sorts of 'clarifications' to try to rescue things.

Caroline Nokes has form. Back in May she appeared before the Norther Ireland Committee and was completely at sea.

One of the joys of these three examples is the style of the questioner: Andrew Marr was considered and adult (but did not get the truth); Yvette Cooper was precise, direct and dramatic.

I love the last one for its gently spoken approach:
'The Government tells us that it puts great store by the Good Friday Agreement. Have you actually read the Good Friday Agreement whose 20th birthday we have been celebrating?'
'No.'
'Have you read any part of it?'
'No. Twenty years ago I was having a baby. I have only been a Minister for five months.'
Ouch! It is not always best to have heavy feet to make one's point.

How do people face themselves in the mirror after sessions like this? Aaron Banks is arrogant to think he had 'won' (cf Trump and the Mid-term elections). When Tracey Crouch disagreed with a policy announcement, she resigned. Caroline Nokes clearly does not think it necessary after two car crashes.

And the plan is ... ?

Laura Kuenssberg reports on the BBC website today that Theresa May was at a Monday night reception in Westminster and talked about how, 'in her view, Brexit gives the government a big chance to reform the country'.

Interesting to hear but exactly how is the country 'going to be reformed' and are we allowed a say in what this might be?

The sad state of politics today is such that everything has now been reduced to a soundbite.

Did any one actually read and consider the Tory manifesto before voting in the general election? Did our revered Prime Minister go out on the stump spelling out the way in which she believed that the country could or should be 'reformed'? Was there any sort of 'debate' about her vision of a newly reformed country?

No, of course not. All we got was a repeat, and repeat and ... of 'Strong and Stable'. Is that how we plan our futures nowadays?

So where's the plan?

• There was no plan for Brexit before the referendum.
• No plan for Brexit was shared with the public after Brexit (was there one to share?)
• David Davis lied his way through the 58 sectoral analyses which were the basis for his negotiating plan.
• 'Chequers' - the nearest thing to a plan that has appeared, was shot out of the water by the EU's first salvo.

Now, apparently the country is going to be reformed. How? Why? Where's the plan.

No competent business would operate like this. Why do we accept it from our government?