Brexit: A tectonic shift in UK’s political fundamentals

Justice Secretary Michael Gove provoked Boris Johnson’s withdrawal from the leadership race.

In the space of one week the United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union, the Prime Minister David Cameron has resigned, the Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn has refused to resign despite losing a confidence vote among Labour MPs massively, the favourite for the Tory leadership (and thus for No 10 Downing Street), former London mayor Boris Johnson, has withdrawn from the race, his previous close political ally, Justice Secretary Michael Gove, provoked that withdrawal by criticising Boris’s leadership capacities and then entering the leadership race on his own account, and Nicola Sturgeon, the First Secretary in the devolved Scottish government, has declared her intention either to block Britain’s departure from the EU altogether or to negotiate Scotland’s independent entry into it (or perhaps both.)

None of these events has yet been conclusively decided (not even Brexit since a post-referendum debate is quietly raging to define what it would mean in practice) except for Cameron’s resignation which, however, does not necessarily mean his departure from frontline politics.

This week has been like that moment in the managed destruction of a high-rise office building when a small amount of explosives is detonated after months in which its main structural supports have been comprehensively weakened. For a moment after the explosion, the building stands immobile and apparently safe.

Then it trembles slightly. Then it crashes to the ground leaving only dust and rubble. Brexit was the small explosion. The weakened structural supports are too many to list, but they would certainly include the following:
1. The Rise and Rise of the United Kingdom Independence Party. Nigel Farage, a Thatcherite commodities broker in the City of London disillusioned with the Tory Party’s EU policy, joined UKIP, became its leader in 2006, slowly built up its organisation and popular vote in by-elections, defeated the major parties in the European elections of 2010 and 2014, and scored a very surprising 13 per cent of the popular vote in the 2015 general election.

Usually new parties get one or two per cent of the vote in general elections. What UKIP’s 2015 support signified was that there was a wider surge of nationalism-cum-populism in politics everywhere. If the Tories didn’t respond to it in England, UKIP would do so and prosper electorally at their expense.

In addition, recent elections have shown UKIP extending its support to Wales, where it has won recent local elections and European elections.
2. The Rise and Rise of the Scottish National Party. This trend was plainly similar in its causes to UKIP’s rise but it was occurring in a more left-wing country. Originally known as the “Tartan Tories,” the SNP under two entrepreneurial party leaders, Alex Salmond and Sturgeon, reinvented itself as a party of the Left. And promptly began to eat heavily into Scotland´s Labour vote.
3. The Splintering of Socialism. All over Europe mainstream socialist parties have been in sharp decline. Sometimes their voters have switched to extreme Left parties like Syriza in Greece, sometimes to far Right parties like the National Front in France, and sometimes to ambiguous protest parties like Beppe Grillo’s Five Star movement in Italy.

In Britain, this phenomenon showed itself in the rush of Scottish Labour voters to the SNP and the drain of socially conservative blue-collar voters from Labour to UKIP in England. But it was counterbalanced, maybe temporarily, by the fact that hundreds of thousands of young far leftist voters — the kind who are joining Podemos, Syriza, and the Five Star movement in mainland Europe — signed up to Labour last year in order to vote Jeremy Corbyn into the leadership. For the moment at least they’re still in the party.
4. The Collapse of the Centre. Britain´s political centre is spread over the three mainstream parties and generally provides their leaderships. But its purest expression is the Liberal Democrat party which in 2015, significantly, was endorsed by The Economist and The Financial Times. Its support collapsed in that election and it remains low today at about half UKIP´s percentage.

The fate of the centre in Labour was ... evaporation. Tony Blair’s New Labour movement was essentially centrist. Its candidate in last year’s leadership election got the smallest level of support in a crowded field. Because it is identified with unpopular causes — notably, high immigration levels, the migrant crisis, the euro crisis, austerity and so on— and a general high-handed high-mindedness, the centre in Britain and Europe has alienated voters in both directions. It still controls governments and the media, especially international channels of communication.
5. The Impact of Immigration. About 13 per cent of the population of England and Wales is foreign-born or has one foreign-born parent. These population groups tend to be concentrated in major cities, notably London but also Birmingham and other northern and midlands cities.

As a result of these five factors, the UK’s regional loyalties and the character of its parties have all changed substantially. If Julius Caesar were writing on British politics today, he would say that the UK is divided into five parts: Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, England and London. Each of these political regions has its own distinctive debate that is not isolated from the others but leans politically towards a particular party and loyalty.

Scotland is dominated by left-wing nationalism; England minus London is still mainly conservative but divided between the Tories, UKIP and urban Labour; London is becoming more heavily Labour and Left as immigrants get involved in politics; exceptionally Wales is becoming more like England as it moves to the Right; and Northern Ireland is sui generis and too complicated for this article.

Most of these changes are gradual, but they are beginning to change election results and the future of the parties.

Labour is the big loser. It was on the losing Remain side in the referendum. It has lost its Scottish stronghold for the indefinite future, costing it something like 50 seats. It is losing working-class voters, and in time northern and midlands seats unless something changes, to UKIP. And it will inevitably be over-influenced by its growing strength in London, which will supply it with two competing constituencies: far Left young activists of the Corbyn variety and young ambitious metropolitan professionals in the public and “caring” sectors with progressive views on Europe, immigration, etc.

Both constituencies were on display this week on successive days outside Parliament when the former rallied to support Corbyn against his MPs and the latter to demand a second referendum on Brexit. Neither has great appeal to Labour’s traditional voters. And it is hard to envisage, let alone identify, the potential leader who could first defeat Corbyn and then unite all the party’s factions around policies that could win an election.

Most Labour MPs support EU membership in their hearts, but fully 40 per cent of Labour voters chose Leave in the referendum. The party faces a prolonged civil war even if Jeremy goes quietly — which he shows no sign of doing.

UKIP and the SNP were both “winners” in the referendum campaign, UKIP in England and Wales, the SNP in Scotland. Both are now waiting on other people to take decisions to which they can react. Until the Tories elect a new leader and adopt a new policy on Brexit, both Labour’s turmoil and Scotland’s notional second referendum on independence are mere sideshows.

The Tories cannot take major decisions until they have a new leader — especially on the key Brexit question of which policy should take priority: staying in the EU’s single market or taking back the sovereign power to restrict free movement of labour (immigration).

It is this question that is now roiling the Tory party. From his semi-retired posture, Cameron has been strongly urging the first option, arguing that the single market is essential to UK prosperity. Certainly most of the Tory party’s corporate backers want to keep the single market in order to maintain their existing market relations with as little turbulence as possible. Cameron is also getting support from the people and global organisations who warned against Brexit in the campaign. Let’s call it Project Timidity.

In reality it is highly questionable, as former chancellors Nigel Lawson and Norman Lamont have pointed out, that the single market is all that crucial to growth and prosperity. It consists in the main of a tariff structure that averages out at 3-4 per cent and a burdensome regulatory structure that actually imposes costs on business, especially small and entrepreneurial business.

Every nation outside the EU that exports to it (that is, almost all nations, including Australia) has leapt over the tariff and accommodated its regulations. On the other hand, leaving EU free movement of labour in place (even if changing welfare policy to discourage migration as Cameron proposed earlier) would be seen by most voters as a direct betrayal of what Leave promised and what Cameron apparently accepted following the result.

Most Leave voters — including the 61 per cent of Tory voters who opted for Leave — want London to control migration, to reduce migrant numbers (33 per cent) and as clear evidence that the UK has retrieved its democratic independence (55 per cent.) For such voters it is a matter of democratic principle more than of economic efficiency. If migration control and policy were to be more or less unaffected by the Brexit negotiations, there would be massive discontent, alienation, and anger on the part of many voters and many Tories.

There would also be UKIP. Farage will be waiting for any chance to accuse the Tories of backsliding on Brexit if he is to get back in the game. Back-tracking on immigration, however elegantly, would be an invitation to Tory and other voters to cast their ballots for UKIP in local, European, and national elections between now and the 2020 election.

It would also suggest that the Tory establishment doesn’t “get” what happened last week in the referendum. It was not a marginal or accidental victory for people who had a poor grasp of the issues. It reflected the fact that for 40 years opposition to UK membership of the EU had usually hovered at about 40 per cent of respondents, sometimes rising to the high 50s, sometimes falling to the low 30s. But it was the settled serious opinion of sober people.

The referendum won a majority of voters older than 45 — including three-quarters of skilled workers — the very people who can recall life before Britain entered the EU, bring practical judgment to bear on serious questions, and deliver a verdict on EU governance since then. Its democratic credentials rest comfortably on the fact that it was the largest single popular vote for any person or proposition in British history,

And despite a post-referendum media campaign of extraordinary hysteria seemingly intended to discredit Brexit but presumably just reflecting the conformist groupthink of the metropolitan intelligentsia, the latest opinion poll shows that people see no need for a second referendum by a two-to-one majority. For both principled and partisan reasons, therefore, it would be foolish for the Tories to imagine that the voters could be charmed or bamboozled out of their Brexit decision and its plain implications.

These two judgments — choosing immigration control over the single market, and treating the referendum verdict with serious respect — explain the alleged “chaos” in the Tory party over the past few days. Set aside the gossipy details and overheated rhetoric about treachery and the truth seems to be that Michael Gove and others were nervous that Boris Johnson was not committed to restoring immigration powers to the Westminster parliament.

Boris had encouraged such speculation, perhaps carelessly, by contradicting himself on the point in a Telegraph column. That also implied a willingness to treat the referendum verdict cavalierly.

Leaked correspondence suggested that Johnson would have to satisfy Gove on those points if the two men were to continue their political alliance. Apparently Boris could not do so. Gove, therefore, decided that since Boris was an uncertain ally, he should put himself forward for the leadership.

Gove’s later statement was quite explicit on these points: “I thought it was right that following the decision that the people took last week that we should have someone leading the Conservative party and leading the country who believed in their heart and soul that Britain was better off outside the European Union.”

Once the controversy broke, other candidates (notably Liam Fox, the former defence secretary, and Andrea Leadsom, a junior Energy Minister) fixed on the necessity of taking the power to control immigration back from Brussels to Westminster. And by midday five candidates had formally applied to be Tory leader: Gove, Home Secretary Theresa May, Fox, Leadsom, and the Secretary for Wales, Stephen Crabb.

May started out yesterday as the favourite, but favourites for the Tory leadership have a long history of falling at one of the many fences ahead.

How should we think about the race and these runners? Recall that the current Tory leadership is part of the political centre that dominates London (see point four above.) It is isolated from most provincial Tories, and shares many of the views held by the broader metropolitan establishment, including its pro-EU opinions.

The Tory leadership was completely shocked by the referendum result (Downing Street was briefing reporters the same night that Remain would win with 57 per cent) and it had no grasp of the fact that millions of UK citizens placed a high value on Britain’s tradition of self-governing democracy, which it dismissed as abstract.

The leadership does not think the referendum can be reversed but it is obviously trying to limit the damage done by pushing the party hard to retain single market access. But it has no candidate.

Crabb was being promoted a few weeks ago in case Chancellor George Osborne was too weakened by his Project Fear to run; but the contest has arrived too quickly for the relatively junior Crabb. He will likely be the first of the five candidates to be eliminated.

That has forced the Tory establishment to embrace May, whom it actually loathes. May is not an especially strong candidate, moreover. She is a political loner, a natural authoritarian with a weak record on free speech, and the minister responsible for the government’s failure to limit non-EU immigration while continually pledging to do so.

Above all, she shilly-shallied on Brexit, the greatest question of the day, on which in effect she voted Absent. That will hurt her. That said, she’s a competent minister and, most important, the best candidate the Cameroons can come up with at short notice.

Of the remaining three, all of whom are confirmed Brexiteers, Gove was a highly effective education secretary who took on the bureaucracy and pushed through major school reforms; Fox is a popular and experienced politician with strong credentials on foreign policy and a doctor’s genial bedside manner with the voters; and Leadsom is a polished speaker (she dazzled audiences in the Leave campaign) with a record of competence in office and a first-class financial brain.

Though one of them will emerge from the parliamentary elimination process to go head-to-head with May in front of audiences of the Tory faithful outside Westminster, no one today can say which one. The latest betting odds from Paddy Power are: May 4/11; Gove 3/1; Leadsom 9/2; Crabb 16/1; Fox 33/1.

Since referendum night, the Tories have been on the defensive, explaining what they won´t do rather than what they can achieve. Yet there are numerous studies on how the UK, liberated from the EU, could form economic, trade, migration, military, and technical alliances with other countries, especially but not only those in the Anglosphere.

Boris said as much in his departing speech (which I read as an application for the Foreign Office.) May’s determinedly modest approach might be hard to combine with this visionary economic patriotism. But the other four could all enthuse people along such lines especially the fresh and formidable Leadsom.

She reminds me that when I was a young parliamentary sketchwriter in the 1970s, I reported on another youngish blonde with a sharp financial brain who then dominated Commons debates with her innovative proposals for free market capitalism. I wonder what happened to her.