Sunday, January 28, 2018

May survives another turbulent week. Again.



Image result for theresa mayLike Mark Twain’s death, reports of Theresa May’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Unlike the legendary writer’s death rumours, however, these are more frequent and relentless. Quite how a person of little obvious political skill or charisma, and seemingly little personal support, has managed to soldier on in Britain’s highest political office during a period of more or less consistent crisis, will be as much a matter for political psychologists as historians in the future.

For now, it is enough to occupy ourselves with the return of that perennial British favourite, “Will Theresa Survive?” When she’s not dealing with a crisis of her own making, be it a misjudged election, a botched reshuffle, or the failure to call yet another errant minister to account, Britain’s accidental Prime Minister is usually to be found fire-fighting another round of leadership questions. Or not. The odd thing about these regular leadership issues is just how little we hear from the central figure, Mrs. May herself. Questions are asked, searing articles are penned, a sense of impending crisis is adopted, and some poor soul is shuffled in front of the cameras to make whatever limited case he or she can for the prime minister before the crisis seems to pass. The lady herself, with her pursed lips and dull, thudding phraseology, is nowhere to be seen.

Mrs. May has managed to prove the success of what is in reality a very simple political strategy. Just keep soldiering on. What is often underestimated in analyses of politicians in their insulated environment is just how little radicalism or courage they are willing to show. Caution is the best observed watchword in any political town, and no more so than in Britain’s scarcely beating political heart of Westminster. Most leaders subjected to the sort of crisis-ridden term that Theresa May has had, coupled with the relentless criticism, would have decided to either try and lance the boil with a leadership election ( a tactic once tried by John Major, which saw him re-elected but notably failed to do much lancing) or simply stand down from sheer weariness and stress. Not for nothing is Mrs. May known as the “Maybot”, a term coined by the Guardian’s political sketch writer John Crace. She really does act like some advanced form of AI which has been programmed to go through the motions of Brexit negotiations and will not be distracted from this key task by mere notions of human frailty. Only utter destruction will stop the Maybot in its tracks.

Whether such utter destruction is just round the corner is not yet fully established, but there have once again been rumblings of discontent in Westminster about her leadership. Newspapers report that the chairman of the Conservative backbenchers committee (known as the “1922” committee after the seminal moment in that year when Tory MPs ousted former war leader David Lloyd George) has received nearly enough letters from MPs to spark a leadership election. Commentators have also been dusting off their familiar critiques of the Prime Minister – that she lacks vision, is indecisive, has no idea of what she is doing vis a vis Brexit and cannot control her ministerial colleagues. And her two principal cabinet colleagues, the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, have once again been sparring in public and producing their own versions of government policy.

There are few certainties about any of this other than that Mrs. May will never step down voluntarily, whatever the pressure. When you’ve weathered the sort of disastrous and self-inflicted election defeat that she has, and moreover proved manifestly and publicly incapable of clear leadership on the central issue facing Britain today (Brexit), and still insist on staying in office, you can guarantee nothing else is going to come along to shake that extraordinary self-belief.

The issue is less about Mrs. May now and more about her critics and putative rivals. It isn’t just caution that holds Conservatives back from igniting a leadership election whilst being in a precarious minority government. Both sides are fearful of the alternative. So-called “Remainers” see Mrs. May in all her awkwardness as palpably more acceptable than the flamboyant charlatan Boris Johnson, once again a likely prospect to triumph in a leadership election. The “hard Brexiters” meanwhile worry about the outside prospect of a Remain leader such as Home Secretary Amber Rudd or Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson. There is also the chance that they know the political damage that could well come with the sort of “hard Brexit” they are advocating, and prefer someone else to take the fall.

It is certainly conceivable that Theresa May could well still be prime minister when the Brexit deal – in whatever form – is signed and sealed in 2019. But Remainers in particular might want to consider the advantage of letting full blooded Brexiters have their day in dealing with the turbulent negotiations of the Treaty they campaigned so fulsomely for. Trying to limit the treaty, or make it look like we haven’t really left, may sound like a comforting strategy, but it will leave Remainers on the defensive and give the hard Brexiters a stick with which to beat them for many years to come. If the referendum result is to have any chance of lancing the anti-EU boil and bringing some harmony to the Tory party, it may be best to ditch Mrs. May and give Boris and his ragtag army of true believers full reign.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

May's political nihilism

If the New York Times piece from yesterday read like a pretty stunning indictment of Britain in its awkward Brexit negotiation phase, that's nothing to the ire that Philip Stephens has reserved for the prime minister's personal approach.  His Financial Times piece yesterday poured unmerry scorn upon her and her works. Most savage was his articulation of her broad political strategy - that she is working to overtun the current narrative of her as a deeply disastrous and accidental prime minister, by ensuring she presides over Britain's exit from the EU, whatever that exit looks like.  He goes on -

"Everything else — the nation’s prosperity and security or its standing in the world — is a second order question." 

As a destructive, nihilistic political strategy it beggars comparison. 

The whole piece is here.

Friday, January 26, 2018

Britain's Decline

The New York Times has published a searing piece by Peter Goodman outlining the case for Britain's increasing irrelevance and economic decline post-Brexit vote.  Quoting Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff that we are experiencing possibly the best moment for the global economy since the 1950s, Goodman then goes on to outline the economic outlook for Britain:

Britain stands out as one of the weaker performers. Its economy probably expanded by just 1.7 percent last year and is expected to grow by only 1.5 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
By contrast, the I.M.F. estimates that the United States economy will grow by 2.7 percent this year, and the 19 nations that share the euro currency will collectively expand by 2.2 percent.
Britain’s weak performance is due in large part to market sentiments about Brexit. The vote sent the British pound plunging against both the dollar and the euro. Although the pound has recovered much ground since then, Britain has been choking on the effects of the shift: A net importer of goods, Britain is paying higher prices for products it brings in from Europe, China and elsewhere, contributing to inflation that is running at a 3 percent annual pace.

Goodman further suggests that Britain is also experiencing a serious decline in influence.  He compares the "rock-star" welcome given to President Macron to the distinctly low-key reception of Theresa May's speech.  Mind you, his comment that people were leaving her speech early was probably unconnected with the state of British influence, and more closely linked to the tedium of listening to the British Prime Minister speak. Happily for the Special Relationship, Donald Trump appears to have found a way round that.  He apparently doesn't let May speak for more than ten seconds in their phone calls. 

Thursday, January 25, 2018

May's underwhelming Davos presence

President Macron and Chancellor Merkel used their Davos platforms to address globalisation.  Theresa May, pursuing one of the biggest and most significant international projects of the generation, has chosen Facebook and Google as her targets.  Important, no doubt, but hardly areas of key influence for her.  She seems barely listened to in her own cabinet, so the idea that global hegemons like the afore-mentioned are going to much listen to her seems far-fetched.  Surely it would have been far better to address Brexit and place some clarity of the Great British Withdrawal Project. But that presupposes there is actually clarity and vision behind the project, and so far Mrs. May and her government have been remarkably effective in covering that up.

"The Sun's" Harry Cole claims May is close to having to defend her leadership in a party contest, with the number of letters being delivered to 1922 Chairman Graham Brady nearly at the tipping point of 48.  The issue for Tory backbenchers of course is whether the continued presence of an uninspired, visionless drudge who can't control her ministers at the top of the party is a better option than a potentially savage leadership contest where Boris Johnson would be a key contender.  One of May's unintended triumphs (although much that she does seems unintended) is to have made the charlatan Johnson seem like a better alternative for prime minister.  She unnecessarily resurrected his career by making him Foreign Secretary when he was down and pretty well out, her weakness as PM  allows him to campaign openly from the Cabinet for his own leadership, and her lame leadership makes him seem a model of dynamism and vision.  Strange times indeed.

Trump knows he won, right?

Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton for the presidency over a year ago, but he just can't seem to let her go.  Answering questions about whether he would be under oath in front of the Mueller Inquiry, his answer was to liken himself to his defeated opponent.  "You mean like Hillary was under oath?".  As he went on to reveal, Hillary wasn't under oath.  He sounded triumphant in telling reporters this nugget.  But then, Hillary wasn't president and wasn't being investigated for collusion with a foreign power.  And after a year of Trump, her email use really doesn't seem quite so significant compared to the traumas of the Twitter President. 

The retreat of liberalism goes on

As communism seemingly disappeared from view at the end of the 1980s, in a sudden and unexpected blow-out, there was plenty of triumphal...