Politics explained

It seems a lost world now, but for right-wing Britons back in 2016 Donald Trump was the coolest guy around to be photographed with. His shock – in more ways than one – victory prompted frenetic predictions about a new age of nationalist populism. Trump’s victory in November did, after all, follow the equally anti-establishment revolt in the Brexit referendum five months before.In due course, Trump would claim that he predicted Brexit. Rightist politicians and commentators basked in a warm glow of mutual congratulation. Nigel Farage turned up at Trump’s rallies. Michael Gove rushed to New York to interview Donald Trump for The Times, with Rupert Murdoch in the room. He had the obligatory thumbs-up picture taken against a backdrop of framed magazine covers, some real, some fantasies, Gove beaming as though he couldn’t believe his luck. Farage and the rest of the “bad boys of Brexit” had their grinning mugs parked next to Trump’s in the gaudy gilded surroundings of Trump Tower. Farage must have been smiling from ear to ear when Trump publicly asked Theresa May to make him the UK’s ambassador to Washington. It’s fair to say, to borrow a phrase once deployed by Farage, they’re not laughing now.   More

Like football managers, political leaders are often harshly judged, their critics narrowly focused on the short run, and all too ready to discount past glories: you’re only as good as your last match, you might say.So it is with Boris Johnson. As the evidence builds that the prime minister’s unique approach to decision-making in the Covid crisis has cost lives, his MPs are getting nervous. Postponed elections from last year added to the usual May crop means that virtually the whole of Britain will going to the polls in the spring, assuming they’re not cancelled. The Scottish parliamentary vote will be particularly poor for the Conservatives and will be taken as a mandate for a second independence referendum. Votes, political careers and the union itself are at stake. Two unnamed members of the 2019 intake have reportedly formally stated that they have no confidence in Johnson’s leadership. They have submitted letters to that effect to the chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, the first steps towards a leadership election. A WhatsApp group of Tory MPs, nicknamed “Lockdown Loons” has also become a focus for discontent, particularly about the stop-go Covid restrictions. The group includes Iain Duncan Smith, Esther McVey and John Redwood. The deputy chair of the 1922 Committee, Charles Walker, among others has openly criticised the government’s habit of bypassing parliament over Covid restrictions. Some MPs have made stinging criticisms, albeit anonymously, one saying before Christmas: “He keeps making mistakes and doesn’t learn from them. We knew he’d have to U-turn on A-levels and free school meals over the summer. Now he forces us to vote to starve children over Christmas. You can be sure he’ll U-turn on that too. I’ve never seen such ineptitude”. Another said more recently: “I’m completely fed up. He just can’t lead and thus can’t go on.” More

By rights, the joint session, or convention, of both houses of Congress mandated by the constitution to ratify the election of a president and vice president should be a routine if not jolly affair, like a school speech day. Usually it has been; but this time round a so-called “sedition caucus” comprised of Republican Trumpite members of the House of Representatives and Senate is dedicated to overturning the result, or, in their terms, defending democracy from a rigged election. Senator Ted Cruz (Texas) is probably the most high-profile figure in the group, along with Senator Josh Hawkey (Missouri). Both may have an eye on gaining support from the Trumpite “base” to be contenders in the 2024 contest.The joint session promises, therefore, to be acrimonious, but talk of a coup seems overcooked.  The joint session will presided over by the president of the Senate, ex-officio Vice President Mike Pence. He will open the various state submissions, lawfully certified. There will then be unusually vigorous challenges and objections to some of the state results, such as those of Georgia and Wisconsin, and of the election as a whole. The claims about voting machines, postal ballots and interference will be familiar.   More

Welcoming in the new year, the education secretary Gavin Williamson declined to break with the tradition of eleventh-hour U-turns that seemingly characterised the government’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.With just days remaining until primary schools are due to reopen their doors after the Christmas break and rapidly rising transmissions of Covid-19, the Department for Education opted to override a schools’ policy announced just three days ago.Under the initial plan, secondary schools and colleges were set to be closed for two weeks at the start of term while some primary schools in London were still being asked to reopen their doors on 4 January. More

What will politics be like in 2021? Not quite same old, same old. Brexit will fade, at long last. It’s in the interests of most of the parties to “draw a line under it”, as the cliche goes, given the trouble it’s (mostly) caused the politicians, and the fact the public is heartily bored by it. It will now be Labour’s turn to be divided, as we saw in the recent Commons vote on the free trade deal. At every level Labour voters, members and MPs who were Remainers, or at least some of them, will morph into Rejoiners, and demand a commitment to go back into the EU. Keir Starmer will hope to unite the party under a vague commitment to build on the “base” of the current deal to build a “closer” partnership with the EU, but no more. Even if Brexit turns disastrous – and there will inevitably be some chaos, closures and job losses, it’s unlikely to stimulate any great appetite among the voters for another great national debate on Europe.  As a political virus, Brexit will, though, mutate in unpredictable ways. It will, for example, start to figure even more prominently in the argument about Scottish independence, or “Scexit” as it may yet come to be known. After all, most of the arguments about sovereignty and taking back control deployed by the SNP have quite a Brexity feel to them, just as the case against trade barriers and being better together have an echo of the Remain campaign. In any case, Nicola Sturgeon seems set to win a landslide victory and one explicitly seeking a mandate for a second independence referendum. If London just says “no”, there will indeed be a bitterly divisive constitutional crisis, and one that probably can’t be resolved by the Supreme Court. As in Ireland a century ago, there will be many in Scotland who will question the legitimacy of the Westminster government, and will seek ways to resist, though through peaceful political protest, resistance and disobedience. Most of the English, it has to be said, would have no objection to Scotland going its own way; the dispute would be with the militantly Unionist government that refuses to even talk to Sturgeon.   More

The war is over, according to Nigel Farage, who is sometimes called, among other, ruder, things “the godfather of Brexit”. Certainly the divisions on the right of British politics, including the bitter fratricide among Conservatives, may now be drawing to a conclusion. Now the “deal” is done, most Conservatives and even the followers of Farage seem disinclined to reject it. There will no doubt be some Spartans who will defy the whip, some Unionists who will complain loudly, and voices from the Brexit Party and Ukip about “betrayal”, but these will be really the last knockings of their conflict.  For Labour, its civil war over Europe is about to ignite. Where the Tories are now, of necessity, uniting on a policy, if only because it is a fact of life, Labour is starting to fracture. The reported threat of a half dozen or so shadow ministers to quit the front bench over the vote on the deal may be just the start of the trouble. Keir Starmer has publicly declared he will tell his party to vote for the “thin” deal, because the realistic alternative is the ultimate horror of a no-deal Brexit. He has good reasons to do so. The voters dislike or don’t understand why a major party would abstain on such an issue – “sitting on the fence” is not a great look for a statesman. Labour’s pro-Brexit voters, especially in the “red wall” seats, might regard an abstention or rejection as precisely the kind of elitist posturing that turned them away from the party before. And he does not wish to have to listen to Boris Johnson teasing him about having no policy and ignoring the will of the people.  His opponents, though, feel equally strongly about supporting a key Johnson policy and one they believe is a disaster and will be seen as a disaster – in which case it will be harder for them to attack something they voted for. Figures such as Emily Thornberry, shadow international trade secretary, and shadow chancellor Annaliese Dodds, committed pro-Europeans, reportedly argued in shadow cabinet against voting for the deal, though not to the point of resignation over it. They, and the shadow junior ministers who appear set to stand down on a matter of principle, represent a substantial body of opinion in the party that is bitterly disappointed by Brexit and, so far as possible, wish to reverse or at least revise it.   More

Given that fisheries represent less than 1 per cent of national income in the UK and France – the principal protagonists – it is difficult for many to understand why this comparatively small industry is hindering any Brexit trade deal. Yet the obstacles are still formidable, even though progress on key areas is being made. Britain has, reportedly, made a generous offer of a five-year transition period, about 65 per cent of the catch available to the EU, plus a joint procedure for allocating quotas and managing disputes.  Even so, it will mean hardship for the fisherfolk of France, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium and Denmark, who have enjoyed some access to British waters for centuries (give or take a few wars), and by treaty and then the EU Common Fisheries Policy since the 1960s. Now that Britain is to be an “independent coastal state” with a 200-mile exclusive economic zone, such access is jeopardised.  At the same time, though, there are many more fish out there than the British could consume, even if they tried, processing imported fish (also from Iceland and Norway) has become a bigger industry and needs EU markets, and some British trawlers may wish to continue fishing for particular species in European waters. More

However Brexit eventually pans out, it should mean the end of the Tories’ three-decade-long civil war on Europe. No doubt the “Spartan” warriors of the European Research Group will engage in some guerrilla tactics from time to time, but, for the Conservatives, the battle should be done. The “party of Europe”, which took the UK in under Ted Heath in 1973, and which pioneered the single market under Margaret Thatcher in 1986, is now the “party of Brexit”. The pro-Europeans have either been purged or quietened by the 2019 election result. ‘However, Brexit is now looking to become a much more tricky issue for Her Majesty’s Opposition. More