andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2019-01-15 08:15 pm
andrewducker) wrote2019-01-15 08:15 pm
Brexit intensifies
So, today the only government ever to be found in contempt of parliament lost a vote by the largest margin ever suffered by a British government, losing by 230 votes (previous "winner" was Ramsay Macdonald's minority Labour government, losing by 166 votes).
Immediately afterwards, Corbyn lodged a vote of no confidence in the government. The DUP have said they will back the Conservatives, which almost certainly means that the vote will fail*.
The EU wants us to make our mind up, and has now repeatedly said that the withdrawal deal is not open for renegotiation. Which greatly reduces the options we have remaining. So once we the no confidence fails I can't see what else Labour can do but move towards a second referendum.
Which is, according to all recent polls, what the people want. (46% to 28% last I checked).
*It's _possible_ that a few Conservatives will rebel. But incredibly unlikely.
Immediately afterwards, Corbyn lodged a vote of no confidence in the government. The DUP have said they will back the Conservatives, which almost certainly means that the vote will fail*.
The EU wants us to make our mind up, and has now repeatedly said that the withdrawal deal is not open for renegotiation. Which greatly reduces the options we have remaining. So once we the no confidence fails I can't see what else Labour can do but move towards a second referendum.
Which is, according to all recent polls, what the people want. (46% to 28% last I checked).
*It's _possible_ that a few Conservatives will rebel. But incredibly unlikely.
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It is also worth noting - and I think this is now as far as I go in terms of prediction - that May will have to be removed for this to happen. I would bet my house that in a straight choice between no deal and a second referendum then she would choose the former, and that's nothing to do with party before country; it's what she regards her obligation as being. I tend to think that any attempt on her part to lead cross-party talks is going to fail quickly because I don't think she'll abandon her red lines and I don't think there's any majority available within them.
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(insert screaming here)
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I wonder what she thinks cross-party means.
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Again, I agree. May will stick to delivering Brexit. Nothing I saw or heard in her Commons statement (or her entire life) made me think that her "consultation" would be anything other than May going round Grieve, Starmer, Cable, Umanu, Soubry, Blackwood et al being baffled that they won't just agree with her that the only way for Brexit to happen is to support her deal. Her sense of honour and duty would be admirable if she weren't so blinkered as to forget that other people also have made promises they feel honour bound to keep at all costs.
So I think what happens next is
1) May survives the VONC
2) May goes back to the EU
3) The EU tell May they won't renogiate
4) May comes back to the Commons in 1-3 weeks with essentially the same deal
5) that is rejected again
6) Labour moves a second VONC
7) ??????
Either May goes, or the Tory Party goes to the country, or I win £500 on my bet that Keir Starmer is the next Prime Minister and we go dancing on the proceeds or Rees-Mogg is caught felating a life size blow up doll of himself whilst being whipped by the other Teressa May and the whole country dies of hysterical laughter.
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I agree with this entirely up to your (7).
At some stage it will be so close to March 29th that enough of the 20 who voted for the Grieve amendment will vote against her in a VONC. Why do you pick Starmer? I mean, I think it would be a great outcome but I don't see any evidence that he would be a more likely candidate than any other.
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Then my mate Keni phoned me up and said he was putting some money on a horse, had spotted Starmer at 100-1 to be next PM and would I like him to put on a fiver for me.
He's just the emblem of the singularity that I happened to get a great price on.
At 7 something breaks but I do fear that such is institutional arrogance of the Tory Party and their form of British Nationalism that it remain inconceivable to them that Britain might not win this one and we might, in fact, turn out to be the bad guys.
So, probably you are right and the Grievites break with May but maybe they need to loop round that VONC process three times rather than twice.
Which is worrying because we're then so close to the 29th of March that individual errors could rapidly shift us from No Deal to Remain and any point in between at random. (On this point I have finally persuaded MLW to actually start stockpiling food.)
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I think the shortness of the Grieve amendment timeframe makes me think that they will decide on when to break in terms of time left before 29 March rather than May's schedule. But could be wrong.
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They can't get rid of May via ejecting her from leadership of the Tory Party because she has immunity.
The government has to lose a significant vote before a VONC is admissible (probably). May has two weeks after losing a VONC to sort things out. It's not entirely clear who gets to decide how and when things are considered sorted out.
Which is why I think there is a second constitutinal crisis nestling like an unexploded bomb in the middle of the Brexit crisis. It's not clear and clearly and authoratiatively writen down who gets to decide about regularising disorderly Prime Ministerial transitions.
VONC lost triggers two week count down. To avoid a General Election there must be a postive vote of Confidence in *A* government but who gets to decide who has first go at forming that government? What is the order of succession? Who decides when the confidence vote happens? There might be competing claims between Corbyn and David Liddington?
What happens if the government refuses to make time for a third VONC after the Grievites cross the floor and join the Lib Dems and instead avoids any significant votes?
At some point the Queen has to exercise some judgement which is going to spark some sort of constitutional crisis.
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That's very interesting.
Does the government have to consent to a VONC? I mean, why does any government ever do so?
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They couldn't block it forever but they could probably delay a second by claiming that there had just been one, the government survived and there hadn't been a significant defeat since the last VONC.
Which is where it bumps up against some the stuff Grieve has been doing which forces the government to submit policy to a vote.
Even without that sort of thing a very hostile House could make government impossible by using procedural motions all the time to stop anything happening.
So, some practical ability to manage the timing of a second VONC but on the other hand Her Maj could call Teressa May in at any time and sack her. So there's a limit to the sort of shennanigans they can get away with. (Although the actual conversation would be between May and a senior equery with said equery pointing out to May that it might be better if she resigned before the Queen was forced to ask her to resign.)
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I am finding it hard to imagine the circumstances under which the Queen would step in.
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Generally her role in Prime Ministerial succession is to confirm the outcome of some other process where that process has concluded, has a clear outcome and where the legitimacy of the process is not contended. And mostly people don't push things. (For example whilst it is constitutionally possible for someone to be Prime Minister but not Party Leader I don't know of anyone who has lost their party leadership and not resigned as PM before losing a VONC instigated by their own party.
What we have here is the potential (unlikely but possible) for May's Prime Ministership to fail and either a clash of mandates exists between her potential successors or for a process of removing May to start, but not to have finished before some other crisis interposes itself. If both happen at the same time, then the Queen moves from being the signatory to a decision maker.
A scenario such as 1) May loses a VONC on 24th March 2) she shapes to take the whole two period trying to prop up her ministry or run down the clock for a general election 3) 48 hours later its clear that neither May nor Corbyn will be able to able to win the confidence of the House - meanwhile there are already food riots - does the queen allow the clock to run down for a General Election or does she boot May, by-pass Corbyn and appoint e.g. Keir Starmer?
The Queen might be able to send a functionary to tell May that she has until noon on the 27th to resign or the Queen will sack her and keep that quiet but if May calls her bluff then the Queen might have to do something in public.
As I say, it would be a unique event in the UK Constitution. We won't have seen the like since Victoria and Melbourne. But the risk of this sort of nonsense happening is driven by the poor quality of our constitution.
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I still find it impossible to imagine a woman of ninety-two taking this action. What would precipitate it? Who would be the adviser telling her that she should step into the political arena, who is not the Prime Minister?
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I would not have guessed that she listens very seriously to his advice but could well be wrong. Not a specialist in this.
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He does have a right of access to HMQ and government ministers, he does take an interest, and he is an activist monarch. So he'd be top of my list to bowl up in front of her telling her she needs to sort things out.
I think he's also (just to unpack the third nested constitional crisis that is looming) the most likely Regent in the event that the Queen is rendered incapax.
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I don't know a lot about this so my view should be taken with an extreme pinch of salt, but I find it hard to imagine. The discourse has so strongly been that she is right not to interfere and he wrong to do so that I think it would be hard for him to convince her even if (perhaps especially if) he was fully convinced. But I could well be wrong.
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HMQ is very much in the dis-active reigning not ruling mode. I think she's watched how her uncle was dealt with and decided to mostly keep herself as the symbolic Mother of the Motherland.
But she is, as I am given to undertand, a sharp minded woman and has taken an interest. She's not been above offering a bit of advice or a sharp rebuke to her Prime Ministers in the past.
So I completely agree that her habit will be to continue to not play an activist role.
Even if Charles is in her ear giving her yap about his (ahem, I mean her, definately her) constitutional rights and duties.
I'm not sure how that survives a situation where May, Corbyn, Blackwood, Dodds, Cable and company turn up at Buckingham Palace claiming that the rule book is broken and none of them can agree who chairs the meeting that re-writes the rules and meanwhile London is on fire and people are actually starving to death.
And whilst she is seen as being correct for not being an activist monarch in the ordinary day to day events (which for this context include contested Prime Ministerial successions like 2010 and whatever was going on with Callaghan - before my time) she does have one job in the UK Constitution which is picking who gets first go at being Prime Minister in the event of an off piste crisis.
That would be uncontroversial in the event of a Brighton Bombing type event which killed half the Cabinet including the PM. A bit more controversial where the current government's majority was on 6 and amongst the dead were a dozen MP's with marginal seats. Yet more controversial where the difficulty is founding a two-fold clash between Party constitutions and the UK Constitution (as we have now, perhaps).
So, we might get to a situation where HMQ might be right to take a more activist position and pick a PM where it is unclear who that ought to be. We might get to a situation where it would be much, much better for HMQ to do the actual picking a week earlier than strictly necessary in order to allow their first pick to fail and still have time for their second pick to at leat manage a functioning government. She, herself, is reluctant. Charles is in one ear. A more conservative councillor is in another. All the likely Prime Minsters and king makers are in front of her. What is a 92 year old woman whose husband has just been in a car crash to do?
(About the only thing that could make Brexit more fun is if the Queen has a stroke or Prince Philip dies and she is devastated with grief.)
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Have you seen The Crown? If not, I really highly recommend it.
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I really don't think Johnson could form a government. He would instantly lose at least Clarke, Soubry, Grieve, Wollaston, Allen, Sandbach, Lee, others. There'll be others in that category too, probably not all of the 20 but enough to mean he can't summon a majority even with the DUP and the lunatic Labour MPs.
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