Dear reader, if Brexit bores you, please look away now…
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“It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
This week Keir Starmer promised: “I won’t shy away from making unpopular decisions,” and he was as good as his word. With two thirds of the electorate clamouring for a return to the EU, he turned them down. Like a bedspread.
Because for Keir Starmer and his cabinet, the Brexit bogeyman remains a terrifying figure, not to be brought to the fore but pushed to the back. He has opted to decide between alternatives he has not chosen himself.
On Wednesday, he visited the German chancellor and claimed their agreement will be “a boost to our trading relations”. But actually no. It will make no difference whatsoever: the rules are agreed with the EU, and the PM is refusing to consider changing them. It is merely a sop to the rising crescendo of criticism over his ‘red lines’.
In the meantime, any rumours one may hear of the PM taking his cabinet off on an away-day to learn how to say boo to a goose can regrettably be ignored.
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In case there should be any misunderstanding over the significance of the rapprochement with Germany, yesterday the FT reported “raised eyebrows” in the EU.
“German officials dismissed a suggestion by Downing Street that the two nations would discuss ‘market access’ as part of the treaty, highlighting how the single market and trade are EU competencies, not national ones.
“One said the treaty would not change anything covered by the EU-UK post-Brexit deals.”
So it appears the new government is prepared deliberately to mislead voters in just the same way the last one did. Dear reader, in the matter of perpetrating falsehoods, can you spot the difference?
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This state of affairs occurs as a result of what a political scientist called Irvin Janis described as ‘groupthink’. The word has come into common usage, but originally described the way a small cohesive group – particularly in politics – comes to accept an apparent consensus, even though some may consider it flawed. Group dynamics prevents them from stepping out of line. The Brexit bogeyman so terrorised the Labour front bench they accepted their present stance without demur.
The characteristics of groupthink are a collective rationalisation, pressure for conformity, self-censorship – are we getting warm? – and an illusion of unanimity.
Mr Janis specifically coined the groupthink word to describe making an absolute pig’s rectum in foreign policy, when it is clear that the path chosen may lead to disaster, but nobody dare say so. The two historical examples he used were Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. If he were writing today, he would cite a third: Brexit.
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Another characteristic of groupthink is the emergence of what Irvin Janis called ‘mindguards’. These are acolytes of the leadership whose role is to prevent troubling or contrarian viewpoints circulating among group members. Step forward this week one of the PM’s closest henchmen, Jonathan Reynolds, the trade secretary.
Mr Reynolds this week declared that a new agreement with Asia and the Pacific represents “a real win” for British exporters and is to be preferred to the EU. The two are mutually exclusive. So, Peru or France? Vietnam or the Netherlands? And can Mr Reynolds square his remarks with those of the German government (above)?
An important canon of governance has been infringed when members of the cabinet believe it is acceptable to mislead voters deliberately. The Tories only got to this place over years: now it seems Labour has come into power to begin exactly where the Tories left off. Is this gaslighting? Or just a lie? However we define it, this is improper and has no place in a Labour government insisting on cleaning out the stables.
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Probably worse is that Jonathan Reynolds and the rest of the Brexit pharisees in government take us all for fools. He knows, we know, and he knows we know that food prices have leapt and supermarket shelves are often empty. But my dears, let us look to Peru and Vietnam instead of all that fresh produce from Europe.
One of the great delights of summer is a crisp, fresh salad. Not so satisfying when there is often little salad produce to be had, since much of it was imported from Europe and we have made importing it either prohibitively expensive or practically impossible. Mr Reynolds faces what is perhaps an unbridgeable margin of doubt as to how to explain that this is “a real win” for consumers too.
But then Alex Taylor points out: “The UK, we read, now under Labour “is considering delaying fruit & veg checks to July 2025” for the, is it 7th? 8th time? The EU did it on Day 1, but then 80% of its fruit & veg isn’t from the UK”.
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Both Sky and the BBC are guilty of grotesque and grovelling complacency towards the Brexit status quo this week. The question of a time-limited, visa-controlled youth mobility scheme came up again and was swiftly repulsed by our splendidly internationalist Labour government. Both broadcasters explained indignantly that the initiative involved receiving young Europeans here. Neither, in those headlines, mentioned that the agreement was reciprocal: that young Britons could also travel to Europe. The same catastrophic and jingoistic misrepresentation that helped bring about Brexit in the first place.
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In the ‘meaningful’ parliamentary vote on Brexit in January 2019, only three Labour MPs voted for the motion, while 248 voted against. (One of whom was Keir Starmer.) As your diarist recalls, polls show that over 80% of party members also support a return to the EU.
A huge majority of current Labour MPs would also support that line, but how will they represent their constituents’ views at conference next month? Party managers won’t permit any discussion on the conference floor. Can they prevent its’ debate in one of those off-piste meetings? Dear reader, we can be certain they will try. The most important question facing this country, and our newly elected government won’t touch it with a barge pole.
So what has happened since Brexit that can have persuaded the prime minister it was a good idea? Nothing, of course. But it was such a bruising and destructive period that he has decided his party doesn’t have the courage to face it again. They claim that people wouldn’t want to go through it, adding insult to injury by projecting their own inadequacy and fears onto the voters, who are actually up for the fight in their millions.
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But let us cut Sir Keir some slack. Brexit apart, facing all this mess, where does he start? Alan Brian once boasted that he had done almost every human activity in the back of a taxi that didn’t involve mains drainage. That’s the kind of ingenuity the PM needs in his team at the moment. Brexit is, of course, only one of myriad problems the government has to face and attempt to put right, though the frustration lies in how taking strides to get rid of Brexit would immediately impact all those other worries.
There is another concern, however. These are very early days in the government, and it would be absurd to expect results yet. It isn’t the lack of results though that is concerning. It is the lack of new ideas. One commentator advised we look to the long game: the prime minister has had years to think about what needs to happen. So why, we are entitled to wonder, has he not devised a plan for enacting such a dramatic change on the country. Where is the strategy? Where is the hope?
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But enough about Keir Starmer already! “What about that other lot?” your correspondent hears you cry.
The Tory leadership contest meanders on. Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex) remained excruciatingly silent during the riots, except for her professed support for the views of Douglas Murray, who has suggested that the public may have to “go in” to sort out Muslims, and the result will be “very, very brutal”. He adds: “I don’t want them to live here”. So Ms Badenoch has decided on the ‘take no prisoners’ position.
Priti Patel (Witham) has promised to “send Keir Starmer packing”, though it would seem she may have a long wait. As will the members. One doesn’t wish to be gruesome, but the next election is likely to be five years away, and the average age of Conservative Party members is well over 60…
Mel Stride has claimed that Labour’s claim of a £22 billion black hole is a “smokescreen”, which is predictable but rather unfortunate timing since his pronouncement was almost simultaneous with the Institute for Fiscal Studies effectively announcing Labour had the Tories bang to rights.
The oleaginous Robert Jenrick is looking for a new shtick, with a different haircut and the announcement that he has lost pounds by taking a proprietary dietary drug. Tom Tugendhat still doesn’t look convincing as the lead: more a walk-on part, or perhaps Roderigo to James Cleverly’s Iago.
Mr Cleverly himself this week has attacked Labour for their smoking ban proposal, when much the same thing was included in the Tory manifesto; and is responsible for claiming the Home Office budget for asylum, border, visa and passport operations was £110 million, when in fact the true figure was £2.6 billion.
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It seems we still haven’t heard the last of Liz Truss. Always a political lightweight, with grandiose delusions about her own abilities and a consequent unmanageable hubris, her downfall became somewhat Wagnerian. (And my dears, wouldn’t she just love to be seen as the beautiful and tragic Brunnhilde?)
Ms Truss is now the subject of a book by Anthony Seldon, ‘How Not To Be Prime Minister’. We mention it reluctantly, for just a couple of its revelations. She apparently told one of her supporters in her cabinet – sycophants every one of them – “I have beaten my enemies, I have beaten the f*cking establishment. I’m not going to bother to build bridges.”
Well, that went well. One plan that didn’t was brought about by the panic after her budget looked likely to sink the economy without trace. Mr Seldon recounts how her aides considered she had “lost the plot”, shouting at her team: “We’ve got to find the money!”. But the most outlandish claim concerns her asserted idea that she could help fill the black hole by cutting cancer treatment on the NHS. Her supporters – bizarrely, they still exist – insist she never made any such suggestion. We can’t know, one way or another. But it is telling that probably most people will believe it of her.
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