Expectation that EU will cave in and give Boris Johnson what he wants remains far-fetched

Posted by Jim on August 30, 2019

 Stephen Collins. Irish Times. Dublin. Friday, August 30, 2019

Boris Johnson and his supporters in the Conservative Party have made two fundamental misjudgments since the Brexit debate began. One is that Ireland will ultimately have no choice but to bow to British interests and the other is that the European Union is on the verge of breaking up.

In fact the trend has been in the exact opposite direction on both fronts. The EU 27 have shown remarkable solidarity with Ireland not simply out of loyalty to a fellow member state but because of an appreciation that this is an existential moment for the European project. Far from signaling the break-up of the EU, Brexit has acted as a glue to hold it in place.

From an Irish perspective, the Brexit crisis has reinforced the commitment of the population to the EU to such an extent that pro-European sentiment is stronger here than in any other member state. Given the enormous benefits that EU membership has brought to this country this should hardly be a surprise.

The strength and unity of the EU has come as a profound shock to the Brexiteers and it is now the British constitution that is suffering under the strain. The clash between government and parliament is a dangerous moment for British democracy as it deepens the already wide gulf that has opened up not just in politics but right across society. Just for good measure it has also put the future of the United Kingdom into the balance.

Resignation
The resignation of the charismatic Ruth Davidson as leader of the Scottish Conservatives represents the loss of an important pro-union figure for the next independence referendum which now appears inevitable.

An insight into the thinking of the Brexiteers can be found in the writings of Dublin-born historian Brendan Simms, professor of international relations at Cambridge University. Writing in the New Statesman back in 2017 he pointed out, correctly, that it would be the Europeans who would have to insist on a border in Ireland after Brexit to protect the single market.

He then went on to say: “To submit to such a demand from Brussels would be as politically impossible for the Irish Republic as it would be difficult for it to resist the economic reprisals that may result from failing to do so. Once again – the last time being during the 2008 financial crisis – Dublin is discovering that it risks becoming an object buffeted by broader European forces that it is unable to control.”

That assessment has proved to be entirely wrong. Far from being politically impossible to back the line coming from Brussels it has become politically impossible for Leo Varadkar and his Government to bow to British demands, regardless of the economic consequences.

Another assessment made by Simms in the same article was that “the European humpty-dumpty is hanging on by its fingernails, as Trump, Vladimir Putin and the various pre-existing crises stomp along the wall. If it comes to a confrontation, Britain could push it off – if the EU does not fall or jump of its own accord first.” So far, at least, the European humpty-dumpty has managed to stay on the wall as it watches the British bulldog attempting to bite off more than it can chew.

Despite the fact that such assessments of the Irish and EU positions have not been borne out by events over the past three years the notion that it is only a matter of time before leaders in Brussels and Dublin buckle continues to persist in the UK and have a big influence on official policy. Even now Johnson continues to insist against all the evidence that there is a good chance that leaders attending the next EU summit in Brussels in mid-October will agree to abandon the Border backstop and give him a good deal.

Final effort

It is important to stress that Johnson and his supporters represent just one strand of opinion in the UK and there are many people in politics and outside it who have very different views on Ireland and the EU. Those who represent the open, tolerant face of Britain will make one final effort next week to try to block a no-deal Brexit through parliamentary action.

They are attempting to build a cross-party majority in the House of Commons that can seize control of the parliamentary agenda and pass legislation blocking a no-deal Brexit. They haven’t been very effective in the past and a successful outcome is probably a long shot. In any case Johnson might even respond to a defeat as the excuse for a general election in which he is confident of winning an overall majority.

That might not be the forgone conclusion he assumes. Look at the way Matteo Salvini collapsed the Italian government in the confident belief he would romp home in an election only to see former allies and opponents joining  forces in the Italian parliament to thwart him by forming a new coalition.

Salvini is probably the biggest internal political threat to the EU and his political miscalculation is good news in Brussels. It is just another reason why the notion that the EU is going to cave in at the last minute and give Johnson what he wants is so far-fetched.

Zealots And Ditherers

Posted by Jim on

lFrom People And Nature

Gabriel Levy ponders the effects of Brexit.

The UK government seems hell-bent on crashing out of the European Union without a deal on 31 October. This leap into the unknown carries the threat of economic hardship and disruption, constitutional crisis and the reconfiguration, or even break-up, of the UK.

The political uncertainty since the 2016 Brexit vote, on top of a decade of austerity, is causing most Brits anything from stress to nervous exhaustion. And the next ten weeks are unlikely to be any less worrying.

Can the manic “no deal” crusade be stopped? The short answer seems to be: it’s difficult, but may be possible, provided parliament gets its act together. Suggestions about how that might happen are being made daily by “left” and not-so-left writers who know more about parliamentary procedure than I do.

This article focuses, instead, on what this frenzy tells us about the crisis of the Tory party and the property-owning class it represents. Because, to develop radical politics in the face of this insanity, we need to understand more clearly what generated it.

Our enemies are divided

It’s not the prime minister, Boris Johnson, who is driving the “no deal” process, as far as I can see. Rather, he is the enabler of zealots: Dominic Cummings, chief of staff at no. 10 Downing Street, who made brilliant use of lies (“Turkey is joining the EU”, “£350 million a week”, etc) and social media to help win the Brexit vote; the European Research Group of right-wing Tories who are ideologically committed to “no deal”; Dominic Raab, foreign secretary, who fancies “proroguing” (i.e. disbanding) parliament if it gets in the way; and others.

However, dozens of Tory MPs have publicly opposed a “no deal” Brexit. So have representatives of industrial capital (the Confederation of British Industry) and financial capital (the City of London corporation), editorials in the Financial Times, and leading business figures.

It’s fair to say that most of the British ruling class hates and fears the zealots. So why are they setting the pace?

One obvious reason is that the ditherers – by which I mean the Tory parliamentary majority, which either opposed Brexit or wanted a managed version – have passed up repeated opportunities to stop them.

On 14 March, just before the Brexit deadline was switched from 29 March to 31 October, an amendment proposed in parliament by Labour MP Hilary Benn, which would have given the House of Commons greater power to control the Brexit process – and to block the “no deal” option – was voted down by 314 votes to 312.

Much of the “left” railed against those Labour MPs who opposed this amendment. But I thought it was more significant that only a handful of Tories supported it. If a few more of these ditherers had done so, the whole “no deal” train would have been derailed.

On 13 June, after the Tory leadership campaign had started, and with Johnson the clear favourite, they had another chance. The Labour party, supported by the Scottish and Welsh nationalists, Greens and Liberal Democrats, put a procedural motion designed to block a “no deal” Brexit – which was lost by 11 votes. Again, the “left”’s ire was focused on eight Labour MPs who voted against and 13 who abstained. But the really remarkable thing is that no Tories broke ranks to block an outcome that could destroy their party.

A widely reported poll of Tory party members, taken around the same time, showed that a large majority of them want Brexit to happen, even if it means the Tory party being destroyed, Scotland leaving the UK and “significant damage” to the economy. The only thing most of them were prepared to sacrifice Brexit for was to avoid a government led by Jeremy Corbyn.

But I always thought that – unlike the extremist and English nationalist Tory membership – the parliamentary party mostly believed in the managing capitalism effectively. Historically this was reflected in Tory principles such as a strong UK, a state strong in support of business but not interfering in it or taxing it, and so on. (Of course almost all Tories always agreed on union-bashing, demonising migrants, etc.)

So what happened? The ditherers, in their desperation, have abandoned these traditional Tory principles to support Boris Johnson, who they see as capable of defeating Corbyn’s Labour in an election. Johnson, who never had any principles in the first place, has handed the initiative to the zealots.

This is a deep crisis in the Tory party without precedent in recent history.

Surely the roots of this are in the decline of British capital on the international stage, the changing character of the UK’s economy, and, most of all, the need for new methods of social control.

Ways of disciplining the population have to be found at a time when austerity policies have impoverished and alienated so many millions of working people, financial crisis has disillusioned so much of the middle class, social democracy is in decline, and other mediations between the state and society (the welfare state, local government, etc) have been undermined.

With these more sophisticated levers weakened, the crude stuff comes out: anti-“foreign”, anti-elite and racist demagogy. The tone is set neither by traditional Toryism nor by the “modernisation” attempted by David Cameron (remember him, the bloke who called the referendum?), but by Nigel Farage and the populist extreme right. 

I think it’s helpful to think about the Brexit madness in a half-century time frame. Fifty years ago, in the late 1960s, the Conservative party had substantially adapted to the social-democratic-shaped state that emerged from the second world war. The party of capital and empire largely accepted the progress in education, health and other gains made by working class people after the war.

Things changed with Margaret Thatcher’s accession as Tory leader and her election victory in 1979. There was some significant continuity, in terms of both personnel and ideas, with what had gone before: monetarist economic policy, which Thatcher turned into a dogma, had first been put in place in 1977 by James Callaghan’s Labour government under pressure from the International Monetary Fund.

But there was a break, too. Thatcher’s great achievement, from the Tory point of view, was her readiness to take on and defeat the unions, thus breaking up the politics of compromise and managed conflict between labour and capital that had lasted since the 1940s. She initiated many of the policies that have become known as “neo-liberalism”, such as privatisation, deregulation of financial markets, and so on, although these were implemented much more thoroughly by the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

But now Tory ideology is in crisis. After financial crisis and a decade of austerity, old assumptions have died away. Attempts to modernise the UK via devolution left many problems unsolved. Before the referendum, racism and English nationalism combined in UKIP; afterwards, the populist right outflanked, and then colonised, the Tories’ anti-Europe wing.

The result is the Johnson government: far more extreme and far more ideologically homogenous than any of Thatcher’s governments. Thatcher persisted by uniting the anti-European and pro-European Tories (and was dropped when she couldn’t do that any longer (in 1990, after a row about how to align the pound with other European currencies)); Johnson has started by throwing out the pro-Europeans. Thatcher married her rhetoric with pragmatism; the zealots’ rhetoric has become completely detached from the economic interests of the ruling class as its own representatives perceive them. Thatcher’s dogma (monetarism) aligned to some extent with British capital’s class interests; the “no deal” dogma subordinates those interests to nationalist rabble-rousing. Thatcher acknowledged the threat of global warming long before many right-wing politicians; Johnson’s government, forty years on, has a strong complement of climate science deniers.

And this ideological meltdown reflects a fundamental crisis of the British ruling class on deeper levels. Its manufacturing base has dwindled; what is left is being shredded by Brexit-related political instability; its economic model is based on a bloated financial services sector and property market in south-east England. Its empire has gone, and its post-imperial grandstanding cuts little ice. (Look how much influence it’s having in Hong Kong right now.) The UK state, one of the oldest imperial states, is being shaken up. It sought to manage the legacy of its colonialism in Ireland with the Good Friday agreement, but the government is now ready to chuck that compromise away in search of Union-Jack-draped chimeras.

What happens next

Here are two sets of alternatives (which probably seem obvious – for which, my apologies).

■ The zealots go ahead with a no-deal Brexit. If this happens, it will be because the ditherers allowed it to, and neither they, nor the other parties in parliament, could get their act together to stop it. I can’t make any meaningful guesses about the consequences, but these could be dire, for people’s lives and for the economy. The damage to the UK state, and to the Tory party, is also unpredictable.

■ The other parties in parliament, with support from some ditherers, block the no-deal Brexit. The methods have been discussed in the press: a no-confidence motion in the government, followed by the formation of an alternative coalition; a legislative manoeuvre; whatever. I hope this happens, although it would surely trigger a campaign of “the people against a parliament of traitors” by the zealots, which could turn into something still nastier.

I don’t think Boris Johnson himself wants “no deal” any more than the ditherers do, but it’s not clear that he can get out of the hole he has dug himself into by committing to it. While the UK government and the EU could come up with some other compromise – a rehashed negotiated exit, an extension of the deadline, whatever – that’s not looking likely right now. One factor that could force change is a further trashing of the pound and the UK economy by international financial markets.

Why this matters to us

By us, I mean, people who hope, and work, for radical social change – which includes me and (I think) most of the people reading this. Here are some reasons why this matters:

1. Although it’s possible that the ditherers and the other parties in parliament will allow themselves to be walked all over by the zealots, it’s also possible that they will resist. In September or October that could lead to some kind of confrontation between government and parliament. Politics might move on to the streets and into communities. A movement e.g. against an unelected bunch of extremists with no mandate railroading through a no-deal Brexit would be something for us all to be involved in.

2. We all surely have a responsibility to lift discussion out of the impoverished binary leave/remain, the effect of which has been disastrous, so corrosive, so divisive, in the labour movement and social movements over the last three years. We must resist our conversations being forced into yes/no arguments about whether “we” (who’s “we”? the British state?) want to be in the EU or not. To the extent that the ditherers, and the other parties, accepted that narrative, they reinforced the zealots’ position. Of course we should discuss how we – working people, communities, migrants from Europe and further afield – can best face the challenges posed by the EU on one hand and the British state on the other, and how we can develop movements that are locally powerful but internationalist in principle. We need to have these discussions on our own terms, not on the terms that have dominated in parliament.

3. Whatever happens in parliament, the zealots will not go away. The Tory party in its old form is gone. Whether they are inside it or outside it, whether Brexit happens or not, the zealots will ramp up their rhetoric against their phantoms: the “parliament of traitors”, “experts”, the judicial system … and then migrant workers, the unemployed, people of Islamic faith. If they stay in government, the zealots will soon supersede the distribution of electioneering cash with new attacks on working people’s living standards.

4. It is not surprising that this government, potentially the most reactionary for a long time on social issues, is also the worst ever on climate change. Dominic Raab, foreign secretary, has close links with the climate-science-denying Global Warming Policy Foundation, which in turn has multiple connections with the Leave Means Leave campaign. Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the House of Commons, is a climate science denier. Other ministers have links to fossil fuel companies’ lobbyists, and patchy records, at best, in taking action on climate change. As in the US, these politicians see such action as a threat to the deregulation of business.

5. The drawn-out Brexit saga has exposed again the Labour Party’s inherent limitations. While Jeremy Corbyn and the “left” have made efforts to focus on austerity and its damaging effects, a section of the parliamentary Labour party has spent the last three years undermining Corbyn, apparently more concerned at the prospect of a government led by him than at the government we now have. But Corbyn and his supporters have made matters worse, from endorsing Theresa May’s idiotic decision to trigger Article 50, to waffling on about “respecting the result of the referendum”, as though that was the only issue. The zealots’ narrative has overshadowed the parliamentary Labour party as well as the Tories. And Corbyn’s post-Stalinist advisers, who supported Brexit because they see the EU as a greater enemy than the British state, have been hard at work. A Labour government, or a Labour-led coalition, is still a possible outcome of all this. But its willingness and ability to challenge capital will depend, more than anything, on the movement outside parliament.

6. The Brexit process has already claimed victims: communities such as Scunthorpe, which are suffering job losses and hardship due to Brexit-related industrial closures; migrant workers from EU countries who find their lives thrown into uncertainty and themselves and their families vilified. Their anger is more than justified. But, in addition to this, the Brexit process has produced a gloom, a feeling of powerlessness, of fear, of uncertainty, that is obviously affecting millions of people. I think this feeling is the product of an illusion that our enemies are powerful enough to decide our fate above our heads. It’s another version of the illusions of power that have engendered fear, obedience and subservience to elites for centuries. It’s an illusion, because they, too, are tormented by crisis. It makes them more ruthless, it throws up the zealots – but it doesn’t necessarily make them stronger. We – social movements, communities, workplace organisations, movements about climate change – can find, and are finding, ways to challenge these enemies. (The FcK Boris demonstration when the new government took office was a reminder of this.) This is not a plea for false hope. It’s a suggestion that we evaluate our enemies’ strengths and weaknesses carefully.

Official Communication from the UFA

Posted by Jim on August 29, 2019

Johnson and the DUP continuing … opposition to the “Backstop”

Posted by Jim on

Brian Feeney. Irish News. Belfast. Wednesday, August 28, 2019 

THERE is an eerie echo in the present state of British-Irish relations of those same relations—or lack of them —exactly a hundred years ago.

In 1919 the newly expanded Irish electorate had just overwhelmingly endorsed Sinn Féin’s policy of Irish self-determination in the December 1918 general election.

The British government not only ignored the firm will of the majority of Irish people but proceeded to spend the next two years fighting to prevent the fulfilment of that will.

The reason they adopted that stupid anti-democratic course of action was because the prime minister Lloyd George relied on the Conservative and Unionist party to stay in office.

Since 1915 senior figures in Ulster Unionism had directed the policy of the Conservative party on Ireland.

In that year, following disastrous reverses in World War I, Asquith established a coalition government.

It included all the chief enemies of Irish independence: Lord Lansdowne, leader of the southern unionists; Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative party and dyed in the wool Unionist; Arthur Balfour; Austen Chamberlain; Walter Long, former Chief Secretary and former leader of the Ulster Unionists; and, bitterest of all, the leader of sedition against the government of which he was now a member, Edward Carson.

What this new coalition meant for British-Irish politics was this. From 1910-15 Ulster Unionists had been the enemies of the Liberal government; now they were the Liberals’ allies.

After 1915, instead of being at loggerheads about Ireland, if a difficulty arose there was a powerful incentive to reach an agreement about Ireland.

A century ago that meant partition. Neither the Irish Party nor the new dominant party in 1919, Sinn Féin, had any leverage.

From 1915 onwards unionists dominated British government policy on Ireland with leading members in Lloyd George’s cabinet until 1922.

In the current state of affairs the DUP exercise nothing like the same leverage as their Unionist predecessors, but they wield a baleful and malign influence which means there will be no progress on any of the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement.

You will notice that just as in 1919 the British government ignored the will of the Irish people, so too this Conservative government ignores the will of a majority of people in the north.

In his tendentious four-page diatribe he sent to the EU, Johnson called the backstop ‘anti-democratic’; it’s not. It was agreed by the democratically elected British government in December 2017 and has been endorsed by the majority of elected representatives in The North no later than last week. Opinion polls here show support for it increasing.

Relying on the minority DUP, just as Lloyd George gave into minority unionist sentiment, Johnson presses on, regardless of the consequences here, or the consequences for relations with Dublin, or on the economy and society of Ireland.

However, don’t be misled into wishful thinking that Johnson and the clique around him don’t agree with the DUP, or will automatically ditch them or their antiquated views on British-Irish relations. He won’t.

You might notice that in his letter to the EU, Johnson invented an entirely new function for the Good Friday Agreement; respect for minority rights, mentioned nowhere in the GFA which guarantees rights for all.

At the same time he minimised any role for the Irish government. That’s because for Johnson, Michael Gove, Johnson’s personal Rasputin Dominic Cummings, and several other members of the most right-wing cabinet of third-raters anyone can remember, both the Good Friday Agreement and the “Backstop” are threats to the desire to ‘take back control’ that consumes all their waking (and sleepless) hours.

Johnson’s letter preposterously claims the “Backstop” undermines the GFA because it’s ‘undemocratic’ since people in The North would have ‘no democratic control over commercial and economic life,’ which is nonsense.

Worse, he promotes ‘consent’ to equal status with his invented minority rights, thereby accepting the DUP line that unionists have a veto on everything.

Official Communication from the UFA

Posted by Jim on August 28, 2019