The world gapes at Britain in amazement and arrives at the conclusion that it must be having some sort of national nervous breakdown. The most dramatic expression of that view has come from Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a disappointed Anglophile, who declared: “England has collapsed politically, monetarily, constitutionally and economically.”
That was over-saucing the language of apocalypse, but you can understand why even level-headed Dutchmen turn hyperbolic when they gaze across the English Channel. Stability is supposed to be one of Britain’s strongest national brands. Over the past 11 days, Britain has behaved like a country without either a government or an opposition, as both of its major parties have been convulsed by cascading crises. If the climate were a bit warmer, people would be calling it a banana republic.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, elected just a year ago, has been toppled by a referendum-cum-coup. Cameron was astonishingly cool when he faced British parliament and the meltdown of his government was somewhat disguised by the simultaneous civil war devouring the Labour Party, but he is a dead prime minister walking, a man decapitated by his fatal miscalculations and the treacherous ambitions of people he mistook for friends.
Illustration: Yusha
Humiliation has also been heaped on British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. Not so long ago, the chancellor was many a pundit’s favorite to be the next prime minister. He will not even be a candidate for succession and his fiscal plans are being consigned to the shredder.
You might recall that the Tories spent the election campaign last year telling Britons to sign up for their deficit-reduction program or risk economic Armageddon. Those same Tories are now binning their commitments as if they were old shopping lists. This might be sensible when the governor of the Bank of England is warning that Brexit Britain faces “economic post-traumatic stress.”
However, such sudden lurches in policy are not likely to instill confidence in British economic decisionmaking. As for what is actually intended by Brexit, the nation is still no closer to an answer to that towering question than on the night of the referendum.
“Can we get back to you on that?” has been the message to the world from the government as the Tory party has descended into an orgy of political assassination.
Former London mayor Boris Johnson knifed Cameron in the back, only then to be stabbed in the front by his erstwhile comrade, British Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove. That was poetic justice for the former mayor, who destroyed his leader and unleashed turmoil on his country by championing a cause in which he never believed. As for Gove, in a matter of days he has ruined the premiership of Cameron and then wrecked Johnson’s ambition to succeed to No. 10 Downing Street.
To murder the two largest figures in the Tory firmament is quite a double. To the bitter delight of both, Gove seems to have been mortally wounded in the process. Only a handful of Tory lawmakers turned up to cheer him on when he launched his bid for the job he has often declared himself incapable of doing. The Conservative Party can live with a rat, but even it recoils from a double rat.
“Who can ever trust him again?” one Tory lawmaker asked.
Many others simply preface his name with words beginning with a “c” or an “f.”
In such turbulent times, it seems reckless to dare venture any predictions about what is going to happen next. However, we have probably passed peak chaos in the Tory party.
Conservatives do not mind being seen as ruthless, but they are troubled when they start to look ludicrous. That is feeding a strong desire among Tory lawmakers to cart away their dead, mop up the blood and place a steady hand on the wheel. They are now looking for a restoration of leadership and order.
Enter, with perfect timing, British Home Secretary Theresa May. The rapid gravitation of support to her is driven by this yearning among Tories for the chaos to be over.
In her quiet, but deadly way, May has been the most ruthless player of them all. She kept her head down during the poisonous battles between fellow Tories during the referendum campaign, winning some points for loyalty by paying lip service to the prime minister’s position while saying nothing to infuriate the other side. She waited for the Tory boys to finish knifing each other in their pantomime version of House of Cards and then elegantly stepped over their twitching corpses to seize pole position for the succession.
Offering herself as a serious person for a serious time is a shrewd pitch. The choice of next Tory leader, and therefore prime minister, is ultimately in the hands of Tory activists, so it is important to remember what they are like.
They are predominantly older. They mainly live in shires and suburbs. They want a leader who looks and sounds like a prime minister. They think that their party had its best years when it was led by a woman of steely fiber.
May is unlike Thatcher in quite a lot of significant ways, but she is similar to the party’s old heroine in enough respects to tick an awful lot of boxes for the Tory electorate. Some of them and some Tory MPs might be a bit wary that May was, at least nominally, a Remainer, but she has already moved to settle doubts by declaring her acceptance of Brexit. It will be the sort of irony that politics loves to throw up if the referendum propels into No. 10 Downing Street a woman who played virtually no role in the result.
The five candidates for the leadership will be whittled down to a short list of two in a series of ballots of Tory lawmakers, the first today. Technically, this could take three rounds and last until Tuesday next week. A strong hunch would be that it ends this week, as unpopular candidates drop out before they are formally eliminated. Two names will then be put to Tory activists. Unless, which seems increasingly possible, the home secretary runs away with so much support from lawmakers that she is crowned queen of the Tories without the bother of a ballot of the members.
So by early September, and conceivably much sooner than that, the Conservative Party will have a new leader who will then be hosannaed at the party conference in October in a choreographed display of adulation. Historically, the Tory party has had a genius for switching from darkest treachery to sycophantic unity and performing the somersault at astonishing speed. So there is a clearly marked route out of its current turmoil and back to something resembling stability for the Conservative Party.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Labour. How its agonies are going to be resolved is much harder to foresee. If Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn were any other leader, he would have been gone by now. In fact, he would have gone on Monday last week when he lost most of his shadow Cabinet. So many of his frontbenchers have quit that Labour is simply no longer functional as a parliamentary opposition. Pat Glass was appointed as a substitute shadow secretary of state for education on Monday last week, only to resign by Wednesday last week, setting a new record for the brevity with which she was in post.
By an unprecedented margin of four to one, Labour lawmakers have declared that they have no confidence in Corbyn. Every single living former leader of the party has implored him to go. This is so wide and so deep that it cannot be characterized as a “plot” by “embittered Blairites.” The resignees and the no-confidence voters included many Labour lawmakers who had done their best to try to make his leadership work. What happened in the Labour Party in parliament last week was not so much a coup as a riot of despair.
The deeper tragedy is that this period presented a golden opportunity for any half-decent opposition to present itself to the country as an authoritative voice. Rarely has Britain so needed an effective alternative to the government. Brexit was rejected by 48 percent of voters and there are second thoughts among some of the 52 percent and expressions of regret by many who failed to vote. That is a lot of potential energy and support waiting to be tapped by a confident Labour Party under attractive leadership.
Over the weekend, senior Labour figures were still clinging to the hope that Corbyn would finally reach the conclusion that his position is unsustainable and announce that he is standing down. Attempts are being made to persuade him that there is a way to depart that does not look as if he has abandoned his supporters and betrayed his causes. A vacancy would allow an open contest involving multiple candidates.
If Corbyn does not resign, then his lawmakers will have to take the bloodier course. They have gone way too far to pull back from triggering a formal challenge to his leadership that will pitch them directly against many of the party’s members.If that does not unseat him, it becomes increasingly hard to see how the party can avoid a trajectory that leads to a formal split.
While the Tories are probably past peak chaos, for Labour, the worst might be yet to come.
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