Theresa May’s first year was awful. Her next promises far worse | Polly Toynbee | Opinion
A year ago today Theresa May was anointed unopposed. What a wretched anniversary, marking an inert year in which absolutely nothing has been done for the country, and even less for her party as she squandered its majority. Beyond the monstrous nightmare that is the eight upcoming Brexit bills, the first of which is to be unfurled on Thursday, there is little in the pipeline either.
No wonder she calls on Labour for ideas. They can throw their fine fat manifesto to her across the dispatch box for her to take her pick. End student fees, the pay cap, the bedroom tax, unpaid internships and excessive top pay? Bring rail and energy back into public ownership, perhaps. Plenty to choose from in this popular cornucopia. Most prime ministers hit the deck running, brimming with policies. She has wasted the first year when a better prime minister would have seized their moment.
Consider what Tony Blair did in his first year: the Good Friday agreement signed; the national minimum wage and human rights acts passed; the Bank of England made independent; a £5bn windfall from privatised utilities; and devolution to the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly begun, along with a London mayor. He stripped the House of Lords of most hereditary peers, brought in a Freedom of Information Act, lowered the gay age of consent, ordained the right to roam, and saved the Kosovans. There was much more in the pipeline, with benefits for families increasing hugely. Any one of those achievements would be totemic in hapless May’s wasted year.
The Tory press was not impressed with May’s appeal for ideas: “May’s cry for help to Corbynâ€, splashed the Daily Telegraph. “Weakened May pleads for support from rivalsâ€, was the Times headline. The idea â€" always a bad one â€" was for a relaunch to reprogramme her. Nothing about this appeal was convincing: “I say to the other parties in the House of Commons … come forward with your own views and ideas about how we can tackle these challenges as a country.†Damian Green, May’s human interpreter, says she wants a “grown-up way of doing politicsâ€, an end to parties seeking to “just sit in the trenches and shell each otherâ€. But this Mother Theresa demeanour sounds painfully synthetic.
If she genuinely wants consensus on Brexit, the gigantic boulder blocking all else, she needs to rescind her red lines and open the door to negotiations in a new frame of mind. Her insistence on leaving the single market, customs union and European court of justice oversight has wrecked all hope of compromise. But her briefers still say she has no Brexit reverse gear â€" and the Europhobes stand ready with knives at her back if she gives an inch.
Yet the great unravelling is beginning, before the repeal bill is even published. A group of Tory MPs has announced their rebellion over May’s arbitrary insistence on leaving Euratom, the EU atomic energy organisation. Leaving it, says the president of the Royal College of Radiologists, could threaten the supply of radioactive isotopes used for scans and treatment of cancer patients. Ed Vaizey for the Tories and Rachel Reeves for Labour are leading the campaign to stay inside.
Yesterday a new all-party group on EU relations sprang into life, led by Anna Soubry for the Tories and Chuka Umunna for Labour, putting up an umbrella under which a host of disparate anti-Brexit grouplets can cluster. New Tory faces are coming out of the woodwork to oppose aspects of Brexit, the nervous sending private signals. One leading Tory anti-Brexiteer said the nature of this all-party group was encouraging more colleagues to come forward, as Umunna was plainly independent of Corbyn.
But this creates problems for Labour MPs, virtually all anti-Brexiteers, willing to move heaven and earth to stop a hard Brexit harming their constituents, but with no appetite for joining anything that looks like an anti-Corbyn cabal. Labour’s rising star Angela Rayner has emerged as the peacemaker calling for an “end to fighting each otherâ€, a reproof to hot-tempered old factionalists calling for beheadings. But Labour is still waiting for Corbyn to come round. His MPs listen hard, but yet again their leader, speaking to thousands at the Durham miners gala, said not a word about Brexit, no warning about its threat to livelihoods and living standards. What an opportunity missed.
Labour MPs expect him soon to join the soft Brexiteers and change policy on the single market and the customs union, whatever his own views. Why? Because his route to No 10 will come by joining Brexit rebellions that split the Tories. These bills will unravel time and again. Neither Commons nor Lords will allow some 1,000 statutory instruments to be nodded through using “Henry VIII powersâ€, without proper scrutiny â€" or allow ministers to implement the final deal without a vote.
May has blundered with the threat to use the Parliament Act to force the Lords to pass Brexit bills: a bill must be rejected by the Lords in two successive sessions before the act can be invoked, but that’s been nullified by May’s creation of a two-year session. The Lords will take a stand for the good of the country, unconstrained by an ill-advised advisory referendum.
But what then? Owen Paterson, extreme Brexiteer, issued a threat on the BBC’s Sunday Politics: if the UK doesn’t leave the single market, customs union and European court of justice, if it doesn’t “take back controlâ€, there will be “appalling damage to the whole establishment, not just political, the media and the judicial establishment†â€" as near as dammit a threat of revolution.
You might wonder why May stays, surrounded by enemies pronouncing her “dead in the waterâ€. She sees it as “her dutyâ€, they say. I wish we knew how she will see her duty if she emerges from the negotiations knowing that Brexit is about to render the country impoverished and powerless in a dangerous world, as Europe moves on without us. Will she think it her duty to stand up to the Owen Patersons and spell out the truth?
“I did my best, but I cannot recommend leaving the union with our closest allies and trading partners. There is no deal available better than staying inside the EU. As your prime minister I cannot lead the country to its ruin and I ask you to think again.†Alas, nothing we know of May suggests she is that brave leader.
0 Response to "Theresa May’s first year was awful. Her next promises far worse | Polly Toynbee | Opinion"
Posting Komentar