Boris Wobbles Back Onto the Brexit Tightrope - But Can He 'Get it Done'?
Morning Star, London
SET aside Boris Johnson’s minor pre-breakfast Cabinet reshuffle to take account of the election casualties and his only real business before he works out which of his extended family to invite for Christmas dinner is to set a timetable for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill.
Getting Brexit done is a simple slogan but the political reality is that it carries a whole hinterland of problems for the prime minister.
First off, he wants it done quickly and the story is that the Bill makes an extension beyond the coming year impossible. Even illegal.
This is a difficult ask and one that puts a premium on the most simple arrangements that can be reconciled with the basic imperative to quit the the political institutions of the EU.
Not having a commissioner among the representatives of the remaining EU states is a small matter. The political influence — for all it was worth — of the British contingent to the toothless European Parliament has always been vanishingly small. Its utility consisted almost exclusively in the gravy train of perks and privileges that it granted MEPs in exchange for their loyalty.
We have seen what illusions about the EU have done to Labour’s credibility with the electorate and ending the power of patronage that trapped a wholly redundant bunch of Labour Party functionaries in a Brussels bubble is an unqualified good thing.
But it is not just the tight timetable that constrains Johnson’s options. He has to balance the competing claims of the different interests that are represented in a parliamentary Tory Party reconstituted by the political necessity to give a greater voice to a wider range of forces than is usually represented in Tory circles.
However imperfectly these represent the regional interests which have been neglected by Britain’s metamorphosis — from a relatively stable manufacturing country to one whose economy is highly dependent on a volatile and financialised City of London — they do mark a shift in the balance of parliamentary power.
The effectiveness of the the slogan Get Brexit Done was enhanced by a minimalist Tory manifesto that contained few overt policy initiatives that Labour could contest. But it did admit to the necessity to fund a fairly extensive infrastructure programme, in the NHS and some social and educational programmes.
The clash of capitalist interests which were reflected in the Tory pre-election schisms has not vanished and a biggish parliamentary majority is less of a guarantee of party discipline than a small one.
The pressure from the big banks, from the biggest monopolies, from the big business elite, from the very powerful interests in the British ruling class that want the closest relationship with the EU and with the widest market access to the EU’s level-playing field cannot be resisted without risking a debilitating fracture in the ruling bloc.
These forces made the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party — with its transformative domestic agenda and the implicit threat to Britain’s imperialist foreign policy — a real priority and the notoriously flexible Boris Johnson was the ideal front man for an election strategy that targeted Labour’s fatal flaw with unerring precision.
But getting Brexit done — even without cracking the carapace of Tory unity — is impossible without a significant abandonment of the election campaign’s simplicities.
Is it possible that Boris Johnson, and the Cabinet he appoints, is wholly committed to the bare bones simplicities that gave it an election win; or is it not more likely that he will accommodate the pressure to fast-track a new trade agreement with the EU that keeps Britain closely aligned with the pro-market, pro-big business rules of the EU single market?
SET aside Boris Johnson’s minor pre-breakfast Cabinet reshuffle to take account of the election casualties and his only real business before he works out which of his extended family to invite for Christmas dinner is to set a timetable for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill.
Getting Brexit done is a simple slogan but the political reality is that it carries a whole hinterland of problems for the prime minister.
First off, he wants it done quickly and the story is that the Bill makes an extension beyond the coming year impossible. Even illegal.
This is a difficult ask and one that puts a premium on the most simple arrangements that can be reconciled with the basic imperative to quit the the political institutions of the EU.
Not having a commissioner among the representatives of the remaining EU states is a small matter. The political influence — for all it was worth — of the British contingent to the toothless European Parliament has always been vanishingly small. Its utility consisted almost exclusively in the gravy train of perks and privileges that it granted MEPs in exchange for their loyalty.
We have seen what illusions about the EU have done to Labour’s credibility with the electorate and ending the power of patronage that trapped a wholly redundant bunch of Labour Party functionaries in a Brussels bubble is an unqualified good thing.
But it is not just the tight timetable that constrains Johnson’s options. He has to balance the competing claims of the different interests that are represented in a parliamentary Tory Party reconstituted by the political necessity to give a greater voice to a wider range of forces than is usually represented in Tory circles.
However imperfectly these represent the regional interests which have been neglected by Britain’s metamorphosis — from a relatively stable manufacturing country to one whose economy is highly dependent on a volatile and financialised City of London — they do mark a shift in the balance of parliamentary power.
The effectiveness of the the slogan Get Brexit Done was enhanced by a minimalist Tory manifesto that contained few overt policy initiatives that Labour could contest. But it did admit to the necessity to fund a fairly extensive infrastructure programme, in the NHS and some social and educational programmes.
The clash of capitalist interests which were reflected in the Tory pre-election schisms has not vanished and a biggish parliamentary majority is less of a guarantee of party discipline than a small one.
The pressure from the big banks, from the biggest monopolies, from the big business elite, from the very powerful interests in the British ruling class that want the closest relationship with the EU and with the widest market access to the EU’s level-playing field cannot be resisted without risking a debilitating fracture in the ruling bloc.
These forces made the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party — with its transformative domestic agenda and the implicit threat to Britain’s imperialist foreign policy — a real priority and the notoriously flexible Boris Johnson was the ideal front man for an election strategy that targeted Labour’s fatal flaw with unerring precision.
But getting Brexit done — even without cracking the carapace of Tory unity — is impossible without a significant abandonment of the election campaign’s simplicities.
Is it possible that Boris Johnson, and the Cabinet he appoints, is wholly committed to the bare bones simplicities that gave it an election win; or is it not more likely that he will accommodate the pressure to fast-track a new trade agreement with the EU that keeps Britain closely aligned with the pro-market, pro-big business rules of the EU single market?
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