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The End of May
Who says voting never changes anything? Thrice in the last three years have the people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland gone to the polls to cast their ballots. Twice in the last three years has the Prime Minister resigned the next morning, in the latter case before the results have even been announced.
Her voice cracking with emotion as she delivered her speech to the assembled press in Downing Street, Theresa May announced that she would be stepping down as the leader of her party. She will continue to serve as Prime Minister until her party elects a successor, probably sometime in July.
Mrs. May will, therefore, greet President Trump on his state visit to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day. After that, the Conservative Party will hope to speed up the process of electing a new leader, reasoning that the country will not tolerate a long campaign only culminating at the party conference in the autumn. Others will just want her gone before she does any more ‘damage’ to the UK or her party.
The failure to leave the European Union on March 29th has seen a drastic fall in support for the Conservatives, falling in the polls from the high thirties to under ten percent. With Parliament having rejected her Brexit ‘deal’ three times, Mrs. May’s speech introducing the Bill to implement it anyway was the final straw. The Cabinet, despite having agreed to her approach, watched the reaction and claimed she had gone beyond their mandate. One resigned, her former rival for the leadership no less. With the backbenches in open revolt and the chair of their 1922 committee offering the glass of whiskey and the revolver, Mrs May finally submitted to the inevitable failure of all political careers.
The early favourite to replace her is Boris Johnson. The impact of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party has ‘marmalised’ the Conservative vote and nervous Tory MPs are recalling the Canadian election of 1993, when Kim Campbell’s Progressive Conservatives went from governing to just three seats. Many are wondering if Boris’ populist touch is the only way to save them. Farage himself states that the decision to finally back Mrs. May’s ‘surrender treaty’ on the third attempt marks Boris as untrustworthy. A lot of his new Brexit Party supporters agree with him. Nor will all in the Conservative Party agree that this is a May 1940 moment, or that Boris is the reincarnation of his hero, Winston Churchill.
An anyone but Boris campaign has been active since David Cameron resigned back in 2016. They sabotaged his time as Foreign Secretary, with hostile junior Ministers and civil servants briefing against him. The media too is filled with his enemies from his time as a journalist and editor of The Spectator; some are jealous, others consider him a fool.
Yet the Remainer wing of the Conservative Party is unlikely to see their candidate elected by the largely Leave voting membership. Whoever succeeds, if the Tories are to survive they cannot continue with Mrs. May’s policies. Kim Campbell had been the leader only six months before that seismic election in 1993, if Britain’s progressive conservatives want to avoid emulating their Canadian forebears they will have to both deliver Brexit and be Conservatives again. Failure to do both and Nigel Farage will be eyeing his third Prime Ministerial scalp.
Published in General
There’s a lesson here for the GOP.
Well. As far as I can see, nothing in her tenure so became her as the leaving it. What an absolute waste of two years. My sister (in Scotland) is hopping mad.
So, is Great Britain leaving the EU?
And enter Donald Trump. There are two ways he can be constructive for Great Britain, especially if Boris Johnson is going to be the new PM.
First, Trump and Boris Johnson can hold a joint press conference in which Johnson announces that he is willing to re-negotiate the Withdrawal Agreement, but that Britain will definitively be leaving the EU on November 1st. At the same press conference, Trump can announce that on November 1st he will be imposing 25% tariffs on EU products unless American agricultural products can be imported tariff-free into the EU.
Secondly, Trump can seek to make peace between Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.
And if it had only been June 6th instead of the 7th. May Day and D Day on the same day.
Ha! I see what you did there. Five pun points to you.
So they can avoid a general election? Cause I thought May leaving triggered one.
Who do the DUP want as PM? Cause without them Tories dont have a majority.
That’s a whole other essay.
Short answer is yes.
When?
Hmm…..
Didn’t Maggie Thatcher resign on the day she announced her resignation? What’s with the long and drawn out ceremony? What point does it serve, except for May to attempt to designate a successor?
http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/dismissal_of_the_rump_parliament.htm
May’s leaving doesn’t trigger an election. A no confidence vote in the government leads to that. Too many MPs, from across the house, would lose their seats at the moment so we are probably safe for now. It is possible that if a new PM goes for ‘no-deal’ then enough Conservative Remainers might vote their own gov. down. They call us Leavers extremists but there is a lot of projection going on there.
DUP are close to the Brexiteers and Boris spoke at their party conference. Their priorities are the Union with Great Britain and Brexit, in that order. They will most likely back a Leaver who commits to the whole of the UK leaving, i.e. no backstop. Not that they get to vote.
Good point though. Tories can’t govern without some sort of agreement with the DUP and the current one has almost run out. Of course a remainer could split the party and govern with Labour, but Corbyn would have to be ousted first or Labour split. Anything is possible I suppose.
Rules have changed since then. In Maggie’s day it used to be just the MPs so you would get leadership challenges and ‘stalking horses’. But you are right, May’s behaviour does not compare well to Lady Thatcher’s.
Nicky,
Not that I’m looking over my shoulder or anything but until they move her stuff out of 10 Downing Street I’ll still be a little nervous. Obviously, it took the Brexit Party dynamite to blast through the May log jam. Nigel should keep the pressure on until Britain is out of the EU.
Regards,
Jim
Nigel’s tweet:
Quite classy I reckon. Although I very much doubt he wrote it….
Now the campaign is over he will be able to resume his media career but I don’t expect him to sit back at all.
Nicky,
Nicky,
Here’s an interesting commentary by Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Rees-Mogg Warns of Parliamentary ‘Stitch-up’ in Appointing New PM
This time the whole Tory membership must have a vote. They are 2 to 1 for leaving on WTO terms over May’s deal. That should produce a result that would bring the Tories back to their roots. If they don’t do it now then Britain may need to get used to the idea of Nigel Farage as Prime Minister and the Tory Party splintering into a uselessness.
Regards,
Jim
Yes, and will be doing so for the foreseeable future.
The Sky News journalist I mentioned in my previous piece covering the Brexit Party rally has a short video about the campaign. He is not sympathetic, as seen in the q & a with Farage at the end, but he is honest. Funnily enough he reaches the same conclusion as you.
The question that is yet to be answered is has the Tory high command got the message? Boris was making a speech in Switzerland yesterday where he stated the following:
Now I think this is what you Americans might call Business Negotiations 101. I know it is over here because it is exactly how it is framed by the Judge Business School of Cambridge University. They even used Mrs May’s original negotiating strategy, when this was the case, as a template for teaching. Walking away with no deal is your BATNA, or Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.
So Boris was simply stating an obvious principle. Yet even this has attracted criticism from his colleagues, suggesting they still just don’t get it.
Well, there might be if the GOP could read. But the “lesson” analogy doesn’t work for social groups – they don’t “learn” although they do modify. I think over the next six years the Republican party will incorporate and mainstream a strong populist strain that will last for decades, and shed many of its parasitic elements. Flake and Corker were the first, but even well-coiffed weathervanes like Good Mitt Romney will be at risk as the tide turns. Sorry about the mixed analogies.
Theresa May is a betrayer; that is her core skill. That has been obvious since her elevation. It’s been instructive to watch how her (monotonically increasingly) lies have been eagerly received by the UK establishment and their press. Much less so, with regard to their electorate – just like US.
The Long Goodbye!
I didn’t know my dog was part cat.