Grand Coalition in England – the Johnson-Corbyn Complex
Published July 30, 2019
© Georg Boomgaarden
In fact Prime Minister Boris Johnson formed an English (and Welsh) Brexit-government, because Scotland and Northern Ireland both of which voted clearly against Brexit are not taken seriously by this government. Johnson assembled the most rightist bunch of Tory extremists in his cabinet.
He could never have come to this point – and he will not be successful without the tacit support of Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party. The referendum would have had a different outcome had Corbyn seriously fought for Remain – he did not, despite the fact that the majority of his own party were Remainers.
The withdrawal agreement was torpedoed by a coalition of the Labour party with the Tories rebelling against Theresa May.All negotiations to form a centre ground policy option failed. The reasons to vote against all options were manyfold but the effect was the stalemate that neither Theresa May nor Jeremy Corbyn were willing to break up.
When I heard Jeremy Corbyn argue on Brexit in the House of Commons he sounded like a stauch Brexiteer. Other Labour politicians like Keir Starmer or Yvette Cooper talked differently. But Corbyn and his closest courtiers were able to sabotage an effective Labour opposition against a hard Brexit. He hoped to be able to continue his ambiguous position criticizing the „Tory Brexit“ but nurturing phantasies of a better „Labour Brexit“ and keeping everybody at arm’s length who fought for another referendum. Very slowly he moved towards a more Remain-friendly tone – but for me he has zero credibility.
For a foreigner it is really stunning how one person based on the support of militants (who represent only a tiny fraction of the voters) can impose minority views on a majority of members of Parliament who do not share his opinion. Corbyn played out the legitimacy of the militant’s vote against the legitimacy of the majority of the elected MPs of the Parlamentary Labour Party. Johnson became Prime Minister and formed his government from the most extremist part of his party. For continentals it sounds very strange that a man who is selected by 160.000 Tories automatically becomes Prime Minister without any vote from the plenary of the elected Parliament – as is usually the case in all other parliamentary democracies.
Both extremisms: the marxist Corbynism and the right-populist Johnsonism reinforce each other. The effect is a kind of a negative Grand Coalition whipping the majority of parliamentarians to support a minority policy to the detriment of compromise, of tact, of logic, of reason and decency, in fact to the detriment of the British people.
It is high time that the centre unites and fights back in the name of reason. Will the Labour Party become a real opposition again, reflecting the ideas of the silenced majority and not the ideology of a few marxists? Can this happen while Corbyn is leading the Labour Party? It would be a great leap forward if the people would dump old sectarian prejudices and form a united vote against the Brextremists.
Are the Liberal Democrats able to win a landslide majority to stop madness? Are the people willing and able to give Labour and Tories a time-out to sort out their internal structures to make them Tory instead of UKIP, make them Labour instead of Trotskytes again?
The unfair voting system (where in a five party context a party could even win a constituency with 21% of the votes, if three other parties get 20% and one 19%) must be reformed. In the Cameron-coalition the Tories had sabotaged the LibDem plans to reform the electoral law, while LibDems remainded loyal to the coalition and commited political suicide by voting for increased university fees and supporting the Tory-trap of a referendum-lock on European treaty changes (that was a first step to Brexit and a big failure of Nick Clegg). The Conservative-LibDem-coalition was not perfect and damaged trust in the LibDems, but the tacit Grand Coalition of Tories and the Corbyn Labour Party is far worse. It is a mess and makes England small again.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has embarked on a no-deal Brexit. He does not want to talk to the EU before the Europeans ditch the backstop. He wants a completely revised withdrawal agreement. He knows very well that this is not on offer. This means that he just wants no deal. No blustering can conceal this. He prepares new elections with a blame game: Stubborn Europeans are the culprits. With the elections he wants to get a mandate for 5 years, he wants elections before his voters may realize that most his grand promises are vain and not soundly financed.
Labour has lost a lot of time with iternecine strife instead of stopping Brexit and stopping Johnson. I do not trust Corbyn that he even wants to stop Brexit. He seems to believe that after a catastrophic cliff edge he may have a better chance to win and have his pure socialism – but must he really risk the catastrophy first? He seems to believe that after Johnson takes back control, he may take up that same control to bring the socialist paradise on earth to Britain. For Corbyn the EU may just disturb that paradise.
Responding to unfriendly fire from Boris, EU countries will make friendly noises, but they will not give in. They just cannot let down Ireland. Boris knows that. A commentator in The Guardian spoke of Johnson playing chicken with the EU. But you need two for a chicken game. Since the EU does not have any driver crazy enough to play games instead of doing serious politics, there is no partner. Boris plays chicken game with a stone wall running full speed against the wall hoping that the wall will blink. But walls cannot blink, they just remind you that they are hard stuff.
Boris Johnson does not fear a no-confidence-vote because he believes that he will win an election, the earlier the better. The Labour Party under Corbyn lost in 2017 despite the fact that Theresa May made the worst ever campaign, while Corbyn really was a good campaigner. Boris together with Cummings are a strong campaigning team without any scruples. Corbyn should not have any illusions about his own popularity.
Corbyn lost in 2017 when Labour was still trusted to be a barrier against an extremist Tory-Brexit. His ambiguity about Brexit does no longer help. The Labour Party is split. It may be too late to win back any trust from Remainers.
The only way to beat Johnson would be to make firm alliances with all decent and moderate parties to support the candidates who are most likely to beat the Tories in each constituency. If Remain votes are allowed to be split, Johnson can win the end-game (he certainly hopes to bring down the Brexit party and get back Farage voters to the Tories – and where this is impossible to arrange himself with Farage).
The EU can only sit back until the drama plays off. Johnson is playing an England only game, the Europeans will have to wait for the outcome. Like Theresa May the debates take place with England and mainly within the Conservative party. and not with the European partners.
The Boris game is the no-deal game. So the EU should just put all the border installations and people in place for that scenario. Boris may have to learn to explain the consequences to his voters. To avoid losing too much time, the EU should start to prepare for a Free Trade Agreement. But negotiations can only start when the conditions for a successful negotiations are given: nobody can negotiate with a government that has vowed to break its international obligations.
The EU should keep a friendly relationship, but not honour unfriendly behaviour. The EU has no reason to give to Boris Johnson what it could not give to Theresa May. The EU cannot make deals on legality, it cannot ditch solidarity with member states to favour a non-member or somebody on his way out. The EU will not destroy its own basic principles to please a self-delusional narcisst. Eating the cake and having the same cake at once does not become logic by the magic of Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister.
The EU is legally prepared for no-deal because all the laws are in place for trading with a non-member – laws, tariffs and regulations which Britain itself has influenced for the last 40 years. But the EU must step up preparations to counter the blame game. Boris has a record of denigrating the EU when he was correspondent of the Daily Telegraph in Brussels, and Dominic Cummings lets us expect a Soviet style propaganda war against the EU. The EU should keep calm and carry on with friendliness and at the same time should make public a sharp analysis of the British actors‘ errors and delusions.
It is important to call propaganda „propaganda“, to call lies „lies.“ The debate must be fought mainly inside Britain, but the EU should not renounce to make its voice heard.
© Georg Boomgaarden