In Westminster, as in life, there’s a lot of truth in the old saying that while the cat’s away, the mice will play. When Tory Prime Ministers are overseas (Thatcher in Paris 1990, Major in Japan 1993), Eurosceptic MPs back in London can wreak havoc with leadership plots. Well, there are more rodents than ever in the Commons right now, both literally (most of our offices are infested with the blighters) and metaphorically (as Tory MPs grumble about Brexit).
Yesterday, Theresa May decided to turn the tables by announcing a Whitsun recess that will mean all MPs are away from SW1 for a nice 11-day break with their families. It’s much harder to plot and connive (WhatsApp groups don’t quite cut it) away from the corridors, rooms and bars of Westminster. The new recess dates mean that when the European Parliament election results come through on Monday May 27, MPs will be in their constituencies and won’t be back in London for another eight days.
Of course, backbenchers spending more time with their local party activists may not prove too helpful for the PM, especially if those activists have been on strike during the non-campaign and just voted for the Brexit Party. ConHome reported yesterday that three in five of local members planned to vote for Farage. Last week, the Standard had a fascinating London breakdown of a YouGov poll putting the Greens (10%) one point behind the Tories (11%). Today, the Guardian reports internal Tory HQ polls showing the party could indeed come sixth behind the Greens.
In remarks that took some ministers (never mind his own shadow cabinet) by surprise, Jeremy Corbyn yesterday said that a second referendum could become a ‘healing process’ for the country. And that’s part of the calculation among some in Team Corbyn pushing a public vote: a new referendum could unite Labour’s grassroots but sure as heck won’t heal the Tory party. And could well destroy it.
Another consequence of the Whitsun recess is that it reduces the amount of Parliamentary time that the government now has to get any Brexit deal through the Commons before June 30, that deadline needed to avoid MEPs taking up their seats in Strasbourg. And it looks like 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady may be disappointed in his hope that May will publish the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) in the next fortnight. A senior Whitehall source says the WAB is so huge (with lots of clauses that will infuriate Brexiteers) that unless Labour is on board, its second reading is a non-starter.
One alternative to formal Labour backing is to get a big chunk of Labour backbenchers on board with some kind of customs compromise. And there are some in government who even hope that the DUP could be brought back into the fold with a customs offer (the one thing where the DUP and hardcore Brexiteers don’t see eye to eye). Yesterday, May met Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds at Chequers. The DUP was robust afterwards, and the task is harder without Gavin Williamson helping woo the party, but some see a glimmer of movement.
As I’ve said before, even May’s ‘hard Brexit’ Lancaster House speech actually had a flexible section on customs, though that was hardened up in the 2017 manifesto to rule out a customs union. The Times reports that the latest Tory Euro election leaflet fails to mention the 2017 pledge to have an independent trade policy. It also carries a link to the ‘backthebrexitdeal’ website that was the brainchild of May’s comms chief Robbie Gibb. That site names the 34 Tory MPs who voted with Labour.
There is a logic here though. The main reasons any moderate Conservative supporter would vote Conservative in the Euro elections are a) loyalty to their PM and b) their opposition to Farage’s no-deal plans. One Cabinet minister muttered to me recently that ConHome’s polls skew too sceptic.
And as young Tory think tanker Will Tanner points out (he’s on our Commons People podcast this week), there’s a huge appetite among the grassroots to move on from Brexit. It’s also worth remembering that these grassroots chose young moderniser David Cameron over traditionalist David Davis back in 2005: by a big margin. Amid the noise of Brexit, that’s what gives still some Tory leadership contenders real hope.
It’s also worth pausing to note the new ComRes poll out yesterday on the Euros. It actually put Labour in the lead on 27% to the Brexit Party’s 26%. That really heartened Corbyn’s staffers who have long felt that their constructive ambiguity on Europe is actually working.
Yesterday, Survation also published an analysis (LabourList got hold of it), showing their was no ‘Brexit backlash’ in the local election results. “For every 1% higher the Leave vote was within a local authority in 2016, in 2019 Labour received 0.08% fewer votes within the local authority than in 2015.”
Meanwhile, Remain parties’ hopes of fighting the Peterborough by-election on a joint ticket have been dashed after the independent unity candidate pulled out under pressure from Labour. The Liberal Democrats, Greens, Change UK, and Renew had agreed to hold back from fielding candidates and back an independent to campaign to stop Brexit via a second referendum.
Sources told HuffPost UK that Labour figures successfully pressurised the independent not to stand. As I’ve said before, Farage’s party could split the vote in Peterborough and make it easier for Labour to retain the seat. That really would take the wind out of the Brexit Party’s sails.
Watch this young boy and his (friend’s) dog execute some smooth moves. The pair of them are better co-ordinated than most political parties these days.
At 5am UK time, the Trump administration lost patience with China over a deal to avoid a trade war and instead whacked up its tariffs from 10% to 25%. It means a potential hit to $325bn of imports of Chinese goods like computers and mobiles, and Beijing is already talking about ‘necessary counter measures’. In other news, ex-pats in China tell me the government has started arresting locals who use VPNs to get round the great Firewall of China on the internet. The new law (introduced when May visited the country last year) has yet to see non-Chinese nationals targeted. But will that be part of the ‘counter-measures’, I wonder?
Yet another by-product of the Whitsun recess is that the effective closure of Westminster has wiped out any lingering hope of Donald Trump addressing both Houses of Parliament during his State Visit to the UK next month. Trump is due to arrive on June 3 and the recess won’t end until June 4. Sources made clear that it was now finally, categorically off the agenda, as the government had decided not to make a formal request to Bercow to allow the speech. Trump may have to wait for his second term to get the historic honour that was granted to Barack Obama.
COMMONS PEOPLE
Our latest CommonsPeople podcast is out. Hear us chinwag about May’s dreams of a Liverpool-style European comeback with Will Tanner, of the hot next-generation Tory think tank Onward. Click HERE for Audioboom and below for iTunes
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