This is the connection between the fallout from the Sue Gray report and Brexit
One of the things Brexiters like to harp on about is how we Remainer types can make absolutely anything about Britain’s departure from the European Union. Every time any little thing goes wrong, the B-word has to be involved in some say, doesn’t it Remoaners? Truth is, I sort of see what they are saying a little - sometimes the need to link everything back to Brexit can be a little overcooked by those of us who would like to see Britain back in the clubhouse. However, there are some wider implications of Brexit that I do think need to be talked about from time to time - in particular those that seem less than obvious until you really stop and think about it.
Some will think what I’m about to say is a stretch. Others, that what I’m saying is obvious and in fact, I’m not going in hard enough. But I think I can connect Partygate, the way it’s being handled by the Conservative Parliamentary Party, and Brexit. Stay with me here.
For a start, I don’t think Boris Johnson would have ever become prime minister if Leave hadn’t won in 2016. I know there is a theory that goes: 2016, Remain wins narrowly, let’s say 52-48. Cameron stays on for a few more years before stepping down and Osborne faces Johnson in the Tory leadership contest, with Johnson running away with it amongst a pro-Brexit membership out for revenge. But I’ve never bought this, for several reasons, one of which is that I don’t think the parliamentary party would have actually picked Johnson under any circumstances but absolutely desperate ones. Beyond that, I think a lot of Tory members would have wanted to just forget about Europe if Remain had won, at least enough of them to have made Johnson’s ride to Number 10 much less likely than some speculate, even if he had got to the final two.
But there’s more to it than that. The big problem with Brexit within the Conservative Party is that I figure about 70% of their MPs know it’s bullshit, that it hasn’t worked out the way everyone thought, but they are chained to it now. The worry then is that as soon as Johnson is no longer leader, the whole facade will start to crumble and when that happens, they might be out of power for a decade. They are hiding behind Johnson.
Now, you might think that Johnson looks like he’s finished and they are going to lose under him anyhow. Wouldn’t it be better to put someone else in and try and start afresh with the electorate? Blame it all on Boris Johnson and make out like this is whole new government, not attached to the previous dozen years of blunders? Yes, most of them know that would indeed be better, but there are two key problems with this idea.
One is that getting someone sensible in who would actually repair the party’s electoral fortunes is a long way from a certainty. They are terrified of their members and think they are mostly a pack of raving alt right lunatics. If it came down to Hunt vs Baker as the final two, a lot of Tory MPs would think it would be Steve Baker PM soon enough. The second issue is that as soon as Johnson is gone, they have to have a fight about what the hell the Conservative party stands for and what it exists to achieve and no one within the party is itching for that to begin.
All this means that Brexit and where it has caused the Conservative Party to go has caused them all to be terrified of what the post-Johnson party might look like. If Remain had won, none of this would be an issue - even if Johnson had somehow become leader. Pre-Brexit, the party knew that it was about low taxes and low state spending; it had become marginally socially liberal. This gave them a broad support base, which in the face of a Corbyn-led Labour party could have seen them solidifying their position for another decade at least. It was Brexit which blew that all apart and caused the Tories to need to seek a new winning electoral coalition, one they are finding now is both incredibly fragile and that they are not suited to meeting the needs of.
For Tory MPs, everything rides on the next election - a final throw of the dice to see if Boris Johnson can, for 3,456th time in his life, receive a get out of jail free and ride the wave to another glorious success.
And we wouldn’t be here were it not for Leave winning in 2016.
2. A new report demonstrates just how bad Brexit was for Northern Irish Unionism
One of the more remarkable things about the Brexit period we are living through, something I think will be one of the key items about it all that will be picked up by historians, is how Unionists in Northern Ireland supported it completely against their own interests. And that they continued to do so even when it was blatantly obvious they had made a deeply serious error in championing Brexit.
The Good Friday Agreement is fantastic for many reasons, but no one should care for it more than the Northern Irish Unionists. It created a situation in which a united Ireland looked, well, not impossible but near enough to impossible to never be a true worry. It sort of guaranteed the existence of Northern Ireland, within the United Kingdom, for the rest of time.
How they failed to see that Brexit was the one thing that could disrupt all of this and bring a united Ireland back into view is genuinely beyond me. A land border just was never going to happen, and even if it somehow had done, that in itself would have been terrible for the future of an ongoing Northern Ireland within the Union. Irish Unionists had literally nothing to gain from Brexit and everything to lose.
A new paper out this week, a joint effort between Queen Mary University and Ulster University entitled, “Political Attitudes In NI After Brexit And Under The Protocol”, is a look at what Brexit has done to the way people in Northern Ireland view their own country after the UK’s departure from the EU. And boy does it make sombre reading for Northern Irish Unionists.
Within the paper are the results of the NI Life and Times Survey, carried out last year. The polling numbers they reveal are fascinating - and every single one of them points in the wrong direction for Unionists in Northern Ireland.
Over the course of one year, from 2020 to 2021, there has been an increase of those professing Nationalist identity in Northern Ireland, from 19% to 26%. While a 7% jump in one year is pretty colossal, those still might seem small enough numbers on their own to think “why worry”. Except it just keeps getting worse from a Unionist perspective from there.
The number of people in Northern Ireland who think that the country should remain part of the United Kingdom has dropped from 54% in 2020 to 48% in 2021 - significant from the perspective of a border poll, staying in the Union no longer holds majority support. But here’s the killer stat: 63% of Northern Irish people believe that Brexit has made a united Ireland more likely. That’s truly an astonishing number.
It’s also indicative of the trend that Brexit has created that is truly devastating for Northern Irish Unionists: a creeping belief across all communities within the country that a united Ireland is going to happen one day. Maybe not one day very soon, but happen nonetheless. This is because it begins to make more and more sense to those who are neither staunchly Nationalist or Unionist - trade is tilting away from NI-GB trade and towards NI-IRE trade, bringing Northern Ireland closer to Ireland economically every single day. This is simply the effect of the NI Protocol; it was never going to be any different and anyone who thought it would be was being naive.
What could Northern Irish Unionists do now to try and halt this trend? To save their project before it is too late? Admitting that they made a mistake in supporting Brexit would have to be the first step. Until that happens, there is nothing they can do that will help. Once they admit that Brexit was a bad thing from their perspective, they can begin to champion taking steps to reduce the friction between GB and NI, lobbying the government to make arrangements with the EU which will lower friction all round. The Tories would hate this - it’s one thing for Labour to demand such a thing as they can just be called out for “trying to reverse Brexit”, but it’s a whole other thing for the DUP and the UUP to be demanding this type of thing.
If NI Unionists take those first steps, they can then come to a place where they can sing the praises of Northern Ireland in the UK. “Look, while Brexit was bad, at least we’ve ended up in a situation where we are in both the single market for goods and the British market. On the latter, we are lobbying the government hard to reduce friction between Britain and the EU so that there is less friction between NI and GB. We can make being in Northern Ireland a truly desirable thing, all because of our place both in the United Kingdom and the Single Market.”
But they aren’t going to do any of this, at least based on how they have behaved to date. It’s likely that what they are going to do instead is what some might deem the very definition of insanity - keep doing the same thing they have been doing and hoping for a different result.
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I’ll be back next week with the worst of Brexit.
think you are missing a key thing about Unionism - a thing that most (GB) Brits miss, and that I only worked out this year. Unionism isn't about the union.
It's about a culture, which they believe should be the dominant culture in NI. Orange marches, and giant bonfires, and Union Jacks and evangelical presbyterianism and all the rest.
They identify that Unionist culture with the union. Attacks on that culture are (to them) attacks on the union, which is why Alliance were attacked for taking down the Union Jack at Belfast Town Hall.
The idea of giving up cultural ground - like Irish language road signs - to save the union doesn't compute. It's not simply that they don't think it would work; it's that the culture (to them) *is* the union. So, when it comes to Brexit, the question is not "will this help support the union?", but "which side of the culture war is Brexit on?" And that is obvious, of course.
Alliance are the only party outside the culture war, the only people that think like liberal/middle-class Brits. They are both the most British and the most Irish party in NI - because, like people in London and Dublin, the constitutional culture war in NI isn't the most important thing to them. Which is why they understood from the beginning that Brexit was a threat to the union - that Brexit would push them closer to the SDLP and Sinn Féin and away from the unionists.
Nick
My only worry is that this Tory leadership is so slippery and devious that stealing popular Labour policy distributing money to the poor and general population shows they won't go without a fight.
They will keep bribing right up to 2024 to say the cost of living is their war now.
This is their only route to try to erase the corruption of partygate.
This is a real danger to Labour as the tories are looking like a big spending high tax party which will appeal to the red wall.
What this does to inflation is another matter.
A manufactured spat with Europe before the election to reheat Brexit through client media is certain along with the regurgitation of the hard left bull of coalition Labour SNP Lib dems.
Labour and the Liberals need to keep banging away at the Character of Johnson the Charlatan liar who used Brexit for personal gain and partied his way through Covid.