It's now clear in which direction British politics is heading.
Several months ago I wrote about the rightward direction that the government under Theresa May seemed to be heading in. Now that the Brexit negotiations are in full swing, and parliament has returned from summer break to discuss its implications, it's ever clearer that we don't really have a Conservative government in power: we have a UKIP government, under another name.
The Home Office leak of its immigration plans, timed to coincide with parliament's return to session, looked to all intents and purposes identical to UKIP's immigration plans for an Australian-style points system. In some ways, it looked even more draconian, in the way that bio-metric technology would be used to keep a track on EU immigrants and the restrictions placed on the duration of their stay.
Apart from immigration policy, it's also clear that the repatriation of powers in the "Repeal Bill" is meant to act as a way to radically increase autocratic power to the government, away from parliament, so it can unilaterally change the law. There's a reason these are called "Henry VIII powers": because no government since then has succeeded in circumventing parliament in such a way. Charles I tried; Oliver Cromwell succeeded, for a time. These are not good comparisons the government should be wanting to be compared to, and it should be sending chills down the spines of our sitting MPs.
But for many on the government benches, it doesn't. Why?
A Very British Coup
What we are witnessing is the emasculation of parliament.
Apart from the intent contained inside the "Repeal Bill", the government are also seeking to subvert the committee process that is used to amend (i.e. improve) parliamentary legislation. By doing this, it again seeking to silence opposition to its own interpretation of the law, making passage through parliament nothing more than a "rubber stamp".
To be fair, there are plenty of Conservative MPs who are as appalled at the government's "power grab" as on the opposition side. In the same manner, there are a number of Conservative MPs who are appalled at the government's Brexit plan, which, again, seems indistinguishable from UKIP's original plan. If those Conservative MPs actually voted with their conscience, they could easily prevent the government from carrying out its "power grab" into the realm of quasi-authoritarianism. Similarly, those MPs could easily deny the government a majority in parliament to carry out its plan for a "Hard Brexit" that would see Britain cut off from all free trade with Europe. But those MPs seem to be emasculated; more like sheep than parliamentarians.
The reason for this is simple, and appalling: fear.
A small clique of hard-line MPs - who represent less than 15% of the party's cohort - demand the most extreme form of exit from the EU. This would mean leaving the free market and customs union on Day One of Brexit, in March 2019, without any kind of meaningful transition period. The Brexit Secretary, David Davis, seems to agree (well, maybe - his idea seems to change from day to day). Apart from the maddening incoherence of this point of view, is the fact that this outcome was not what the referendum was about. The UK voted to leave the EU; the vote said nothing about EFTA, for example, which the UK has been in since 1961, long before Britain joined the then EEC. The Brexit Secretary seems to be acting of his own accord, deciding what Britain's relationship with Europe will be, without any regard to parliament's point of view, or indeed, those of the actual electorate. The only points of view whose his seem to coincide with are the hard-line clique mentioned earlier.
While there is a "debate" in parliament about the government's policy, the government's strategy of dealing with parliament is a) to avoid answering any questions at all, b) imply that they "the government knows best", c) to suggest that opposing the government is to betray "the will of the people". This is the language of authoritarianism. There is no meaningful "debate" on Brexit in parliament at all, for the government seems to have no intention of paying any attention to it. It is just "going through the motions", turning parliament into a toothless talking shop.
What makes this all even worse is that those hard-line MPs (who now have the ear of the government) have even less of legitimate platform for their agenda than before the general election. Before the election, Theresa May said she had called it in order to strengthen her hand in the negotiations. The implication was that the larger the mandate she received, the freer she would be to carry-out a "Hard Brexit". As we know, the opposite happened: she is still in government, but only thanks to the DUP. The rational conclusion to reach from the election was that those who wanted a "Hard Brexit" lost. And yet they are the ones still dictating policy. Counter-intuitively, it is thanks to the government's precarious position in parliament that allows these hard-liners to blackmail the moderates into silence. In the same way that the DUP were able to demand a ransom from the government as its price for power, the party's hard-liners are able to do the same over Brexit.
Those Conservative MPs concerned about this process have been emasculated by fear. While a hard-line cohort of MPs seem able to dictate government policy, those concerned by this subversive take-over have been silenced into submission by the even greater fear stoked from the thought of losing an election to Jeremy Corbyn. In other words, the party's moderate MPs really are being held hostage: by the fear of losing power, they are ready to hand the fate of the nation over to extremists.
In a "First-Past-The-Post" electoral system, an "extremist" government was meant to be virtually impossible. It looks like some of them have found a way. And now, using authoritarian tactics, we are on the cusp of a quasi-autocratic government.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
What happened in Germany in 1932 is held as a warning to all of us. It's also worth remembering that the reason Hitler gained power was thanks to a "deal" with the mainstream Conservatives. It was the threat of Communism that had helped to focus minds in the Conservatives to do a deal with the Nazis: rather Hitler than the hammer and sickle. He was technically meant to be the junior partner in a coalition: although he was Chancellor, he was meant to be held in check by his deputy, the mainstream Conservative, Von Pappen; mainstream Conservatives also held the vast majority of government posts. But very quickly, it was the tail that was wagging the dog.
The same cowardly mindset seems to in today's "moderates" in the Conservative Party.
How To Subvert Democracy
Let's remember how we got here.
Currently, UKIP are polling around five per cent in the polls; not much more than they were in 2010. And yet, as we have seen, the Conservative government is now carrying out wholesale UKIP policy. Why?
As it is the threat of losing power that is keeping "moderate" Tory MPs subservient to the "hard-line" agenda today, it was Cameron's worry of losing power that made him cave in to demands for an EU referendum.
This is how extremists are able to control the agenda in a "First Past The Post" electoral system: by blackmailing the governing party into backing extremism. A handful of hard-liners thus make the fear of conceding power to the opposition greater than the fear of conceding the agenda to extremism. David Cameron began the precedent; Theresa May has taken it one stage further.
As Cameron's 2010 government was a coalition, it left him in a precarious position. With UKIP rising in the polls, and a cohort of his own MPs sharing that party's Euroscepticism, Cameron thought he was being clever to try and deal with the issue by promising a referendum. But the reason for this decision was one borne from weakness and cowardice: thanks to not winning the 2010 election outright, it gave a disproportionate power to the "hard-liners" in his own party. This was one reason why the 2010-15 parliament was one of the most rebellious for decades.
He could have stood up to the "hard-liners" in his party, by "calling their bluff" (such as telling them if they didn't like the Conservatives' pro-EU policy, they were free to join UKIP). As it happens, two of them did just that, but that was eighteen months after after Cameron's "Bloomberg Speech" in which he promised an EU referendum if his party won the next election. They left the party after Cameron had already partly caved-in on their agenda.
So by not standing up to the "hard-liners" in the Conservative Party to begin with, he allowed them to set the agenda on Europe. And in the end, this cost him his job. The fear of losing the next election (by shedding support to UKIP) made him cave-in to their agenda, and thus once the sharks smelled blood, they went after him to finish off the job. The irony here is that the referendum was probably never really meant to have happened even after Cameron had made the promise, because he wasn't expecting his party to win the election in 2015 outright. As it was assumed another hung parliament would be the most likely result again, it was equally assumed the referendum idea would be dropped in the post-election talks with the pro-European Liberal Democrats. That "plan" went down the toilet when the Conservatives won a majority, forcing Cameron into carrying out the promised referendum - one which he never expected to lose. Such things can happen when you try to be too clever by half; like with Von Pappen's plan to "tame" Hitler by making him Chancellor.
Even before Theresa May decided to implement the UKIP agenda, that party had already cost one Prime Minister his job. Now we see that she saw a cynical opportunity to destroy UKIP by becoming UKIP. Except that you don't destroy an ideology by implementing it under a different name. There were signs of her nationalistic and authoritarian leanings when she was Home Secretary; now it is clear that her own personal inclinations are much closer to the "hard-liners" in the party than the "moderates".
For those in UKIP this must be a bitter-sweet moment: in their moment of triumph, a government is implementing entire swathes of their agenda, and the party isn't even in power. All they had to do was scare the Prime Minister a bit.
For more on the "Brexit Agenda", and what it means for Britain, look at the following article.
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