No. 14 - Happy New Year James! (A Response to Mrs May’s New Year Message).

Dear James, 

A Happy New Year to you and your family. I hope that you feel rested after the Christmas break and will return to the Commons refreshed and ready for the battles ahead. 

For battles there will be. I am afraid that Mrs May is still living in a version of reality that existed for a brief moment in 2016 but has since changed into something very different. Sticking to her narrow, tramline view of the world, Mrs May says she is ‘delivering what the UK voted for in 2016’. She is wrong. The UK vote in 2016 was largely split (a 3.8% margin separated the two sides) and yet Mrs May has squandered the last two years by skewing all her attention to the extreme right of her party rather than to the interests of the country. This was a major strategic mistake on her part. With such a close result she should have called for some form of national debate or forum to discuss the way forwards. Instead she focussed on her own party interests. She is now trapped in a cul de sac of her own making. 

In the coming weeks, there is a slight chance that the ERG and the DUP may swallow their pride and vote through Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement just to get the country ‘across the line’. Should this happen, it would be evidence of the ultimate in political cynicism – in other words that the survival of the Tory Party comes before the national interest. That would, however, be an appropriate summary for Mrs May’s whole policy since 2016. Solve the Tory Party civil war, not the national interest. And, at the same time, convince many non-Tory voters, that the Tory Brexiteers are champions of their own anger about being ignored and left behind. Somehow, the Tory Party, the Faragistes and  the ERG, managed to hide the fact that the people’s anger was due to the Tory party’s very own austerity programme. That has now become abundantly clear and the Tory Party will suffer for a long time for this Faustian compact. 

In her New Year’s Message, Mrs May urges us to ‘turn a corner’ and to ‘put aside our differences.’ That is impossible if she continues to ignore the 48% +. Even though the country is in crisis, she continues to make her crass statements. Today Mr Hunt is in Singapore trying desperately to conjure up an alternative way forward for our country. Tiny England (65m market) linked with tinier Singapore (4m market) will create ‘an invisible chain of democratic nations’ in a world now dominated by the big block markets of China (1.3bn), India (1.1bn), the USA (350m) and the EU (450m). Mr Hunt is simply adding to the long list of Norway+, Canada +++, no deal. The futility of these various exercises is laughable but sums up the desperation of the government.  

In the coming days parliament will probably reach the end of the road, unable to find a resolution of our national crisis. There will probably be no agreement and, even if there is, it would be a cynical Tory stitch up which will leave the country more divided than ever. 

The only way honest way forward is to put the question back to the people. It is the only way to relieve the pressure created by this collision of the ‘alien device’ of a referendum and our normal way of representational democracy. It will not be a re-run of 2016. It will be a way to discuss, on the basis of reason rather than ranting, all the new knowledge that we now have. It will be a way to bring the 2016 plebiscite back into our normal constitutional arrangements. It will help to clear the air. 

James, I believe that the people must be allowed to choose. And thereafter, we should reorganize our voting system upon proportional principles which will, in themselves, obviate the need for any future referenda!

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent