No.7 - The National Interest versus Party Interest & a People's Vote

Dear James,

Our nation is entering its biggest political crisis since the Second World War. The futures of millions of people and especially the young will be determined for the next forty to fifty years. You are one of 650 MPs who will have a vote on what happens next. At the moment you are loyal to Mrs May. I have asked you to see her deal for what it is: a shallow, colourless document that will leave us poorer, stripped of any decision making in Europe and still subject to the ECJ. You have however, decided to support it.  You may feel proud of standing alone in glorious faux- independence, on the side lines of the world’s largest Free Trade Area but that pride will soon reveal itself for what it is. A puffed up illusion of a small sovereignty gained for an off-shore island suffering from terminal, post imperial nostalgia. We would be so much better off by staying in Europe and using Europe to radiate our undoubted influence through its much larger power on the world stage.

Your loyalty to Mrs May is understandable for someone who does not want to split his party. But surely now, in our hour of need, we should be putting party politics behind us?  We need MPs who have the principled backbone to see what is in the National Interest. No one wants to be poorer or disenfranchised from our nearest neighbours. Not even for the illusions of regained sovereignty for our plucky little island.  The interminable bickering of party interests must now stop. Yet it seems that it will continue and will culminate in the leader’s debate next Sunday. The thought of this ordeal by television appals me.

In this debate we shall have to endure the siren call of Mr Corbyn’s ‘Jobs First Brexit’ opposing Mrs May’s tunnel vision of the future, wall papered by the latest in the long line of her political mantras, each of which has a shelf life of perhaps a few weeks. Corbyn and May will pound away at each other from their different positions. It will be like PMQ on steroids. This is a national crisis that demands honest, open debate and not the stale rhetoric of yesterday. The nation will cry out, ’Where is the fresh air?’, “Where is the quiet, pragmatic discussion that an issue of this size demands?”.

The problem is that both May and Corbyn will be fighting from their own political party’s standpoints. Neither will be fighting for the National Interest which has, since last week, been revealed for all to see. The smoke of propaganda has been blown away and beneath it the facts have been laid bare. The nation will be poorer. Yet Mr Corbyn will rabbit on about ‘Workers’ Rights’ while Mrs May will continue with her empty rhetoric about ‘delivering what the people want.’ Mr Corbyn, - wedded to nationalisation of everything, believing that unions should have all their previous rights restored, thinking that an outright re-allocation of equity to a workers’ fund and a worker on every board -  thinks such nostrums will bring social justice to our country. I am afraid that he will be taking the country back to the 1970s with a cowed and emasculated management class sulking under the leaky roof of his idea of justice. Our country needs to have the freedom of entrepreneurship. It just doesn’t need its excesses.

The one epithet that Mrs May seems to glory in is that she is this ‘difficult woman’. What she does not seem to realise is that what makes her difficult is her lack of any political imagination which causes her to live from one borrowed shibboleth to another. The list of her discarded mantras is endless. From, ‘Brexit Means Brexit’ (when was the last time we heard that one?), through ‘a deep and meaningful relationship with Europe’, (recently dropped) and on to  ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’ (life span about six months) and her most noxious of all, “If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.’ (uttered only once and never heard of again.) The absence of genuine contact with her audiences is clear whenever she arrives at a podium.  She scans the auditorium with a brief, embarrassed flicker which does not penetrate the audience. She is locked into what ever her pre-programmed self has foreseen. If the audience attempts to damage that view with questions they are met with one or more of her shibboleths that are thrown up like shields to protect her from the dangers of original thought. Like all machine minds, she fears that she would sink without trace without the mantra current at the time.

It was this absence of original thought that caused her to make the mistake of adopting the extreme Brexiteer position from the start of her premiership. They were the loudest, the noisiest and the most enthusiastic - qualities ever more absent in the last six months. Since then she has crossed virtually all her redlines, offered little but the long since discarded aspirations of her right wing and now faces the ultimate humiliation of the rejection of her final Brexit deal. Except that machine minds do not do humiliation. So, like a good head girl, she will simply say she did her best.

 In the last few weeks we have witnessed Mrs May’s slow collision with the reality that we cannot have our cake and eat it. And the only deal on offer is the Withdrawal Agreement now before parliament. It is a sad document for Little Englanders.

The threatened debate of our two leaders - two of the most unimaginative and inauthentic politicians of recent years - will not offer us the fresh look that should be coming come from the huge amounts of new information available since the 2016 referendum. Parliament is stuck in the rut of out dated data and illusions. That is unfair on the British people. And it won’t work. Both sides will be arguing from their party interests rather than the national interest. Of course, both will argue that their party interest equates with the national interest and this sums up the problem. Parliament will not be able to decide. What better way then to define the national interest than by asking the nation itself? Surely, the only way forward is to put it back to the people?

So James, it’s your call. You may stay loyal to Mrs May for the vote on December 11th but if she loses that, the country will be thrown into a constitutional maelstrom. Please reassure me that in that event you will vote for the only way forward. A People’s Vote. It is the only fair and honest way to deal with our greatest political crisis for seventy years. 

Kind regards,

Brian