No.53 - With friends like this…

Dear James, 

Air Force One arrived at Stansted yesterday with President Trump and his family on board for the start of his 3-day State Visit to the UK. He has come to bathe his massive ego in the colour and pageantry that only our country can offer. Behind his craving for pomp and circumstance however, the reality is that he is crashing onto the British stage as a flag bearer for the Brexiteers. He has already told us that If the UK cannot secure a deal with the EU then it should walk away. He says that the UK should include Nigel Farage (a ‘very smart person’) in the talks with the EU. And later he added that Boris Johnson would be an ‘excellent’ Conservative Party leader. 

I think your party should be very careful James. Yesterday Mr Trump also compared the London Mayor, Sadiq Kahn, to New York’s Mayor De Blasio ‘who has also done a terrible job - only half his height’. Trump does not like small men. Or any man who does not flatter him. He is the ultimate playground bully – full of bluster and self aggrandisement but the first to flee the fight. Yet having invited this rogue President several years ago, the Tory Party is now in danger of becoming an analogue for the Trump party in America. Your arch-Brexiteers - Boris, Sajid Javid, Mrs McVey and Dominic Raab - must be scratching their heads.  Who needs friends like this? “Sue the EU if they don’t cooperate?” “ Refuse to pay the divorce bill?” With such crazed messages, it seems that we as a nation might be subject to further protracted banging of heads against the adamantine determination of the EU to preserve the biggest free trade area in the world. I have said it before, ‘What don’t the Bexiteers understand about the phrase. ‘We are not going to renegotiate the deal’?

I had been tempted to wonder if the current Tory leadership debates might actually help to solve the Brexit conundrum. It is, after all, a Tory Party civil war that we have all been dragged into and in the next few weeks your party will have every chance to argue its various cases to its own members - a kind of a ‘team away’ period where they can work out the difference between dreams and reality and come to a decision away from the spotlight of the Commons.  I thought we might actually hear some common sense for once. But it was I who was dreaming. The debate will probably be just the overture to the final Tory party split as it swings hard right to grab votes back from Farage. If you do go that way, you will find that after a few years and normal generational attrition (thank you God!) you’ll fade into political insignificance. 

So for a brief moment James, you, as one of 315 Tory backbenchers, have some small power to influence the vote by choosing the candidates to put forward to your membership. Since your party is probably going to divide between no-deal Brexiteers (leave date October 31st) and managed deal Tories (leave date extendable), this will present you with a choice. (Of course, there is a third - to put the vote back to the electorate – but so far you have rejected this on the basis that you are following the instructions of the British people.) Each of these options are,of course, irreconcilable with each other. But, fleetingly, you do have a choice. 

The final choice of PM however, will be down to your membership, the 160,000 old school Tories. The rest of our nation will have no say. That will face you and us with the first question of legitimacy.  The  second question of legitimacy will occur when new PM faces the same dilemmas as Mrs May. Our unwritten constitution has never been clear about whether it is parliament or the executive who makes the final decisions. The Brexiteers may actually try to force the bill through without parliament. That would lead to a major constitutional explosion. 

There is one person who could prevent such a collision. No, it is not the current incumbent of the White House but one of those ‘small men’ so despised by our current guest at Buckingham Palace. Diminutive John Bercow is the Speaker of the House of Commons and a passionate defender of that institution’s powers and rights. Like the Democrats in the USA, he believes that the fundamental ideals of a constitution, written or otherwise, must be respected before the current needs of the political classes. 

Mr Bercow has recently said that he will stay on longer than his original 10 years to see us through this difficult moment in our constitutional history. Now I know that Mr Bercow is not loved in the Tory Party but at least someone still stands up for parliament. Treasure him James! And ignore the guy who’s just arrived at Stansted. 

The future of our nation is at stake!

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent