Breathing Space. Domestic politics is on hold for August. Where do the parties stand?

It is 1 August and virtually every politician appears to have disappeared on holiday. Who can blame them? After all, nothing ever happens in August apart from the start of World War I, the build-up to the start of World War II, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, a failed coup attempt in the USSR a year later that proved the catalyst for the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and a few other minor incidents. In that spirit, BVCA Insight will be using the next few weeks to look at interesting political issues from outside of these shores such as the US Mid-Term elections and the strange state of the government in Germany. Before doing so, though, it is worth taking stock of where the parties here stand now

Conservatives

It has not been an easy July for the Prime Minister to put it mildly. Yet she ends it stronger that she started it despite losing both her Brexit Secretary and her Foreign Secretary within 24 hours. She does finally have an agreed blueprint for Brexit in the form of a White Paper that provides some basis for a successful negotiation with the EU-27. She has positioned herself on the relatively soft end of the Brexit spectrum, and now has to decide whether she is willing to take the political trouble that seeking to nudge her stance to an even softer point would involve, or accept that the EU-27 will only buy her plan at an unacceptably high price in terms of additional concessions, so a managed retreat to a somewhat less soft strategy might be rational.

If the principal trade-off at the heart of Brexit is between access (to the single market) and autonomy (from the single market), then the secondary trade-off for the weeks and months ahead is between offering clarity to the business community, in particular, by putting more flesh on the bones of what the ultimate Brexit bargain is likely to look like this side of the start of the transition period, or between minimising conflict inside her own party by keeping the ‘Future Framework’, which will be agreed as part of the overall Withdrawal Agreement, ambiguous in the short-term, with the real negotiations on the ‘end state’ effectively deferred until after the UK has legally and politically left the EU in March 2019.

There are respectable arguments for and against both approaches. What the Prime Minister decides to do is destined to be determined by three factors. These are what the EU-27 counter-offer in September is, the mood of the Conservative Party conference in the first week of October, and whether the advice of the Whips when the House of Commons returns is to rush through a deal or wait until December. No direct challenge to Theresa May is imminent but that is not a prospect that can be discounted.

Labour

Labour has had a rather fortunate summer so far as Brexit is concerned. The difficulties that ministers have faced in coming to a collective understanding has distracted from the fact that Labour’s own position on the matter is staggeringly vacuous.

In so far as it has an intellectually credible argument at all, it is that it wants ‘a’ single market with the EU but not ‘the’ single market with the EU and ‘a’ customs union with the EU but not ‘the’ customs union with the EU, and it would like to have relationships with more existing EU agencies than the Government has proposed (although exactly which ones at what price is entirely unclear). It is also against a second referendum (probably) but would not mind a second general election to settle the matter, although exactly how that would help is a challenge. As a result of all the above, at least half of Labour MPs are in despair about their own Brexit policy.

That is not all that they are in despair about. Most of the experience and talent in the Parliamentary Labour Party is not in the Shadow Cabinet and does not want to be. The atmosphere between the various factions, not only at Westminster but throughout the country, is absolutely toxic. Hatred is far, far too inadequate a word for it. The continued row over anti-Semitism, ignited again by the reluctance of the Corbynite National Executive Committee to accept the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s widely-acknowledged working definition of anti-Semitism is staggering. A world in which two Labour MPs (Margaret Hodge and Ian Austin) have more-or-less denounced their own leader as not only insufficiently enraged by anti-Semitism but a de facto anti-Semite himself is utterly astonishing. Yet the dispute will run and run because it is a symbol of the extent to which the Labour Party’s membership, organisation and culture have changed since September 2015.

All of which means that the Labour Party conference in Liverpool at the end of next month will not be a happy undertaking. The hard left is set to tighten its control over the party structure, the party rulebook and party policy. De-selections of sitting MPs will inevitably follow. Whether the MPs jump before they are pushed cannot be known at this stage. Labour must hope Brexit never ends. If it can be drawn to a reasonably civilised conclusion then the spotlight would turn on to Labour’s turmoil.

Liberal Democrats

Sir Vince Cable would be pleased to have any sort of spotlight turned on him. It is a year since he was elected unopposed. It cannot be said that he has set politics alight during that period. He has yet to find a theme that makes him and his colleagues stand out.

In fairness, he has sought to make the notion of a second referendum on Brexit his own but has faced competition on that front, and with every day that passes before the UK leaves the EU that cause is weakened. He has spent a lot of time engaged in private discussions with disgruntled Labour MPs (a time-consuming process allowing for how many aggrieved Labour MPs there are). Yet all that effort has failed to produce either a defection of one of them to his party, or agreement among them that, despite the downbeat precedent of the SDP in the 1980s, there should be either a ‘new’ Labour Party or a ‘new’ Centre Party, which would need to have some sort of alliance or non-aggression pact with the Liberal Democrats in order to have the slightest possible chance of success (and under the single plurality/first-past-the-post UK electoral system it really would be a slight possibility of success). Despite all this, Sir Vince will have a comparatively peaceful party conference. Questions about his future can be deferred until 2019.

SNP

The Scottish National Party is entitled to a sense of frustration. The Conservative are clearly at odds over how the UK should leave the European Union. Labour is engaged in a bitter civil war. The Lib Dems are struggling to be relevant. The economy north of the border is in somewhat bumpy straits. Put together, one would have thought that the case for a second referendum on independence is a strong one.

Yet apart from the odd opinion poll that never quite seems to be sustained, there is not much evidence that Brexit will trigger such an outcome. The SNP finds itself comfortably ahead if the voters are asked who they would support at the next election for the Edinburgh Parliament, but that is not enough for a party which exists for one cause and purpose which it does not seem to be able to deliver. Some adept leadership has silenced this existential question for the moment but it will need to be addressed at some point. Nicola Sturgeon is in more of a spot on this than is realised. Once the UK has left the EU, she and her followers will be obliged to return to the drawing board.

DUP

So, it is probably the case that the most content set of MPs heading for the countryside or the beach are the 10 individuals who wear the DUP’s colours in the House of Commons. Unlike their brethren in the still suspended Stormont, they actually have a job to do and are utterly central to UK politics. And that will certainly remain the case when the holidays finally end and Parliament is reassembled.

Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA