Chaos Theory or Spontaneous Order? The implications of a May victory for the Conservatives

According to Edward Lorenz, one of its most prominent advocates, chaos theory occurs because and when “the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.” The past two weeks in British politics have illustrated this spectacularly. All the assumptions about the present determining the future were rooted explicitly or implicitly on the basis that Britain would remain a member of the European Union. Once this was disturbed, change of astonishing magnitude became possible.
So, for example, 14 days ago it was widely taken as read that when the Conservative leadership contest eventually came it would be contested between George Osborne, Boris Johnson and Theresa May. As matters evolved, two of those three names never came to be printed on the ballot paper. The Chancellor, like the Prime Minister, was destroyed by the Leave victory. The ex-Mayor of London felt victim to fratricide within his own Leave camp as suspicions about his true commitment to withdrawal stoked an internal coup against him. As a consequence, the actual battle for the Conservative leadership is set to be the Home Secretary vs either Michael Gove or Andrea Leadsom. Not an outcome many would have predicted on 22 June.
Who will be Mrs May’s opponent?
The first round of voting among Conservative MPs showed truly impressive support for Mrs May and enhanced her claim to be the ‘unity’ candidate. To win an outright majority with four contenders in the race was as the very top end of expectations. It is an important outcome because it allows her to confront the principal ‘legitimacy’ question thrown at her, namely how could a Remain figure lead what will have to be a Leave administration, with an alternative ‘legitimacy’ argument of her own, being can the Conservative Party really have a leader who, in a less extreme version of the dire trauma that Labour has faced over Jeremy Corbyn, does not command the backing of Members of Parliament? Mrs May will clearly top the ballot again on Thursday and by a very handsome margin.
Who will be her opponent? On paper, it is overwhelmingly logical that it will be Ms Leadsom. The departure of Liam Fox and Stephen Crabb from the race means that there are only 50 MPs left to reallocate their support and many of those will follow those two candidates themselves and switch to Mrs May. As Ms Leadsom has an advantage of eighteen votes (66 to 48) over Mr Gove after the initial ballot that would appear too wide a margin to overcome tomorrow.
In these strange times, however, while that is the logical assessment it is not necessarily the correct one. Over the next 24 hours, the Gove camp will be asserting to some of those who backed Ms Leadsom that with Mrs May now having such a large advantage among MPs, only a challenger of senior Cabinet rank would be a remotely credible alternative to the Conservative Party in the country.
Furthermore, there is time to rake further over her past statements over a range of issues, the allegation that she is the de facto UKIP option and above all her tax arrangements about which she has been spectacularly ambiguous. Meanwhile, there will be some Conservative MPs who favour Mrs May who will contemplate voting for Mr Gove in the belief that he will be a weaker opponent for her among the ordinary membership who might be unimpressed by his role in bringing down first David Cameron and then Mr Johnson. This has precedent. There has long been the suspicion that in 2005 some of those who favoured Mr Cameron actually cast their second round vote for David Davis to ensure that it was he rather than Liam Fox who made it in to the final two contenders put before the wider Tory membership. The Gove team is thus not acting irrationally in staying in the second ballot. Overall, Ms Leadsom looks the more likely rival to the Home Secretary but this strange version of House of Cards is not over yet.
What difference does this make in policy terms?
A lot. As her past (albeit reluctant) support for the Remain team remains a relative liability for her, Ms May will tack to the right during the membership section of the campaign to limit her exposure. She will insist that “we are all Brexit backers now” and that she will appoint a prominent figure from the Leave campaign to be the main figure negotiating the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU. She will point to her consistent form of advancing a tough line on immigration. She pre-empted this by refusing to offer a blanket reassurance that all EU nationals currently in the UK would automatically stay here unless and until similar promises were offered by the EU-27 about British citizens who are living in their countries. She will not offer her opponent much space to outflank her on Europe.
There are, though, real differences between Ms May and a ‘True Believer’ Leave candidate. She has already said that she would not rush to trigger Article 50 and the formal dialogue on leaving the EU but would prefer that the UK organised its preferred position and its key personnel beforehand. This could mean that the process does not start until early 2017. Her rival will argue for pressing the Article 50 button earlier, either before or at the Conservative Party conference in early October.
She is also more sympathetic to a model of exit based loosely on that of Switzerland in which substantial if not absolute access for the single market is sought but with some restrictions on EU migration (such as an agreed ‘cap’ on the overall total) in place of absolute freedom of movement. While this will not be an easy accommodation to reach (and could require an extension to the two-year schedule that Article 50 outlines), it is not completely beyond the politically possible if Angela Merkel in particular were inclined to accept such a settlement.
Her rival, by contrast, would be less tempted by the Swiss outcome and more predisposed to head towards something like the EU-Canada accord as a model. And a ‘long game’ in terms of the exit from the EU raises the possibility (if Labour could be shot of Mr Corbyn) of an earlier election in May 2019 before the divorce from the EU is absolutely absolute. A late reversal of policy if national sentiment shifted strongly could not be completely discounted.
The overall shape and flavour of a May administration would show more continuity with that of the current Cabinet than that which a rival would assemble and which would be closer to wholesale regime change. There would need to be a new Chancellor and a new Home Secretary and a reshuffle may well lead to a new Foreign Secretary, but the very top of the Cabinet would consist of not unfamiliar figures such as Chris Grayling, the current Leader of the House of Commons and the most significant Leave supporter in her team, and Philip Hammond, who could stay as Foreign Secretary or be moved to the Treasury. Sajid Javid (another possible Chancellor) and Mr Crabb (Home Secretary?) can also expect to be looked upon with favour. A few younger Leave backers would have to be incorporated elsewhere but in sum this would be an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary shift in Government. Culturally, it would be a rejection of the Eton-type boys set in favour of the middle class meritocrats.
To achieve this end, nevertheless, Ms May has to win the membership ballot and ideally by the sort of margin that means that she is not obliged to offer her main rival a very senior portfolio or have to compromise on her policy instincts. If her win amongst the Conservative membership were to be closer, then the demands of Ms Leadsom to be Chancellor or Mr Gove to be the Minister for Brexit may be difficult to ignore and that would make it much harder for Ms May to pursue the relatively gentle exit from the EU that she would like and which would hold party and government together. The Conservative civil war over the European Union would continue and be deeply destabilising.
The opposite of chaos theory is spontaneous order, the notion of a sudden emergence of order out of seemingly anarchical conditions. Ms May aspires to be the spontaneous order Prime Minister.