Thursday 22 June 2017

The View from South of the River

Yesterday I went out to the pub with one of my business partners and his father 'John'.

It was an interesting experience.

The father is in his early 70's, a bit of a self-made man which means he dabbles in a number of things with a strong bent towards residential real estate and as he would say he's "doin' awright".

Bromley generally votes Conservative although the margins of victory have been slowly reducing. Essentially they fit into the left wing of the Conservative party which in American parlance would mean "Republicans with a heart".

Bromley voted Remain, as did 'John'. He voted Conservative in the June 8th election, but actually was voting against Jeremy Corbyn of Labour as opposed to for Teresa May of the Conservatives.
When his son, who voted remain and voted Tory heard the results of the June 8th election he called his father to moan about what a disaster it was. To his surprise, his father was almost euphoric.

His rationale was that Teresa May, although a tepid Remainer, was indeed a Remainer. He also said she had no scruples coupled with a consuming desire for power and so she happily jumped into the leadership battle after the Brexit vote, taking up the Leave standard and embracing wooden phrases such as "Brexit means Brexit"- whatever that means- and the equally inane "no deal is better than a bad deal", without ever engaging with the idea that no deal could indeed be the worst deal.

So when Ms May called the snap election claiming it was to achieve a crushing majority in Parliament thus stiffening her back for the coming battles with the EU 'John' thought the election was actually a chance for a second referendum on Brexit. He was concerned that there was even more at stake in this second referendum as he was concerned that Mr Corbyn would have a much stronger showing on the Brexit wave. This despite the fact that if he were not an outright Leaver he was basically an abstaining Remainer and could still garner those young voters who had failed to show up for the actual Brexit referendum.

And, according to 'John', despite the risk, this explains the abysmal campaign run by Ms May.

So on the morning of the 9th he was confident that Ms May would work out a way to remain prime minister and would actually have a 'soft' Brexit mandate, and would no longer have to pretend that no deal was an option.

The dalliance with the DUP is still unclear as they represent the far right and the far left of the Conservative party and have a pork barrel list on top. Their anti-abortion and homophobic anti same-sex marriage goals will find no support in Westminster but their open-border demands between Ireland and Northern Ireland actually plays into the hands of Ms May and all the soft Brexiteers regardless of party affiliation.

So, if politics makes for (very) strange bed partners a Conservative/DPU majority is the epitome of that phrase.

Enter the Liberal Democrats.

The Liberal Democrats won 12 seats, 2 more than the DUP.

They are a recognized party and were part of the last coalition with David Cameron's Tories.

They ran a poor campaign with their leader, Tim Fallon, an evangelical Christian who spent most of his campaign trying to deny that he was anti-gay refusing to deny that homosexuality was a sin. He has since resigned and it looks as if the new leader of the Liberal Democrats will be Vince Cable who is pro-Europe, was Business Minister under Mr Cameron. Mr Cable lost his seat in the 2015 elections and therefore although his predecessor had declared that the Liberal Democrats would not do a deal with the Conservatives Mr Cable feels no responsibility to uphold that pledge.

This was all last night.

It remains to be seen who Ms May goes with but I believe one thing is for sure: Brexit may mean Brexit, but what Brexit means is a much broader church today than it was 2 weeks ago, and that can only be a good thing.