Brexit Day 18: 'Theresa May has benefited from the Tories’ hunger for power'
Another unexpected day! Theresa May will be PM by Wednesday evening, with a cabinet reshuffle surely to follow afterwards. David Cameron appeared on the steps of Number 10 this afternoon to say he will chair cabinet tomorrow, lead one more PMQs and will then offer his resignation to the Queen on Wednesday afternoon. Theresa May gave a very brief statement outside Parliament at 1730 surrounded by MPs from all wings of the party. She thanked Andrea Leadsom for her dignity in withdrawal, and David Cameron for his leadership. ‘Brexit means Brexit’ she said ‘and we are going to make a success of it’.
Mr Cameron was captured thus (click link to watch the video):
Conservative leadership competition: Le roi est mort, vive la reine
The Conservative leadership contest has been the gift that keeps on giving. I thought that I would be writing about the Leadsom Effect today. The way her presence in the campaign would pull Theresa May over to the right and make her more populist. And the way that Leadsom’s pronouncements – including the thermonuclear mumsnet bomb that she detonated in the Times on Saturday - might just appeal to the anti-politics, anti-business, anti-establishment mood that has pervaded even the grass roots of the Conservative party. And sure enough, May’s set-piece speech this morning squirted around attacks on big business fat cats like a hungry builder with a bottle of HP sauce. This is the new centre ground of British politics.
However the script, was ripped up. Again. At 1215 Leadsom withdrew from the competition citing the glare of publicity and the level of opposition to her candidacy in the parliamentary party. She gave her support to Theresa May, as did Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. Shortly after her withdrawal, Graham Brady MP, the man running the leadership process, said the party hierarchy would meet to rubber stamp the decision. It looked like he had been caught on the hop. Chris Grayling gave a statement saying that May was on her way back from Birmingham. In this bizarre, slightly chaotic procession of rushed statements, the leadership of the world’s sixth largest economy and control over a fleet of Trident-armed nuclear subs sloshed away from David Cameron towards Theresa May. Jonathan Freeland wrote in the Guardian that ‘there is a reason why the Conservative party is the most electorally successful political organisation in the western world. They have an iron will to power their rivals lack – and they have just shown it once again.’
So it’s time for Dave to pack his bags because Theresa is moving into Number 10. The fact that the UK will be under new management very quickly - rather than watching the Tory party engage a multi-week process of vicious politicking – should be a relief to business, if not to hardcore Leavers who thought that Leadsom was the only option.
Labour leadership: Eagle swoops
It really is game on. I think. Labour Party General Ian McNicol confirmed today that he had received the 50 MP signatures required to trigger a leadership contest. Tomorrow the Labour National Executive Committee will meet to confirm arrangements, including whether Jeremy Corbyn needs to collect 51 signatures from Labour MPs to be placed on the leadership ballot. The fact that this question has no clear answer shows just how poorly drafted the Labour leadership rules are. Labour’s election co-ordinator, John Trickett MP, suggested that the party should get behind Corbyn, and it appears that the leader has every intention of fighting all the way. So much for a deal.
Presumably hoping to seize on a gap in the political drama, Angela Eagle launched her bid to oust Corbyn officially today. “I’m not a Blairite, I’m not a Brownite and I’m not a Corbynista. I am my own woman – a strong Labour woman” she said to a rapturous cheer. In a rebuke to Momentum she said: “I’m not here for a Labour party that just takes part. I’m here to win.” It was all rather overshadowed by developments in the Conservative camp.
Question: Will Owen Smith chuck his hat in too?
Snap general election?
There have been calls, particularly from the left, for Theresa May to call a general election. They argue that it’s wrong that the PM should be chosen solely by a handful of Tory MPs and have no personal electoral mandate at a time like this. Labour’s John Trickett MP said in a statement that: "It now looks likely that we are about to have the coronation of a new Conservative Prime Minister. It is crucial, given the instability caused by the Brexit vote, that the country has a democratically elected Prime Minister”. He continued – rather unconvincingly – that he was putting the whole of the party on a General Election footing. Caroline Lucas MPs of the Greens People said something very similar.
There are also those of a Remain persuasion who hope that a second election will allow the public to recognise that they have made a huge mistake and unwind the whole Brexit thing. This argument isn’t very convincing to me because the mandate for Leave is 17,410,742 people – far bigger than this government or any that would follow it. Only 11,334,576 voted for the Conservative majority in 2015. Or, we can look at it another way: just where does the ‘Stop Leave’ coalition come from? Is it Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP? That doesn’t seem to work. Under May the Conservative party – remainers and leavers - would presumably fight a snap election on an ‘out means out’ platform, and say that it is the party that is most competent to deliver Brexit. And they would probably win a majority in doing so. That doesn’t change a thing. In any case, we live in a Parliamentary system and (as we know from A-level politics) the executive stems from the legislature. If Theresa May does not want to call an election, well that’s up to her.
But what are pros and cons of calling a snap election?
Reasons for May not to call an election:
- She has said very clearly that there will not be one
- She doesn’t have to offer one
- There’s no May manifesto
- It’s a real pain – including going through the votes in Parliament under Fixed Term Parliaments Act to dissolve Parliament
- The country has probably had enough of this for now
- Business and the markets have dealt with enough instability
- There’s no guarantee of victory
Reasons for May to call an election
- Labour is in disarray – this could destroy the party
- UKIP is rudderless
- Lib Dems have not had time to capitalise on the Leave vote
- A victory would give her a clear, direct mandate
- She could increase the Conservative majority
- The Conservative party can probably afford it, the others can’t
Will she or won’t she? For now, I think I am taking what May has said at face value. However, given recent events, taking anything anyone says at face value is probably extremely naïve.
Trading places
George Osborne was in New York today, to persuade Wall Street that the UK is not turning into Little Britain and is still open for business. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal George Osborne channelled his namesake John Osborne (or perhaps Noel Gallagher) saying ‘there is no point looking back in anger; in great democracies like ours, when the people speak, we respect their verdict.’ Osborne is also travelling to China and Singapore in the coming weeks.
Companies and markets
The markets responded strongly to the emergence of greater political certainty. That certainty effect in full:
Sterling – boing!
Housebuilders: ka-ching!
Soap opera: I was intrigued to see a story about pongy soap purveyors Lush picked up in Ryan Heath’s excellent Brussels Playbook this morning. Under the headline: Lush Founder: Voters said they don't want our EU staff - we'll grow our business in Germany instead the Bournemouth Echo quotes Lush founder Mark Constantine as saying the referendum had signalled to his immigrant staff that they were “not wanted by people in Poole”. Lush is to move production for continental European customers to Dusseldorf, in a move that is reported as linked directly to the referendum result. “It’s not a question of cutting local production, it’s a question that the growth is going there” Constantine said. He’s also quoted as saying “Mo [wife and co-founder] said when she went to Germany last week it was awfully sad to see that’s where the centre of things would be in the future and not here. But we don’t know that yet. All we know is we’re moving our mainland European production over there, along with those people who wish to go.”
My Remainer tendencies are very well known, but I will say when something doesn’t quite add up to me. That last part of Constantine’s quote was pretty equivocal. Lush had already announced its new Dusseldorf factory in February. An article from that time said the factory would be opened to take pressure off its UK and Croatian factories. Read the two articles side by side and the message is completely different. Lush was already doing this. I don’t doubt that Brexit strengthens the logic for opening the German factory. The vote clearly places non-UK workers in an uncomfortable position. But the reporting that Lush is doing this just because of Brexit doesn’t seem to tally with what the company has previously said.
Farnborough International Air Show, one of the world’s largest aviation trade shows, kicked off today. Outgoing PM David Cameron opened it and announced a partnership with Boeing to create 2,000 jobs in the UK. The UK confirms it is to buy 8 Boeing Poseidon submarine hunting aircraft (because: Russia). The bosses of Rolls Royce and BAE Systems put a brave face on Brexit this morning (they don’t really have a choice). The sad truth is that the world is not a particularly stable place at the moment which will help their defence divisions. BAE’s boss, Ian King, pointed out to Radio 4 that the EU is not a defence entity and that co-operation was at an intergovernmental level. The UK’s closest defence partner aside from the US is France and its unlikely to see this change any time soon. Warren East of Rolls said that 75 per cent of its business in the next decade was probably coming from outside the EU. On display at Farnborough this week is the F-35B, which is soon to enter service in the UK and makes it second appearance in public here. The US is the lead partner of the largest, most expensive defence procurement in history, with NATO members United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, Canada, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Turkey part of the programme.
Plane spotter corner: Here’s my picture of an F35 at RIAT, Fairford yesterday.
Tweet of the Day
Time to sell shares in Eton...
Power cuts...
From air show to hair show. Time to go long Maggie’s hairstyle?