Most of you were
probably sick of Brexit, but with all the MP’s on holiday it does
give us a chance, now things are quiet, to look back at how the
Circus came into being and the possible motivations. 2017 seems ages
ago but its worth looking at what we were promised before that
election.
.
The main Political
Parties in Wales with only one exception, said in 2017, prior to the
General election of that year, that they accepted the Result of the
Referendum to Leave the E.U. They would deliver the best form of
Brexit. Then one did a sharp U turn to demand a second referendum and campaign for Remain the others kept their policies but then spent years
wasting our time and destroying our economy by not sorting out
Brexit.
I believe that most
UK politicians genuinely originally believed in 2016 that the people
of the UK would not vote Leave. Still reeling with the shock many
made promises to deliver Brexit that they had no real intention of
fulfilling. Follow that with a misguided 2017 general election which
turned the Conservatives into a minority government dependent on the
DUP, and the focus of many Remain MP’s switches to delaying and/or
stopping Brexit. This is complicated by what becomes a clear policy
by Labour to concentrate on undermining the Conservatives and forcing
another General Election to put Labour into power on a UK basis.
On the other axis is
a small group of more principled MP’s who actually want a proper
Brexit where we do leave the EU and between these a large number of
our leaders claim to want to fulfil the decision of the people but
whose antics are totally ineffective. The E.U. negotiators have done
their best to thwart Brexit, They need our money [which we now know
from the wording of the Withdrawal Deal is nearer £390 million a
week rather than the £350m on the bus] and the E.U. Beaurocrats want
to make leaving the EU a long and difficult process. They need to
discourage the Eurosceptics in other E.U. Countries from taking
similar action as the UK and every delay is more money for them.
Lets look at the
2017 party manifesto for each major party standing in Wales, most
promised in 2017 to deliver Brexit but haven’t quite made it yet.
In fact, in practice, the M.P.s have appeared to deliberately deliberately
obstruct leaving the E.U.
Few M.P.s declared
how they had personally voted in the 2016 referendum on their
election literature when they stood in the 2017 General Election.
Their party policies were all the public generally had to go on,
reflected in their election literature. The result was a House of
Commons where around 75% of all M.P.s had previously supported and
voted Remain. Although few could be described as young, they do, in
the main, fit the rest of the demographic for remain voters. Many are
graduates, all have a very comfortable income, most are homeowners,
and many are of middle or upper class background. What they did not
realise was that they were about to expose the UK political class as
seriously unfit for purpose, and change our politics radically.
The Conservative
and Unionist Party.
Their manifesto
opens with Theresa May’s positive statement on Brexit:
This manifesto,
Forward, Together: Our Plan for a Stronger Britain and a Prosperous
Future will meet the great challenges of our time, beyond Brexit.
With this plan and with a strong hand through Brexit, we will build a
stronger, fairer, more prosperous Britain, for all of us.
No hint of the
ultra Tory Brexiteers and the determined Tory Remainers who would in
fact, deliberately block her Brexit Plans. Also the Conservatives
totally underestimated the EU negotiation difficulties. as the EU
had no interest in an early Brexit and is quite happy to receive the
generous contributions from the UK for as long as possible.
The Labour Party
"Let's
build a fairer Britain where no one is held back. A country where
everybody is able to get on in life, to have security at work and at
home, to be decently paid for the work they do, and to live their
lives with the dignity they deserve."
Jeremy Corbin
Welsh Labour have a separate manifesto. “Standing up for Wales”
116 pages long. “This is not the Brexit Election”, it states. It
calls for backing to elect Westminster members to form a UK Labour
government to support the Welsh Labour Government and makes Welsh
promises such as the end of Severn Bridge tolls and Support for Wylfa
Newydd Nuclear power.
On Brexit:
They
would “give a meaningful role to Parliament and the Welsh
Government through the Brexit negotiations”.
Recently,
in UK’s Labour Conference, an option of a “People’s Vote” has
been added to the Brexit mix by Labour but is not yet definitely
adopted as a rigid policy.
The Liberal
Democrats
Manifesto title “Change Britain’s Future”
Tim
Farron's leader’s
foreword
says: "I want the Liberal Democrats to be the party that holds
Theresa May to account over spending on the National Health Service;
our young people's education, skills and opportunities; the
protection of our precious environment; and our future relationship
with Europe."
The Lib Dems are the
only major party who list a second referendum as a policy prior to
the 2017 Election and paint a picture of doom for any form of Brexit
from then onwards. Full marks for consistency but they didn’t do
too well at the General Election.
Plaid Cymru
The 2017 manifesto
is titled “Defending Wales” and reminds us several times that
“Plaid Cymru is the hardest working party in Westminster”.
Plaid accept the
result in Wales of a pro-Brexit vote and offer to deliver a Brexit
favouring Wales:
“We will fight to
get the best possible Brexit deal for Welsh Industry and
Agriculture.”
“We will secure
all the money promised by the Leave Campaign and not a penny less”.
At some point,
presumably by some internal party process I can’t find, this has
morphed into a policy of reversing Brexit and having a “peoples’
vote” on any Brexit decision.
It is thought that
Plaid may have just changed policy, perhaps by executive decision, to
the SNP’s policy, in the hope that a second referendum in the UK
will set a precedent for a second Scottish Independence referendum.
There is certainly an argument that supporting the SNP in order to
hasten Scottish Independence may progress Plaid’s plans for our own
Independence. However, there is this little problem in that the
majority of people in Wales voted out. Plaid MP Jonathan Edwards,
whose Carmarthen East Constituency voted out with a similar margin as
neighbouring, Llanelli, is especially cynical in taking this view.
The other Plaid
M.P.s can at least claim their voters voted remain, and now hold the
view that a re-run is necessary. However, I doubt that many M.P.s of
all colours have any real idea of what their voters actually think
today. Some media claim all leavers have changed their minds
significantly but the panic about EU elections suggest that the fear
of Eurosceptic Parties’ by the mainstream ones. belies that
belief
UKIP
Paul Nuttall was the UKIP leader in 2017 and he presented a manifesto
called “Britain Together”
A
"patriotic agenda for defending our country and our way of
life."
Paul
Nuttall's foreword says: "We are the country's insurance policy,
the guard dogs of Brexit. We have fought for Brexit all our political
lives and we want to ensure that the people get the kind of Brexit
they voted for on 23rd June last year.
However,
the party were not successful in getting any MPs elected so could not influence Brexit at all..
Recent
polls suggest that if there is an EU parliamentary election the
current trends are a drop in Conservative and Labour support and an impressive
showing for the new Nigel Farage led Brexit Party:
Overall,
Wales 2016 referendum result of 54% leave vs 46% remain is close to
the UK result of 52% Leave vs 48% remain, with 2% more Leavers in
Wales and 2% less Remain supporters.
Next
steps politically…..
BACKDOOR
SECOND REFERENDUM?
Its
been suggested in the Guardian that the EU Parliamentary Elections
could be used by Remain Campaigners as a second Brexit referendum.
The individual Remain parties have all rejected electoral pacts but
they could still replicate a second referendum and possibly even
increase the turnout for EU elections, usually pretty low in the UK.
So a campaign to encourage Remain voters to vote for the Stop Brexit
policy parties, it is argued, could “win” overall in the EU
parliament elections and show that the people of the UK have really
changed their minds.
Any
vote for the Remain favouring “Reverse Brexit Parties” - Plaid
Cymru, Change UK, Greens, Liberal democrats and Scottish National
Party – would count as a Remain vote, a request for staying in, and
presumably any vote for UKIP, Brexit Party, Labour and Conservatives
etc would count as a pro Leave vote. The trick is to get more theoretically Remain supporters out to vote than supposed pro Brexit ones on the day.
However,
with the great public lack of confidence and trust in our politicians
would anyone bother to play this game or accept the “result”?
In any case the current polls suggest that this particular gambit looks rocky unless Labour , as advised by Deputy Leader Tom Watson, declares for a second referendum campaigning for Remain, thereby joining the "stop Brexit club",and, on today's figures, getting a theoretical but narrow pro Remain vote of 51% .
However the risk of losing Labour Leave voters for the next general election would be real. Is staying in the E.U. more important to than Labour than winning a UK general election? I think not, but we are about to find out if the elections go ahead.
Yougov results 17.4.19 below
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| Published by YouGov 17.4.19 |
The 2 main political parties may well now try a last effort to pass the only withdrawal agreement the EU will allow, despite its flaws, as their only way of avoiding a very embarrassing European Union Parliamentary election.
Siân Caiach
