The Current Shambles in the UK Parliament
Conrad Black
National Review Online
. . . The current absurd state of affairs arose when former prime minister David Cameron (2010–2016) promised a referendum on staying in Europe or leaving, certain that there could not be a vote to leave. But there was, 52 to 48 percent, in 2016. Cameron had to resign and was replaced by Theresa May, who claimed to be leaving when she was really advocating an arrangement of remaining in Europe with some modifications.
She never indicated there was any chance of leaving without any departing arrangements, so Brussels made minimal concessions on behalf of the EU. Mrs. May’s proposed deal, which would have been approved if Cameron had taken the trouble to negotiate it, was rejected by Parliament three times, all after she called an unnecessary election and lost her majority.
Theresa May finally had no support left and retired earlier this year, and former London mayor Boris Johnson was chosen by the Conservative party to replace her. He has said he will try to negotiate a satisfactory arrangement with Brussels, but that he will leave without a compromise departure arrangement if he can’t reach an acceptable one. . . . (H)e will not seek another extension of the departure date, which was supposed to occur last March.
A bloc of 21 of his M.P.’s defected on the issue of possibly leaving without a negotiated agreement after Johnson secured Queen Elizabeth’s agreement to prorogue (suspend) Parliament from next week to mid-October, just two weeks before the October 31 departure date. The Conservative rebels have joined with the five opposition parties (one Scottish and two Northern Irish parties and the Labour and Liberal Democratic parties) to deny the government’s move to dissolve Parliament for new elections. They are going to legislate a requirement that there not be a “no-deal Brexit,” as “crashing out of Europe” is called.
Thus the opposition groups who could not agree on much else, will try to dictate and adopt legislation without attempting to remove the government. This is now the most absurd depth British parliamentary government has plumbed since the English Civil War in the mid-17th century.
It is fatuous for the opposition parties to try to govern legislatively without control of any of the ministries, and as soon as there is what amounts to an expression of non-confidence in the government, which all but technically has already occurred, Johnson should be able successfully to request a writ of dissolution and of new elections from the venerable Queen Elizabeth II (Johnson is her 14th prime minister in her 67 years as queen).
I predict that the Johnson government will make an electoral arrangement with the Brexit party of Nigel Farage and will win a landslide victory against the fragmented opposition, a mélange of mountebanks, Marxists, and regional autonomists and separatists.
The point of all this for the United States is that Britain will shift the balance of power in the world by a rapprochement with America after departing Europe, which was always conceived as a somewhat anti-American enterprise, in which the United States would be dispensed with when it was no longer needed to liberate it from the Nazis or protect it from the Soviets. . . .
As for Britain itself, its principal media outlets, the BBC and the Economist, Financial Times, Telegraph, Guardian, and Times of London, have rarely ceased for long in reviling the Trump administration, along with all his Republican and half of his Democratic predecessors since Roosevelt, and mocking the garishness of the American system generally.
This unspeakable display of incompetence and dysfunctional hypocrisy (in the UK) should confer upon the British commentariat a trace of well-earned humility. Cromwell’s dismissal of Parliament 370 years ago leaps to mind: “You came here to address the nation’s grievances and you are now its greatest grievance. In God’s name, go!” They shall go to the people, and, happily, many will not come back.
CONRAD BLACK’s latest book is Donald J. Trump, A President Like No Other.
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