May Premiership: The Sun Is Setting

It seems now clear to everyone that the days of the May government are coming to an end. It is widely reported that May wants to see the first part of Brexit, the actual withdrawal, complete before she goes. This is not going to happen. The numbers are just not there to get her deal through the Commons, however and in what format it is presented, unless she can persuade the DUP and the ERG to back her to the hilt. Pigs might grow wings and fly first.

The cross party talks have failed, not because agreement was out of reach, but because the leadership of neither party could deliver enough votes to get any agreed deal through. Moreover with rampant Tory leadership candidates declaring they would tear up any agreed deal, it was impossible for Labour to sign such a thing. As they said, negotiating with the government is like dealing with a company about to go bust.

But be in no doubt. Changing Tory Prime Ministers will change nothing of substance. Most likely an ardent Brexiteer will get the job and form a Brexit cabinet, which will find itself blocked by a parliament for which there is no majority for anything, save for stopping a No Deal exit. The truth is the country is gripped in crisis and is ungovernable upon the key issue of the day because of a combination of the Fixed Term Parliament Act and the Supreme Court Ruling which put the House of Commons in the driving seat over Brexit. The combined outcome is the stripping of the executive power of the Government, the stripping of the Prime Minister’s power to call for a dissolution and the stripping of Parliament’s power to sack the government and in effect dissolve itself. Now everything has to be agreed before it can happen, which is why nothing has.

On top of that, we no longer allow the Monarch to exercise reserve powers to intervene when governance breaks down. So the Ship of State is ultimately without a functioning Captain, adrift on the high seas. Changing the Tory leader will change nothing else.