This is the first edition of Iain Martin’s letter, delivering to your inbox his political analysis and a weekly round up of the best content from Reaction. Subscribe here.
What a time to launch a new site offering commentary on politics, economics and culture. Just when there is nothing going on. That is, nothing other than the UK voting to leave the EU, a Tory leadership race, a Labour party meltdown, the threat of a swing to Scottish independence, an EU in crisis and a US presidential election in which the Republican candidate is a golf-obsessed poltroon who makes Sarah Palin look like Abraham Lincoln.
Despite the geopolitical backdrop being so boring, I decided with the help of some friends to launch Reaction. We have been up and running for ten days now and the feedback has been encouraging. If you want to tell me what you think, encouraging or discouraging, please email me.
When I chose the name Reaction I did not do so in reaction to the UK leaving the EU. Remain were the likely winners back then and I meant it more as a small response to some of the worrying trends that are apparent in politics and the media. Not only do those of us who are in favour of free market capitalism have a lot of work to do rethinking its image problem, the substance of how it has come to operate needs urgent attention too. Quality journalism in the internet age is also under assault. We hope, in a small way initially, with the help of leading writers, to add another voice to the debate. Reaction will be pro-market in its outlook, but broad church and outward looking. Even if you do not agree with everything you read on the site (and already I don’t) I hope it will be stimulating, informed, sometimes amusing and enjoyable to read.
This new Reaction weekly email will contain my take on events of the moment. After a week in Britain in which the word historic has been worn out through overuse, rather than penning a long essay on what it all might mean I have attempted instead to break down a few initial thoughts about what comes next. No-one knows definitively and anyone pretending to has had too little sleep or is deluded. But here, on some of the major questions that arise from the EU referendum result, are my observations.
A deal with the EU
The anger of those on the losing side is immense. Already a petition for a second referendum is up and running. I want to avoid being unkind to fellow Britons who feel aggrieved, but there is not going to be a re-run, even on the basis that you think your opponents were economical with the truth. Both sides made questionable claims in the referendum. The insurgent official Leave side applied arguments that privately appalled some of its liberal adherents. Equally, the proper Europhiles on the Remain side, who could have made a real case for a vision of Europe and the EU, colluded in a mean-minded, narrow, risk-based Remain campaign. I bet they wish they hadn’t. Out of all the resulting resentment and upset should come a cross-party national effort to get the best deal possible and to make it work. But it will involve an almighty punch-up along the way over exactly what that deal looks like. Many voters voted wanting real controls on immigration and meaningful reductions from the current levels. They will expect this delivered, if not at once, then within reasonable time. Some Remainers will try to salvage the Single Market, even though it is part of the EU, which the UK has just voted to Leave. The rows are far from over. Let us hope they can at least be conducted in a spirit of friendly intra-British national cooperation. Meanwhile, look at that pig flying up in the sky above the Palace of Westminster.
Tory leadership
Much more to come on this, but it looks in the early stages like Boris v Theresa May, with Theresa as the Stop Boris candidate. Boris has a lot – a lot – to prove in terms of his suitability and the campaign will be extremely testing. It is also perfectly possible that the Tories could choose a Remainer as a compromise candidate if they are considered to be capable of doing the administrative heavy-lifting in government and strategic thinking about securing a deal with the EU. From the new crop, Stephen Crabb is an extremely good prospect but it may be too early. Then – like a Grand National – there will be all manner of exotic and not so exotic runners and riders who think it worth a shot. It is certainly feasible for one of them to capture media and activist attention. They might even win.
Election coming
There has to be a general election soon after the new Tory leader is chosen. The country will not tolerate its future being decided by Tory MPs and members. Whoever wins the Tory leadership contest will need their own mandate to negotiate. This is going to add another fascinating layer of complexity to the Conservative party leadership race, because the contenders will be pressed on their preferences for the deal with the EU. After that chaotic spectacle, and once a new PM is in office, the country will rightly demand and get the deciding vote.
Lost Labour
Labour needs a new and sensible leader urgently, because a general election is highly likely to take place before the end of the year. If the timetable slips because of the negotiations, at the latest the UK will go to the polls a year from now. Jeremy Corbyn cannot be Labour’s leader. He is entirely unsuitable and not very bright. England – in the South East, the South West, in the Midlands and in the North – will not vote for him. Only London might. Keeping Corbyn means a Tory landslide. If – if – Labour MPs manage to get a leadership election and he runs and wins it again it is time to shut up shop, go to moderate Labour voters and liberal left-leaning business people and get the funds for the launch of Real Labour or whatever else it might be called. Or stay and endure a Tory landslide. Whatever the outcome, the UK needs a proper centre-left, mainstream party or the Tories will have it all their own way.
The Lib Dems
Tim Farron, fresh from rapping inadvisedly in a video during the campaign, spots a chance to get them back in the game as the “get the UK back in the EU” party. Although he will not achieve his aim in term of readmission, it may be enough to get him some attention from grieving Europhiles and even secure his party more votes.
A challenge for the Establishment
Shortly after the result came through, three men sat in a BBC TV studio on air musing on the robust message that angry Britain had just sent to the Establishment. They were presenter David Dimbleby, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg and Labour MP Hilary Benn. Any novelist deploying such a cast-list even in fiction would have been thought fanciful. A Dimbleby, a Rees-Mogg and a Benn? It even sounds like the beginning of a joke about the Establishment. I mention it not to condemn the individuals, who are all familiar with life outside London. It is though a highly appropriate image that sums up one of the realities of the referendum and its aftermath. Many middle-class Britons (particularly in London and the media) are being introduced to what other people, of different classes and backgrounds, think. “Ooh, you’re so thick, old and racist, let’s rerun the vote,” is not an advisable response. The rest of the Establishment – excluding the Brexity Royals – has just taken the most remarkable slap in the face. Be in no doubt, it will reinvent itself in a hurry, and that includes the upper reaches of the civil service and the CBI.
UKIP
Despite doing its best to lose the referendum, the Faragist clique, that wasted months on a futile bid for the official campaign designation and then introduced disgraceful posters into the campaign mix, treated Thursday’s result as its victory when it was not. Many UKIP activists certainly campaigned for Vote Leave, but Farage’s gang knew that a victory for Leave presented him with problems. He is not in parliament, and his disgusting rhetoric (“a victory for decent people” as though Remain voters are not decent Britons) rules him out of any part in the negotiations. It does, however, give him a chance to rebuild UKIP as the Leave means Leave party, harrying the government and kicking up hell if what emerges from the negotiations is anything short of full abandonment of freedom of movement. It is tempting to say that the referendum result has finished Farage. It is tempting but potentially wrong. The events of the next year, if mishandled by the two main parties, could put him at the head of a movement with potential support of as much as 25% of the vote in England and Wales. He knows this. He is a shameless publicity-seeker and dangerous rouser of rabbles. But he is not an idiot.
Scotland and the Union
My view is that the Nationalist hype is overdone, and that in a second referendum on independence in which the Sturgeon offer is separation from England, currency chaos and the eventual adoption of the euro, they will struggle. For that reason, expect her to avoid it and instead barter a devo-max settlement that leaves just defence, foreign affairs and the monarchy with the UK. Although there are plenty of Unionist media voices north of the border who now seem open to independence after the shock of the EU vote, at least in theory, I would encourage them rather than weeping and wailing to engage. There is a long way to go before the conclusion of the UK’s departure from the EU, and the UK and the EU could look very different in three years time.
The UK constitutional situation
After the Scottish referendum, an opportunity was missed on both sides of the border to rethink and reimagine the UK’s constitutional settlement properly. I never wanted Scottish devolution in the 1990s. I thought it would let in the SNP. But that’s ancient history and there is no going back. What was proposed by Robert Salisbury in late 2014 (the Commons as English chamber, a new upper chamber as the elected UK-wide body and maximum devolution) is a good starting point.
David Cameron
The Prime Minister will have better things to do than read this epistle, especially from a Leaver. I hope right now that he is having a pint or a glass of decent claret and relaxing with his family. And what I am about to say may infuriate, appal and even amuse some friends on both left and right. But then they never rated Cameron, and they were wrong. Personally, I found some of what he did infuriating and I wrote about it, probably with too much anger, from time to time. As the most talented British politician of his generation he could be hellishly frustrating when it came to planning or explaining what he was about. But even so, David Cameron was a bloody good Prime Minister. The job never drove him mad and he was abroad a credit to his country. He maintained his sense of humour and a sense of perspective. He also, when he did not have to, remained deeply and sincerely loyal to certain friends made long before he was famous, infamous or running the country. In the EU referendum a good man made a decision, thinking it was the right call for the country, and lost. Eventually, I suspect it will be seen that this outcome, a British break with a failing EU, was always going to come whether now – via Cameron’s referendum – or a later vote. The British had always been rather grudging about membership. In addition, forces unleashed by technology and increased global trade make the EU model unworkable for the UK. That is not Cameron’s fault. The Tory leader is relatively young man, not yet 50. David Cameron has much more to contribute as the country tries to make a new dispensation work. He will not feel much like it but he should stay in the Commons.
Thank you for reading Reaction. Have a good weekend.
Iain Martin,
Editor, Reaction