Don’t expect too much summer lovin’ among MPs

PARLIAMENT breaks up for its summer recess this week and most its members will go off with their buckets and spades.

Hopefully, politics will cease to be headline news, although, of course, ministers will be busy about their tasks and the Labour Party still trying to sort out the mess in which it finds itself.

The last few weeks have seen history made, and uncharted waters explored. David Cameron took a gamble with the British electorate and lost. He broke his promise to stay on as prime minister whatever the outcome, and this put paid to the ambitions of some close colleagues, in particular George Osborne.

The Labour party suffered the indignity of a coup by MPs opposed to Jeremy Corbyn, which up till now has failed, leaving the Opposition in total disarray.

This is very bad for democracy. To get the best out of the system, it is essential to have a live, questioning Opposition, led by a person who commands the respect of the vast majority of its members.

At the moment, Jeremy Corbyn is in post. Should he win the leadership vote, then it would appear there will be a major split, for 174 MPs have a different view of socialism than party members who back the current leader.

However all is not sweetness and light on the government side. Theresa May has a paper thin majority of just 12, and there are a number of Tory MPs who are not fully in support of the Prime Minister, especially those that have had their careers, at best put on hold, at worst terminated.

The Prime Minister has ruled out a General Election anytime soon. Therefore the next few years up until 2020 are going to be very interesting as the UK works through disentangling itself from a very unhappy EU that has seen its income drop by 15 per cent with the UK opting to quit.

Unelected Euro bureaucrats are not used to having to consider making economies, and they will try to make life difficult.

However, I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that leaving Europe is the right course of action.

Somehow I doubt if it will be a peaceful summer!

Russell Luckock is chairman of Birmingham pressings firm

AE Harris