Tory majority would bring vote on Brexit deal before Christmas

When I ran against Tony Blair, we agreed on a lot. His party’s lurch to the Left has changed all that

The state opening would take place ‘with reduced ceremonial elements due to the early election and proximity to Christmas’

MPS will vote on Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal before Christmas if the Conservatives win a majority at the election.

Parliament will be asked to approve the Prime Minister’s deal on the last weekend before the Christmas break, meaning Britain would be all but guaranteed to leave the EU by Jan 31, giving Mr Johnson 11 months to agree a trade deal with Brussels.

The Conservatives are so keen to hold a vote quickly that if they win a majority they will bring forward a Queen’s Speech on Dec 19, which could force Her Majesty to postpone her departure for Sandringham. Details of the timetable were released as Mr Johnson said Jeremy Corbyn would reduce the Union to “the status of a bargaining chip” if he formed a coalition with the SNP.

Mr Johnson, who will announce the Scottish Tories’ manifesto today, will say Labour would condemn the country to a second EU referendum and a second Scottish independence vote at a total cost to the taxpayer of £155million.

A poll of polls yesterday showed the Conservatives enjoying their biggest lead over Labour since 2017, with a 10-point gap opening up thanks to dwindling support for the Brexit Party.

Preparations are under way for a Queen’s Speech next month should the Conservatives win a majority on Dec 12. MPS would be summoned to Parliament on Tuesday Dec 17, when a Speaker would be elected and MPS would be sworn in before the Queen’s Speech on Dec 19.

Senior Conservative sources said Mr Johnson then planned to introduce his Withdrawal Agreement Bill for its first reading, which does not involve a vote, on Friday Dec 20 and is considering making MPS sit on Saturday Dec 21 for the second reading of the Bill, when a debate would be followed by a vote.

With all 635 Tory candidates already signed up to the deal, a Conservative majority would all but guarantee the Bill being approved. It would mean the Bill reaching the same stage that it did when MPS voted for it at a second reading in October before rejecting the Government’s timetable for making it law.

Before it could become law the Bill would have to be scrutinised by the House of Lords, meaning it would be January before it gained royal assent. Tory insiders said that the plans were not yet set in stone.

The Queen usually travels to Norfolk on the last Thursday before Christmas. Downing Street said the state opening would take place “with reduced ceremonial elements ... due both to the early general election and the proximity of the state opening to Christmas”.

The 2001 general election, when I unsuccessfully led the Conservative Party into battle against Tony Blair, now seems as if it belonged to a different era. The techniques used and policies presented would have been more familiar in elections of half a century earlier, in the 1950s, than in this utterly different contest just 18 years later.

Much of the rapid change in how elections are fought is the result of new technology: in 2001 we were still spending our campaign resources on huge advertising hoardings seen by everyone, rather than the targeted social media operations today.

But most striking is the consensus within which we all operated at that time. Labour under Blair set out to portray itself as a party safe for big-hearted Tories, conspicuously abandoning socialism. Whenever we Conservatives had a good idea, he would simply steal it. I wanted taxes to be a tiny bit lower than he did. He set spending slightly higher than I would have done. I was against the euro, but he wasn’t joining it anyway. And both of us wanted to prevent Gordon Brown becoming prime minister. We agreed on a lot. Voters knew in 2001 that they were not at a major inflection point. Neither main party was going to raise income taxes; both were committed to a close alliance with the US president; nationalisation was unthinkable.

In the fantasy world in which I won that election, Britain would have resisted European integration and started to control immigration, so in the longer term things would have been different. But the average elector was not yet concerned about those issues and was largely able to forget about politics, simply glaring at canvassers who interrupted the washing of the bright new Mondeo on the drive.

In 2001, therefore, the voter was offered from all sides the status quo with minor amendments. In 2019, the status quo is not even on the ballot paper. The events of the intervening years – high immigration, the financial crisis, the unequal effects of globalisation – have wrought their work. Whatever the result in three weeks’ time, this country faces a very big change. A Conservative victory means leaving the EU, for sure this time. A Labour victory would mean any normal notion of financial management was at an end, leading within a few years either to a siege economy or to national bankruptcy.

Tony Blair, my old arch-rival, now says both sides are “peddling fantasies”, and has called for tactical votes to create yet another hung parliament. But in this situation, that is not the answer. If the SNP hold the balance of power, the extreme consequences of Labour in office become even worse, with the nuclear deterrent at stake and another referendum in Scotland not far away. Some voters, particularly in London and the Home Counties, entertain the thought that voting Liberal Democrat is the last refuge of supporting the status quo. They are mistaken: Jo Swinson has now conceded that her party can only progress by damaging the Conservatives. The sole Liberal objective of remaining in the EU would in any case most easily be realised by putting Labour in power. On December 13, either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn will be set to be prime minister.

So what does the 2001 swing voter, who might well have been a moderate Tory who supported Blair, think now? How should a middle-of-the-road citizen – they do still exist – exercise their judgment in an election where the gap between the parties is huge?

If you are such a citizen, Jeremy Corbyn and John Mcdonnell last week made your choice much easier. Their programme of much heavier taxes on inheritance, capital gains, financial transactions and higher incomes revealed a burning hatred of wealth creation. They are true socialists, retaining their admiration for the policies of the late Hugo Chavez even as Venezuela suffers the loss of half its entire national income. They have little understanding of the fact that many businesses and entrepreneurs can move to another country if they wish, and no memory of the unremitting incompetence of nationalised industries in the past. No form of Brexit could inflict on Britain anything approaching the level of damage that these people would bring.

What, then, of the Conservative alternative, now their own manifesto has been launched? Leaving the EU is indeed a big change, one that many of us Tories did not want. But after three and a half years of paralysis, leaving with a reasonable deal is better than follow William Hague on Twitter @Williamjhague; read more at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion plunging back into refighting the issue. The most ambitious part is the commitment to negotiate free trade deals, with the EU next year and with many other countries soon after. The PM has already surprised by striking a faster and better exit deal than many thought possible, and would have to repeat that trick.

In every other way, the Tory manifesto stands in the political centre that Labour have now fully vacated. The commitments to plant many millions of trees, to spend far more conserving the oceans, and to tighten animal welfare rules after leaving the EU are the policies of a mainstream party adapting to the needs of the time. Other parties can claim similar environmental policies, but it is clear British Conservatives are a far cry from American followers of Trump.

On tax, cuts are directed at small businesses and the lower paid. The minimum wage would see sharp increases. And the locking of all the major tax rates while devoting more resources to the health service rings a bell – ah, yes, Tony Blair’s manifesto in 2001. Thankfully, the Conservatives have not become the counterpart to a Labour Party that has hurtled to the Left. This is not a programme of an ideological party or one that is moving sharply to the Right. Its policies would not have been out of place in either main party 18 years ago.

Some former Labour MPS – like Ian Austin and John Woodcock – have been brave enough to recognise this, and to recommend that people vote Conservative. It is time more Blairites had the courage of their convictions and followed them. As I look back on the centrist politics that Blair and I espoused at the turn of the century, the Tories are the only ones who come close to being its inheritors.