Sturgeon and May put to the test in a defining year ahead
IT IS back to school for Holyrood and Westminster next Monday. As with children, one imagines there are certain routines that must be gone through before MSPs and MPs turn up for the new term. With pupils, the process starts about one hour into the school holidays when shops start advertising back-to-school wear, thus prompting what experts call a “massive downer” among young folk. Just as children are taken to buy new uniforms, so MPs and MSPs, having ceremonially burned whatever they wore all last year, go shopping for new duds, usually the same boring suits, sans the sweat stains.
Teachers, too, have their back-toschool rituals, most of which centre around the rending of garments, the gnashing of teeth, and other expressions of delight at thoughts of being reunited with their little darlings. At the swankier establishments, the staff go off to hotels to prep for the new year.
If it is good enough for teachers, it is good enough for politicians. Thus you will find this week those two headmistresses of British politics, Nicola Sturgeon and Theresa May, taking their teams for awaydays, the First Minister heading to Stirling and the Prime Minister to Chequers. The main items on the agendas at both events say much about the political year to come, so think on this column as our prep for the 2016-17 term. And yes, you will need to have the annual bath tonight.
Mrs May has been back from her walkingholidayintheSwissAlpsfora few days, though you would scarcely know it, such has been the silence from Downing Street. Mrs May, it has been reported, is said to favour a “submarine” style of leadership, whereby she speeds along quietly under the water, only surfacing now and then for important announcements. The bells on her sub must have surely rung on Saturday after former cabinet secretary Lord Gus O’Donnell made his contribution to the Brexit debate.
In an interview with the Times, GOD, as he was known in Whitehall, provided heavenly music to the ears of all those who persist in thinking that the 17 million people who voted Leave did not really mean it, that somehow their fingers slipped and they won’t mind too much if the Remainers ignore the result. Asked how events might play out from here, GOD said it depended on “what happens to public opinion and whether the EU changes before then. It may be that the broader, more loosely aligned group is something the UK is happy being a member of”.
As for the regulatory overhaul required if Brexit was to really mean Brexit, GOD reckoned the UK would stick with the EU rules and laws it has because it would be too much hassle to change them. In short, the UK could muddle through the next few years, not exiting the EU building entirely, just setting up shop in a nice corner of reception with access to the toilet, cafe, all the good stuff.
To Brexiters this was an outrage, confirmation that the massed ranks of Sir Humphreys and their political allies were ready to subvert the clearly expressed will of the people. Despite Mrs May’s declaration that “Brexit means Brexit” she is not entirely trusted by Brexiters to deliver. After all she was not, publicly at least, one of them. Is her impersonation of Maggie for real, they wonder, or just a party piece to rattle Jeremy Corbyn at Prime Minister’s Questions?
One thing that is known for certain about Mrs May is that she likes to exert and keep control. Hence the summons to Chequers today, where ministers will have to present their Brexit plans to Cabinet. Yet while this will keep the sceptics happy for now, Mrs May must know that Brexit is a beast that will require a lot of feeding, right up until the day when (if?) the UK leaves the EU. The Chequers meeting is just the start of a very long haul for a prime minister with a majority of just 17. Speaking of which, the first question she will have to answer in the new term is whether she will allow a parliamentary vote before triggering Article 50 and the start of exit talks.
Talk of big beasts that require a lot of feeding leads us naturally to the independence movement. Ms Sturgeon had promised a summer campaign to build support but events, dear boy, events, overtook that notion and now party chiefs are going full steam ahead with an autumn action plan.
The First Minister has been emboldened by the 68:32 vote in Scotland in favour of staying, and while she does not yet look or sound like a leader about to call a second independence referendum, there is no harm, as she sees it, in doing some groundwork. How does the saying go? Fail to prepare, prepare to fail? That could be the motto of both Mrs May and Ms Sturgeon from schooldays onwards. Women in male-dominated worlds rarely do anything else.
Mrs May’s task is to convince the Brexiters that she is honouring the letter and spirit of the June 23 vote. Ms Sturgeon has far more perilous territory to navigate. With a timetable for a second independence referendum shortened, there is no time, and no need, to preach again to the converted. The message has to be sold to the wider public now, to all those No voters of two years ago.
The SNP believes a significant swathe of this constituency is swithering because of the Brexit vote and, if it can only nudge them in the right direction, then the pennies will drop and the jackpot will be secured.
Just as in those fairground coin drop machines, appearances can, however, be deceptive. For some No voters, millimetres might as well be miles. If time really is pressing, if effort is to be concentrated where it will have the most effect, then Ms Sturgeon should have only one item on the agenda before her MPs, MSPs and MEPs this week: the economy, and in particular the £15 billion deficit in the nation’s finances.
Without addressing that, and the matter of a Scottish currency, any effort to persuade the doubters will come to nothing. Worse, voters will be irritated at having the same debate of two years ago with the same lack of answers to their questions. Is it really the case that the party has come up with serious solutions, some genuinely new thinking, on the finances of an independent Scotland? Or is finding answers to these conundrums, like the Brexit negotiations, going to be a work in perpetual progress?
Both Mrs May and Ms Sturgeon are in tricky political positions. As leaders of their parties and countries, they must be managerial, keep the show on the road, carry out the usual business of government, all the while appearing to be radicals.
They must preach to the converted at the same time as converting the doubters; stay ahead of the game but appreciate that the rules will change as they go along.
Never mind pencils; both women will have to sharpen every political skill they have to stand any chance of making the 2016-17 term a success.
‘‘ As leaders, they must be managerial, carry out the usual business of government, all the while appearing to be radicals