Can Boris and Nigel team up?
BORIS Johnson may have started the engine running on his battle bus but Jeremy Corbyn has slashed the tyres. The Prime Minister and his team expected to be on the campaign trail this weekend hunting for general election votes. Instead, they will be trying to work out a way of breaking down the Labour leader’s resistance to a snap poll.
Cowards flinch, according to the words of the socialist anthem The Red Flag sung by Labourites at their conference every autumn. Under Mr Corbyn’s leadership, the people’s flag appears to have turned deepest yellow.
Mr Johnson is the first British prime minister in the democratic era to be denied the right to call an election at the time of his choosing. The refusal of the Commons to approve his request to seek a dissolution of Parliament is a stark illustration of the way the Fixedterm Parliaments Act has enfeebled his office by stripping away Crown prerogative powers.
David Cameron introduced the legislation, demanding a vote by two-thirds of MPs to trigger a general election before the scheduled end of a five-year term, as a sticking plaster to hold together his ill-matched coalition with the Lib Dems. His short-term fix has proved to be an act of constitutional vandalism that has drastically upset the balance of powers between the executive and the legislature.
MR JOHNSON’s team insists the block on an election imposed by Mr Corbyn in cahoots with the Lib Dems and Scottish National Party cannot last. Downing Street insiders say private opinion polling commissioned by Conservative Campaign HQ shows huge support among the electorate for dissolving the current deadlocked Commons and calling time on three years of Brexit impasse.
“The voters are mad for this,” said one senior government source. “They can see this bunch of MPs has failed to deliver on the will of the people and needs to be booted
out. Corbyn is denying the country democracy.”
Senior Tory aides believe the Labour leader will come under irresistible pressure from angry voters in the coming days. “When Labour MPs see their poll ratings plunge even lower than they were already as a result of Corbyn continuing the paralysis, their resistance will crack,” the source said.The problem with such a siege strategy is that it leaves the Prime Minister at the mercy of the Opposition. Under the instruction of his hard-Left inner circle, Mr Corbyn has repeatedly shifted his position to try to undermine the Government. And an Opposition leader with a falling poll rating has little incentive to allow a general election to go ahead.
Mr Corbyn has every reason to fear a campaign fought over a clear Brexit Remain versus Leave divide. In 2017, both Labour and Tory manifestos promised to deliver on the verdict of the 2016 EU referendum but that will not be the case in the next contest.
HOWEVER, Mr Johnson’s path to a Tory majority from an election is not clear-cut. His party risks losing votes to the resurgent Lib Dems in Remaindominated areas. To compensate, the Tories must find a way of neutralising the threat posed by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party that could split the Leave vote.
“Boris needs to get on the phone to Nigel. Even if the Brexit Party just got five per cent, it would hurt us badly,” one senior Brexiteer Tory MP told me.
Mr Johnson will need to think seriously whether to form an alliance with the Brexit Party or try to crush it.With Mr Corbyn and his allies digging in to block an election, the Prime Minister may have longer than he wants to ponder that dilemma.