Opportunities are there to be seized
Embarking upon the Brexit negotiations in Brussels on Monday, David Davis summed up his attitude to the talks in a quote which he attributed to Winston Churchill: “The pessimist,” Davis said, “sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees possibility in every difficulty.” Theresa May, judging by the way things are going back here in Britain, is a pessimist.
For how else can it be that a Prime Minister whose political opponents unequivocally lost the election is failing to challenge the growing impression that it is they, not she, who have the legitimacy to govern? How can it be that in negotiations with the DUP, it is the party from Northern Ireland that appears to be dictating terms to the Conservatives? How can it be that Labour is able to play both sides of the Brexit argument, even though that makes its position transparently untenable? And how can it be that yesterday, following the Queen’s Speech, the old spectre was raised of Labour and Liberal Democrat peers blocking the passage of the nation’s most significant upcoming legislation, even though this has the popular backing of a referendum?
Should any or all of these issues make a Prime Minister’s knees knock together? No. Should any of them prevent a Government, even one as precariously positioned as this, proceeding with its programme and policies? No. In fact there is political advantage to be had here. There is scope to turn these situations to the benefit of Downing Street, if only it could seize the initiative, dictate the narrative, and make – not be drenched by – the political weather.
On the DUP talks, there is a case to be made that the Conservatives can govern without a formal confidence and supply arrangement, the terms of which have only grown more extortionate with every day that has passed since the election. After all, will the DUP really vote against the Government and risk triggering a new general election that carries the very real possibility of ushering Ira-sympathiser Jeremy Corbyn to power? If the Government rightly begins to believe as a result that it, not the DUP, has the upper hand, would the pressure not begin to mount on Arlene Foster, as her supporters worried that she was overplaying her hand and so risked throwing away the greatest bargaining chip presented to any small party in recent memory?
Is it also not possible for the Government to start stating, repeatedly and unambiguously, that the Labour Party can constructively participate in the Brexit process, but that if it does not do so, it is sabotaging it and so subverting the will of the British people? Surely the Government can see that Labour’s simultaneous appeal to both young, metropolitan Remainers and older Brexiteers in the north of the country leaves it in a position of weakness, not strength? Just what is Labour’s real position on Brexit? It is a question that should be posed time and again, for the answer will reveal the Socialists either to be wreckers, or betrayers of many of those who have just voted for them.
And on the Lords, Downing Street yesterday spent time fretting about whether the so-called Salisbury Convention might apply to whatever government or deal does eventually emerge. This convention states that the Lords will not block legislation that a government has put in its manifesto. Can No 10 not point out that if the Upper House eventually chooses to frustrate laws introduced to effect a democratic decision with the largest popular mandate in British history – on the very pretext that those laws do not somehow have a popular mandate – then peers are signing their own constitutional death warrant?
On all these things and more, the Government can choose to see difficulty and stare, paralysed, into the headlights. Or it can see the opportunities, and act.