William HAGUE
Be honest: despite the rise of Nigel Farage, it may not be possible to take us out of the EU by October 31
Seasoned politicians have always been able to put a positive gloss on any election result, however grim. Over the past 30 years, I have appeared on countless news programmes the morning after local or European elections to say it wasn’t as bad as expected, that the turnout was unusually low, that the weather was unfortunate or that everything would be fine when the economy improved.
But if you are, like me, in the tiny minority who actually voted Conservative last week, there is no positive interpretation available for the result now in. It is by far the party’s worst-ever electoral performance. It shows that the country is deeply and perhaps evenly polarised. And it serves a final written notice on the current party system, which is now in imminent danger of collapse.
Some might think that the almost equal drubbing for the Labour Party is a cause for minor consolation or comfort. Indeed, their appalling result will have come as even more of a shock to them for not being fully anticipated. If you’re Labour and you wake up to find you have a fifth of the vote in Rotherham and have lost Islington to the Lib Dems, you
will be very worried indeed. The consequence of this, however, is likely to be that Labour will change its policy in a way that makes the job of an incoming Tory prime minister still harder, by embracing unambiguously the concept of another EU referendum.
Before the results, Tories were in any case heading for a harder line on carrying out Brexit, come what may. After the results, it is Labour policy that will feel the biggest impact and change most decisively. For them, “the people have decided” will now become “let the people decide”. While Jeremy Corbyn refused to concede this immediately, a new and clearer position from Labour is probably on its way.
This means that the parliamentary deadlock facing the new Conservative leader will be even worse than the situation that ended the premiership of Theresa May, and that a second referendum will be teetering on the edge of majority support among MPS. Yet the pressure on the leadership candidates, with Nigel Farage looming over them, will be to make categoric commitments and unbreakable vows. If they are not careful, they are going to be swept up in the tidal wave of a rampaging Brexit Party and dashed against the sharp rocks of a hostile House of Commons.
A wise leadership candidate will therefore leave him or herself some space for manoeuvre – not about whether they will achieve Brexit, but about how exactly they will do that.
It is a good rule on all subjects for a putative leader not to box themselves in before they’ve even started, despite the procession of people and endless questions asking for certainty.
My own time as party leader was hard enough, but would have been completely impossible had I given in to requests that ranged from guaranteed jobs for individual MPS to favouring certain road projects to adopting policies that would have split my party down the middle. The most common word spoken by someone aspiring to be prime minister should be “no”.
Of course, it is even more difficult in these circumstances, and in an age of declining trust, to resist making statements that remove all doubt. But mark my words, leadership candidates, if you say things like “We will leave the EU on October 31 in any circumstances”, or “I will quit if we haven’t left on November 1”, or “We will have a no-deal Brexit unless the Irish backstop is removed”, you are going – if elected – to regret it very bitterly indeed.
There is a better alternative to giving people false certainty, and that is to give them honesty. When Churchill took over in 1940, he didn’t say we would win the war in a few months. He said he could only offer “blood, toil, sweat and tears”. One of the undoubted mistakes made by Mrs May was to insist that we would definitely be leaving the EU on March 29, when it was not actually in her power to guarantee that. A leader is best advised to think carefully about making a promise they can keep, but to dismiss the idea of making one they cannot.
The honest truth now is that whoever is chosen as Conservative leader in late July will be quite lucky to be able to do anything at all. Unlike John Major, Gordon Brown or Theresa May herself when they took over part-way through a parliament, they will have been elected leader of a minority government and must reckon on facing an immediate vote of confidence in the Commons. If
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they manage to upset just three MPS on their own side irretrievably while being elected, the country will have the novel experience of a general election campaign in August. From day one, the new prime minister will have the most tenuous grip on office in modern times.
The next instalment of honesty would be to admit that a departure from the EU on October 31 is no more guaranteed than it was on March 29. There might be a way to negotiate a changed declaration about future relations with the EU and then to pass the Withdrawal Agreement in time, but only if the new leader is extraordinarily skilful. Alternatively, it is possible that a prime minister adamant that we leave anyway, without a deal, could get their way. The Institute for Government has pointed out in recent days that most of the procedures used to block Mrs May’s deal could not be deployed against a no-deal exit.
Yet it still requires heroic assumptions to think it possible to get away with that while resisting all no-confidence votes and parliamentary innovations – and all the more so to be sure of doing so by a certain date. If Labour moves decisively towards favouring a second referendum, it will become extremely difficult to deliver any form of Brexit without, one way or another, going back to the electorate.
So my advice to the rapidly expanding field of aspirant Tory leaders is: recognise the absence of certainty and go for honesty. Do explain your vision for the country, and what form of Brexit you want to see. But don’t pretend you will have the power to do everything you wish. In a political system in deep trouble for its failure to deliver, don’t set yourself up to be the next example of it.