Who’s in charge of Britain today? The terrifying answer is nobody.
WHO runs Britain? Who is actually responsible for the governance of our nation this morning?
It isn’t the Prime Minister. Mrs May holds that title, but has relinquished any grip on the office. The only meaningful decision left for her now is the announcement of the date of her departure from Downing Street.
It’s not the Cabinet. As the Huawei debacle has revealed, their focus is no longer on running the Government but jostling for the premiership. The views of the voters of Britain are now secondary to the views of the 120,000 members of the Tory Party who will be eligible to vote in the upcoming leadership election.
When Ministers’ thoughts do turn to the wider political world, they no longer relate to the agenda of their own administration. ‘I was speaking to a senior Government adviser,’ a Brexit Party official told me last week, ‘and he said, “Well, we haven’t got any choice now. We’re all just
going to have to vote for your lot in the European elections, aren’t we?” ’
And then there is Parliament. Last Tuesday, MPs played host to an historic event. The 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg addressed them over her concerns about global warming.
In response, the British political class rose in fawning, toe-curling acclamation. Michael Gove called her ‘the voice of our conscience’. Ed Miliband said: ‘Her message that politics isn’t doing nearly enough is right and we all need to step up’ – then tweeted a photo with her.
The politicians didn’t seem to be aware they were venerating their own failure. What Thunberg had actually said to them was: ‘You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to.’
She added: ‘We have not taken to the streets for you to take selfies with us, and tell us that you really admire what we do.’ At which point they posted their photos, and told her how much they admired her.
The incompetence of our politicians is only matched by their selfregarding conceit. A conceit finally shattered on Wednesday by a priest called Father Martin Magill.
‘I commend our political leaders for standing together in Creggan on Good Friday,’ he said as he addressed the mourners at Lyra McKee’s funeral in Belfast.
‘I am, however, left with a question. Why in God’s name does it take the death of a 29-year-old-woman, with her whole life in front of her, to get to this point?’ As the congregation gave him a standing ovation, Theresa May and the other senior MPs present were left with no option but to rise and join the applause – applause that again endorsed their own failure. A failure that had resulted in the casual murder of a young journalist on the streets of the United Kingdom.
We are not witnessing just a political collapse, but a psychological one. Utterly incapable of addressing the major issues, our politicians are constructing an alternate universe. One i n which another Prime Minister, another Cabinet and another Parliament somehow shoulder the blame for their own abject inability to govern.
Iti snow a month since MPs voted to seize control of the B rex it process. On the night of the vote that enabled them to do so, Minister Richard Harrington resigned saying the Government was ‘playing roulette’ with the lives and livelihoods of Britons.
Now it is the entire political
establishment playing roulette. Having connived t o overturn centuries of parliamentary precedent, what do our MPs have to show for it?
Nothing, except a series of ‘indicative votes’ that only serve to indicate they do not have the first clue how to solve the Brexit crisis.
And so the self- indulgent displacement activity continues. Last week a new group – the More United MP Network – was formed. ‘We’re sick of urgent issues being ignored in favour of Brexit,’ was the headline accompanying its launch. Sorry, but who actually gets paid to highlight and deal with these issues?
Who has responsibility for ensuring Brexit is implemented? Not Father Magill, not Greta Thunberg, but the 650 MPs who we elect to act as our legislature.
And yet it as if the political stasis engulfing the nation is nothing to do with them.
Like the crowd in the Life Of Brian, they have relinquished all accountability for their actions.
‘The politicians must do something!’ the people demand. ‘You’re right. The politicians must do something,’ our politicians chant back.
This situation is not sustainable. The vacuum that has been created as MPs of all parties flounder around, trying to get to grips with the repudiation of the political status quo, is already starting to be filled.
Its most benign manifestation is the misguided but largely goodnatured protests of the environmentalists who brought Central London to a standstill over the Easter holiday. Its worst is the shadowy, balaclava- clad figures who stalked the streets of Derry with murder in their hearts.
This weekend our politicians are on notice. If they are unwilling or unable to govern us, there are others who will.