UKIP HEADING FOR POLITICAL OBLIVION
THE disgraceful way in which the EU bully-boys treated the Prime Minister at the Salzburg summit last week will have won her some sympathy from her Tory Brexit critics – but that sympathy will not morph into support for her Chequers proposals.
But it does signal a far more belligerent approach towards the stubborn and grasping EU negotiators. Dominic Raab, the splendidly outspoken Brexit Secretary, has served notice that Britain will not be dictated to by Brussels.
In short, the deplorable behaviour of the EU leaders, which was insulting to the UK as well as the Prime Minister, may well have been a blessing – in that the UK is already serving notice that it will not tolerate any more high-handedness from Brussels and metaphorically, at least, start to thump the table more robustly, as the intensity of the negotiations steps up in their final stages.
A lot, of course, depends on the response the Prime Minister receives at the Tories’ forthcoming conference in Birmingham.
I suspect it will be a lot warmer towards her than most of the Conservative anti-Brexiteers would have hoped. That should spur the Prime Minister on to demonstrate forcibly to Brussels that they cannot run rings round her or the UK. Let us hope so.
■ Labour have every right to demand an early snap general election this autumn over the Brexit debacle, but I suspect it will fall on deaf ears.
Do they really believe they will persuade Theresa May to repeat the same grave error of judgement as last year?
The Prime Minister has now learnt her lesson. And Raab has firmly rejected the idea of an early election.
However, it is more refreshing to see Labour at last attacking the party’s natural enemy – certainly at the start of its conference in Liverpool – than to see them tearing themselves to bits.
The country needs a battling opposition, rather than one that is inward-looking and obsessed with self-harm.
■ The withering description by David Cameron of Ukip as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly” seemed to some people a little harsh at the time. No doubt the then PM was seriously worried about the extent to which Ukip would attract into its ranks otherwise potential Tory voters.
After all, in those days, Ukip represented the views of what turned out to be the majority of voters at the Brexit referendum. In fact, Ukip played some part in getting the referendum to happen at all.
But since then, when the party appeared to be a useful and serious addition to the British political scene, Ukip has degenerated into a ragtag and bobtail outfit, sliding dangerously towards the extreme right of British politics. If this continues, it will gain a reputation like that of the National Front and the English Defence League.
Ukip has had a succession of ineffectual or useless leaders since the days of Nigel Farage. But even he, with his considerable influence, seems unable to halt the party’s slide into oblivion.
I suspect that sooner rather than later, it will be a case of “thanks for the memory”.
■ Politicians and their speechwriters suffer sleepless nights and spend hours of agonising, brainwracking thinking up startling sound bytes to wow their audiences with – and more importantly, to find their way into the headlines of the following day’s newspapers.
So Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable and his team were patting themselves on the back when they thought up “erotic spasm”, which they thought was a marvellously derogatory description of Brexit.
But alas, as we all know, poor old Vince, never a barrel of laughs, failed to get his tongue and his larynx around the phrase and, he spat out something which sounded like “exotic sprezm”.
Former Labour leader Ed Miliband dropped an equally embarrassing clanger at his party conference a few years back. He memorised his speech and then forgot entirely to include the passage about the economy and the deficit, by far the most important issue of the day. He was so mortified that he locked himself in his hotel room for several hours, weeping no doubt.
As one Labour MP said at the time: “What a plonker”.
Long live the political gaffe. They pinprick the pompous and give us all a good chuckle.