The Guardian view on Brexit divisions: a week that reset the dial
This week British politics has been convulsed in ways for which there are few modern comparisons. So dramatic and polarising have these events been that an effort of will is required even to recall the political assumptions that applied before the supreme court changed everything on Tuesday. That effort is nevertheless necessary, because it helps to clarify what has happened and to understand its significance.
Until Lady Hale delivered the supreme court’s unanimous demolition of Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament, the prime minister had been acting with exceptional autonomy over Brexit. He was midway through – or so he thought – the enactment of a strategy involving three things. First, he played Russian roulette with the European Union over the Irish backstop in the hope of getting a changed deal. Second, he tried to normalise the idea of Britain leaving with no deal. And, third, he launched an unofficial general election campaign. Parliament’s role was intended to be marginal until the last moment. The goal of this strategy – call it Plan A – was an 11th-hour deal that would compel hardline leavers and enough pragmatic MPs to back it for Britain to exit on 31 October.
The supreme court blew two holes in that plan. First, it explicitly put parliament – where Mr Johnson has no majority on Brexit or anything else – back at the centre of the argument for the next five weeks. Second, it did huge damage to Mr Johnson’s credibility as a responsible prime minister. By finding that he had behaved unlawfully and that there was no good reason for his prorogation request to the Queen, the court challenged not just the strategy but the man himself.
Mr Johnson’s response spurned the advice of Edmund Burke that “magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom”. Instead, he offered defiance. On Wednesday, summoned back from New York, he abandoned any pretence of respect for the courts, parliament or his Brexit opponents. His speech to MPs might in theory have been an opportunity to concede with grace that he could no longer pursue his Brexit strategy without parliament’s consent. Instead he took the fight to his opponents in one of the most testosterone-fuelled and intemperate performances ever by a British prime minister. This was a major change of approach. If Mr Johnson had seriously intended to get a deal through the House of Commons, he needed to lay the ground. He had to show EU leaders he was serious. He had to act in ways that would give confidence to opposition MPs to support his deal. Down the track, as Conservative leader, he needed to avoid pushing moderate voters into the arms of his opponents in marginal seats. The refusal to accept the court ruling and Wednesday’s angry insults made all these tasks harder. This was therefore a deliberate decision, made in Downing Street, to polarise not compromise in order to deliver Brexit. Call this Plan B.
The consequences for British politics are big. Plan B increases the likelihood that, if Mr Johnson remains in office, he will go even further rogue and take Britain out of Europe with no deal in defiance of MPs and the law. For that reason, it increases pressure on pro-EU MPs to cooperate wisely if they are to prevent no deal and solve the Brexit crisis. Finally, it makes it more likely that the Tory pitch in an early general election will focus on winning leave voters, especially in Labour seats, not on retaining remain voters in seats where the Liberal Democrats or the SNP are the main challengers.
This is a significant change of direction. Many who attend the Tory conference next week will not relish the spending commitments that will surely be needed if the Tories are to capture and retain the working-class electorate on whom they are now, perforce, increasingly focused. The Tories will cheer Mr Johnson to the rafters in Manchester. They always do. But he has been forced, in his arrogance and his belligerence, to take them in a direction they may not want in the long term and which may even wreck them, especially if the opposition parties keep their heads and act wisely.