Coverage of the result of the Peterborough By-Election actually felt different. Maybe even a little odd. But perhaps prescient of the direction our Politics is now going – a place where there is no control or script and it all seems to be in the hands of the gods.
Within hours of this blog being published, the gurus of political interpretation will have of course broken the whole thing up and began spinning it into many different, but for them, primarily self-serving ways. However, the reality will nonetheless remain underneath it all that Politics in this Country has changed and things are never going to be the same again.
Yet the politicians refuse to see it.
They are still looking at everything coming at them through the lens of the old politics – and yes, I’m even including the Brexit Party as being one of them in this instance too.
To perhaps understand this a little better, it is important to consider the Peterborough result.
Yes, the Labour Candidate was Elected. But the Brexit Party Candidate wasn’t far behind them and it would be foolish to frame the Conservative Candidate’s 3rd place as being outside of the same room.
Somewhere, probably in London today, different conversations will be taking place around the realities of what can be gleaned from the way the vote was split.
Some of this thinking will simply be deluded. Some of it will be based on outright fear. But what will be common among all of it will be the view that the problem is outside of the Politicians hands, outside of their Party’s control and that it will be something or someone else who is getting it all wrong.
With the Peterborough result for these three Political Parties and the wider Westminster Polls being dispersed between them and the Liberal Democrats as they are, you can bet that the debate will end up for many of them concluding that First Past The Post is now redundant and should be replaced by some other form of electoral system that will benefit the de facto righteousness of their position – such as PR.
What they fail to observe, or deliberately overlook and therefore do not accept, is the reason that none of them – even with Brexit involved – is offering the leadership, vision and inspiration that is necessary to formulate the public policy that the People now want and is required of our Politicians and their Parties not just for Brexit, but as we step off into a world based on A New Politics beyond.
Playing around with the Electoral System will only benefit the Political Parties and the Politicians themselves.
It will sure up, consolidate and in some cases expand their presence and position.
But the upshot is that the opportunity to provide the kind of decisiveness and defining leadership that we now need in British Politics more than ever, will simply be lost.
Brexit and the future of this Country requires good leadership and the decisiveness that goes with it by the truckload. Without it the mess we are now in is set to get a whole lot worse.
What Politicians should understand from the results and polling as they are, is that no Political Party is currently capable of commanding a working majority in Parliament.
Without a working majority, neither Brexit nor anything substantial in terms of the changes to and creation of new Policy that our People now need is going to be addressed in any meaningful and lasting way. That simply has to change.
The biggest risk to Brexit and to our Democracy – make no mistake that the two are now intricately linked – is that the new Conservative Leadership will continue onwards and go all out to enable a No Deal Exit from the EU by 31st of October – just so the Conservative Party can claim that they have achieved and can take ownership of that result.
If the current Parliamentary dynamic doesn’t stop them before they do so, there is a storm cloud awaiting them on the other side. Because it is there that the Remain majority in Parliament – if it has not been changed – will have an incredibly hard stick to beat the Government with, and the ability to make serious hay from the sunshine that they will see pouring over them from the inevitable problems that will follow a No Deal Brexit that has been executed in this specific way.
Taking the UK back into the EU on the turnaround of a sixpence is not something that any Political Party with designs or long term aspirations on being the natural party of government is going to want to do. Especially when the straightjacket that the UK will have no choice but to accept as part of a completely one-way and loaded bargain will inevitably become poison for whoever was to blame – irrespective of the Politicians who were actually involved.
The only way out of this problem is to recognise Party boundaries and tribal loyalties as the ties that bind all of todays MPs to the politics of old. The old politics that the public are telling them is not only flawed but is fundamentally wrong.
Our Politicians must come together to deliver on the issues. And the issue which is the doorway to solving all other issues is Brexit – whether our Politicians like that fact or not.
The People Voted for the UK to Leave the EU without any deal or ties. Giving us anything less will simply be wrong. This includes coming out of the EU and then taking us immediately back in, whilst MPs then sell their ineptitude and lacklustre attempts at managing the Process as evidence that the whole thing was wrong.
The only Political Parties that have the ability to coagulate around the fact, reality and message that a full and proper Brexit must happen are the Brexit Party and the Conservative Party. And it is within the Conservative Party where the real struggle is still taking place, as it has been all along.
The new Conservative Prime Minister must accept and then immediately act on the fact that without a General Election and securing the Brexit MP Majority that it will give them if they ask for Public support in the right way, the future is effectively lost.
To realise and achieve the alternative – which is a real and permanent Brexit, there is no option for the next Conservative Party Leadership other than to swallow their pride for the greater good and work with the Brexit Party to establish a ‘Grand Brexit Coalition’.
Working together these Political Parties can provide that Brexit Majority and then ensure that our Brexit and the great future that follows it will for all of us be secure.
If they fail to do so, the future is very bleak. It is one that revolves around Corbyn and his Marxist tentacles reaching out and destroying everything we value from No.10.
The cost to everyone in this Country from allowing this to happen will go way beyond the destruction of the Conservative Party. It will simply be too high.
Isn’t it time the Conservative Leadership put the requirements of real Leadership first and did whatever necessary to get the job done?
image thanks to unknown
Adam Tugwell 