14th October 2022
Well.
— Ed Miliband (@Ed_Miliband) October 14, 2022
The word “chaos” – like “crisis” – can be overused in politics.
But on some days the word is apt.
A Chancellor of the Exchequer flew back after cutting short his meetings with the IMF in Washington only to be summarily sacked, and the government performed yet another U-turn on its “growth” mini-budget with what was a mini-press conference.
So much for policy instability – but it is the politics that has gone beyond mere instability into chaos.
The authority of the current Prime Minister within the governing party has simply collapsed.
They are simply not turning up any more:
Someone on the Zoom call says: "Not even a third of the Parliamentary Party has bothered to log in." https://t.co/QQUM4pMcgo
— Aubrey Allegretti (@breeallegretti) October 14, 2022
The lack of authority is related to humiliation in the markets:
What we've seen just now is a humiliation for Truss and govt but more than anything else it is a humbling day for Britain. Take out the personalities, and the UK's govt has been forced to change its economic policy and its finance minister by the markets. It will be remembered.
— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) October 14, 2022
There have been two other occasions in recent history where a British government has come off worse with the markets. In 1976 and 1992. On both occasions, the incumbent government went on to severe defeat- and the folk memory of both lingered long with the electorate.
— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) October 14, 2022
Perhaps this is the reason “Brexit” was named after “Grexit”.
These are not normal times, of course, but it is hard to see how the current Prime Minister can survive much longer in office – and even if she does, her authority is extinguished.
And when the Prime Minister’s power is low – let alone non-existent – then intense political instability will result until and unless another Prime Minister with authority can be put in place.
The centre cannot hold.
*
Stepping back, we must remember that the office of Prime Minister has little formal power.
The name of the office barely features in the statute book – and for a good part of its history, the office had no statutory recognition at all.
The power of the office rests on two bases.
The first is the power that derives from the Royal Prerogative and other means of non-legislative power.
The Prime Minister can, in practice, hire and fire ministers, (again) call general elections, confer honours, set the policy agenda and chair the cabinet and cabinet committees.
But this executive power rests on the confidence of the Prime Minister’s politcal allies.
And once that respect is gone, it is gone.
The second power is that which comes from effective control of the legislature, especially in respect of matters on which there is a general election mandate.
Command of the House of Commons means control of the Finance Bills, and thereby mastery of revenue and taxation; and a general election mandate for a policy means that the House of Lords cannot needlessly delay or block the relevant legislation.
A Prime Minister with a substantial majority won at a general election has the greatest prize that the constitution of the United Kingdom can bestow.
And on paper, the current prime Minister has a parliamentary majority of about seventy.
But, as this blog recently averred, we now have, in political reality, a hung parliament.
The Prime Minister cannot even be confident that she could get a Finance Bill through the House of Commons unscathed, let alone any other contentious legislation.
And so, this Prime Minister has no authority in government and no control of Parliament.
It is only because the last few years have seen many other politically odd things that one can think that the current Prime Minister can survive another week.
*
The striking thing about this political predicament is that it is entirely self-inflicted.
There was no objective reason – no requirement – for that mini-budget before the conference season.
And there was no good reason for the government to “press on” when it became obvious it had lost the confidence of the markets.
The reason they did so is not ideology – for as this blog contended not long ago, many successful politicians have been guided by ideology.
The problem with current Prime Minister is not that she has an ideology but that she seems to have nothing else.
One suspects that even now she has no sense of what actually she has got wrong: about why reality is not according to her political vision.
And so we have politicians who idolise “free markets” being destroyed one-by-one by the market.
It is quite a spectacle.
*
We now get to see how our constitutional arrangements deal with yet another Prime Minister being forced from office between general elections.
It is not, of course, unusual for a Prime Minister to either take office or leave office between general elections.
As this blog has said many times, every Prime Minister since 1974 has either taken office or left office between general elections.
The unusual thing is now it is happening frequently, and we are now on our fourth Prime Minister since 2016.
The cause of this political instability is not that the governing party cannot obtain a majority – it has had a working majority between 2015-2017 and from 2019 onwards.
There is a deeper problem in the politics of the United Kingdom which means that even a governing party with nominal majorities is being relentlessly wrecked.
Brace, brace.
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For the record, there is no reason why a weak PM should lead to instability except custom/culture. There are plenty of countries where the PM is always much weaker than the UK PM, but which still have stable governments. They simply take decisions in cabinet by consensus/majority vote, without any one person being able to force their will through. That’s a perfectly sensible way to run a country, it’s just not what UK politicians are used to. (See also: coalitions.)
I see that Wiktionary now includes the term “Trussian”, meaning pertaining to Prime Minister Truss. Contrast that to Prussian virtues (viz. Wikipedia entry) which are identified primarily as honesty, frugality, punctuality, order and diligence. Trussian and Prussian qualities seem quite the opposite.
So what are the Trussian qualities? I propose lack of political awareness, lack of diligence, stubborn belief in ideology, and chaotic reversal of policy decisions. What more can we add?
It’s unfortunate the British people are saddled with this disastrous regime.
Lack of self-awareness, wooden and gauche, self-seeking for its own sake, conceit, littleness.
The Dunning-Kruger effect in an expensive frock, isn’t she?
The most depressing thing is that she’s got a cabinet full of equally compelling examples.
Perhaps she should have stuck to being a “style influencer”: having “nailed” Instagram seems to be about at the limit of her abilities (and says a lot about the person – the phrase “style over content” leaps unbidden to mind):
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-foreign-secretary-liz-truss-became-a-style-influencer-zb27x835v
The frequency of self-inflicted Tory predicaments makes me wonder if there is a malign influence at work
“makes me wonder if there is a malign influence at work”
Yes there is.
It’s called the Tory Party.
As this blog has said many times, every Prime Minister since 1974 has either taken office or left office between general elections.
1997?
Major took office between general elections in 1990/Blair left office between general elections in 2007.
Please check before commenting.
“And so we have politicians who idolise “free markets” being destroyed one-by-one by the market.”
Is it possible to overdose on Schadenfreude?
If it is, I’m at real risk.
I can just see it: any day now, she’ll start including the markets in the Anti-Growth coalition.
She’ll probably be doing it while sitting in a cardboard box under a flyover, but old habits die hard for zealots…
Is there anyone who would be selected on a Single Transferable Vote of MPs as a whole? Conservatives would dominate the present Parliament but only if they agree among themselves,
Truss will go, there will be a contest between Hunt and Sunak, which Hunt will win because he has not been part of the current government and then we will have had five chancellors in six months!
If Truss is forced out in the next week will she carry on as lame duck or will Coffey take over as caretaker? Can things get any worse than that?
Well. Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss. We have already had a year of two monarchs, two prime ministers, and four chancellors. What next?
Apart from the brief interim chancellorship of various Lord Chief Justices (a strange convention that we don’t seem to do any longer) and the early deaths of McLeod and Canning, we’ve never seen the likes of Zahawi and now Kwarteng’s very brief tenures.
“Well. Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss. We have already had a year of… two prime ministers, and four chancellors. What next?”
Who knew? The senior Tory party is apparently a work experience scheme, giving lots of boys and girls the opportunity to play at important, grown-up jobs.
For a bit…
The instability since 2015 is down to the Brexit vote and, in particular, the fact that within the majority of 52% (and within the Conservative Parliamentary Party) there have been competing versions of what Brexit should be and, furthermore, that those behind the version we ended up with do not accept its logical consequences and trade-offs, particularly those embodied in the NI Protocol. It is notable that Truss blew up her Government up without even facing that, which I thought would be her undoing.
I totally agree. The manner of Brexit has done, and is doing, untold damage, making the prejudiced more prejudiced, the big-headed more big-headed, and now the empty-headed a black-hole crater.
And then you see Farage, pettily sniping from the sidelines that he hates what the Tory party has become – despite (in common with others of his ilk) being the de facto creator of the party in its current incarnation.
Typical of The Right, I suppose – everything is always somebody else’s fault: in addition to hearing it from him, we heard it from Johnson over Covid; and we’ve heard it more recently from Kwarteng and Truss over this latest debacle.
Strange language for “the party of personal responsibility…”
The manner of Brexit has also led directly to the attempts at government-by-magical-thinking which David outlined in his 28th September “Fantasy and Policy” post. The Brexit promised by the Leave campaign and the Johnsonists was always a sparkly-rainbow-unicorns undeliverable fantasy. The result has been that – initially in relation to Brexit but now, seemingly, infecting every aspect of our government – hard-headed, expert realists (be they MPs or civil servants) who attempt to explain that “that simply isn’t going to work, Prime Minister” are sidelined, ousted from the Party or sacked. We are left with a bunch of utter fantasists who think that hand-waving and declaiming slogans is all that is required to solve intractable problems – until, that is, they run slap bang into a brick wall in the form of the EU, a global pandemic virus, the financial markets, etc, and discover that reality is immune to their bullsh*t.
“government-by-magical-thinking” and “utter fantasists who think that hand-waving and declaiming slogans is all that is required to solve intractable problems”
As look to the US and Donald Trump de-classifying documents by thinking so.
Am looking forward to the Abracadra Act 2022.
This is a Suez type moment.
The Uk is forced to look at itself in the proverbial mirror and accept a few home truths about itself.
There is no place to hide.
“The centre cannot hold”. Au contraire. Despite T. S. Eliot, elections are largely won and lost by parties who move too far away from the centre ground where most of the electorate are comfortable. Recent research (published in FT) indicated that Truss and Kwarteng’s fiscal “event” was way further “right” than the Tory “right” and one of the reasons that it lost credibility or support by the market. Ironic given the Unchained gang’s worship of the market which has hung them out to dry. It is by no means over.
I don’t think DAG meant the political centre. I read it as being the centre of power (the PM) that cannot hold.
Indeed.
Not T S Eliot, Y B Yeats, more biting!
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Apologies. Of course it is WBY. I have a couple of juvenilia drawings of his of Sligo cottage interiors. Would they were by his brother Jack.
Indeed. Also go back a hundred years to Ozymandias.
https://twitter.com/MattCartoonist/status/1580967981617541120/photo/1
Less Singapore on Thames,ore, London on Tiber (on a bad year).
Correction: Who don’t move too far away from the centre
About the most interesting thing arising from Truss’s dreadful “press conference” on Friday afternoon was her assertion that low growth she wants to change had originated after the 2008 crash. She was quite right about that. The economy was just beginning to grow after the lengthy post crash recession. Then we had the 2010 General Election. The economic buzz word at the time was “structural deficit” which the Tories were determined to eliminate. So they imposed austerity, killing off the recovery. We’ve been bumping along with low growth and stagnant wages ever since. Brexit hasn’t helped, quite the reverse.
Imagine how Truss will feel when she finds out which political party caused this period of low growth?
‘There is a deeper problem in the politics of the United Kingdom which means that even a governing party with nominal majorities is being relentlessly wrecked’.
Too true and such that whoever gets in will have an impossible job.
IMHO we have several strands to this problem. One is a faction that hankers for a pre 1910 Britain with forelock tugging ostlers, bobbing tweeny maids, well downtrodden workers and plenty of coal and steam. Amply assisted by American heiresses and their money.
We still have echoes of why isn’t British business more like American business. For very good economic reasons is why not. From whence we got the Brexit we don’t know what to do with.
Then there is the structure of Parliament. Our prime minister still has roots as a mini monarch in charge of a Ruritanian mini monarchy. Our lower MPs are nice enough but expensive and ineffective social workers. Higher up the dunghill the system seems designed to be opaque, obsessed with secrecy and designed to provide regular scandals of omission, neglect and worse.
Then there is The Law. Supposedly our proud edifice of freedom and purity. But seems to be an impossible muddle of conflicting duties and un-enforcable constraints and slow – so slow. Not merely through lack of money, it needs a sharp sword of the Gordian knot kind and Justice a bit rougher and a lot quicker.
Now poor Ms Truss is in a tight fix. Particularly with house prices – already obscenely high and ripe for a useful expansion in housebuilding and reduction in price. Now she dare not touch that delicate edifice and if she did she will have the NT and the RSPB on her back. To say nothing of folk who glue themselves anywhere with impunity – protected by the law.
Rather too much freedom and not enough duty on all sides – starting at the top. The place is impossible to run.
Hear, hear, Jim!
WB Yeats.
Restricting freedom to make the country governance? That sounds rather sinister. Politicians must have the freedom to pass the legislation they were elected for.
The thing is this country isn’t ungovernable in normal circumstances. It’s the actions of the current government that have made it so. Brexit and culture wars have deeply divided public opinion, the latter division quite deliberately encouraged. Johnson’s lack of attention to detail and cronyism has encouraged corruption on an epic scale. No one seems accountable.
Now we have an acolyte of libertarian economic theory in charge, nominally at least, of the country. Unthinkingly causing chaos in financial markets and creating significant and very real problems for the population. A zombie parliament.
All this would be reset by an immediate General Election. No other radical reform is required.
Does the PM admire Margaret “The lady’s not for turning” Thatcher? Because she’s in danger of being named Lathe Truss at this rate.
It seems we are entirely dependent on what can be done in parliament to force a change in the current government.
There is a petition to “Call an immediate general election to end the chaos of the current government” which will be debated on 17th October 2022. Of course unless a large number of tory MPs own up to the mess they have created over so many years, then this will be voted down.
What other options do the opposition parties have? Is there for example the possibility for opposition parties to simply refuse to participate in any more parliamentary debates and committees? Would this cause a constitutional crisis where the only outcome is for the King to dissolve parliament? Just asking.
Fingers crossed and God help us all.
Interesting commentary.
On your last para – “There is a deeper problem in the politics of the United Kingdom which means that even a governing party with nominal majorities is being relentlessly wrecked.”
– I wonder (1) if you think it’s particular to the Tory party or if Labour might suffer similar if elected at the next GE; (2) how much – none/all/something in between – is due to Brexit?
As an American ignorant of UK politics, I wonder if the problem is that party members choose the leader. Corbin seems to have held onto Labour long after he had lost the confidence of the electorate. I wonder if forcing leader candidates to face the electorate before claiming the mantle of their own party would cure some pathologies. The U.S.’s version of this dynamic is the hold Evangelicals have had over the Republican Party for ~25 years, pulling it away from majority positions and forcing it to corrupt democratic mechanisms to win power.
More detail: “Party officials tend to overwhelmingly prefer moderate candidates over ideological ones, research has found. This holds true even in uncontested districts, suggesting that the preference runs deeper than electability considerations. To activists looking to push their parties further left or right, this can look like a conspiracy to block change. To parties, it is often intended to enforce internal unity and cohesion, as well as what is known in European politics as the “cordon sanitaire,” or an informal ban on extremists and demagogues. As primaries have shifted power from parties to the rank-and-file, these barriers have fallen away.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/23/world/europe/britain-truss-conservative.html
In Britain local constituency party members, not officials, select their parliamentary candidate. That can often favour radicals over moderates. Also, local party officials may be radicals themselves. They can deselect sitting moderate MPs, forcing a new selection process. This is particularly true for the Labour Party.
Party leaders in Britain aren’t regularly up for election, so whether elected by MPs or Party members once voted in can stay in charge long after their popularity declines with the wider public. Even losing a general election isn’t certain to end their leadership.
Corbyn did unexpectedly well in 2017, mainly because of a terrible campaign by Theresa May. But 2019 was essentially a rerun of the Brexit vote. Johnson campaigned on “getting brexit done”. So he got Tory supporters’ votes plus the votes of Brexit supporters of other parties. Labour didn’t stand a chance with Corbyn’s attempt to please both remain and leave voters.