The remain campaign’s political dilemma looks insoluble. Perhaps I am being overly pessimistic – gloom is my default state – but it is certainly formidable because it requires remainers to simultaneously support and oppose Jeremy Corbyn.
I can make the people who spell it out sound silly. I shouldn’t because some of the brightest and most committed men and women in the People’s Vote campaign are wrestling with the problem of how to break through in a first-past-the-post-system when a neo-Stalinist faction controls the opposition.
Here is their argument. A new Tory prime minister will be with us by July. I will assume the PM is a he and that he has conned Conservatives members, and perhaps himself, into believing that if he shouts a lot, the EU will abandon Ireland, and reopen the withdrawal agreement. It won’t or will make only cosmetic concessions. So what does he do?
He will want to call an election. Theresa May’s plan cannot get through the present Parliament. Indeed nothing can get through it. He may well decide that May’s is the hardest Brexit on offer, and put to the back of his mind the months he spent pretending she had betrayed the people’s will.
Perhaps, he muses, the old wine could be poured into new bottles and marketed as a fresh vintage, if he has a mandate of an election victory behind him. Equally, he could decide to go for a full Halloween crash out. I doubt he could do it by proroguing parliament and running down the clock. He would have no Commons backing, the markets would be going mad, and there would be protests on the streets. He would know that every job loss and business closure would be his fault, and suspect that as soon as the Commons reassembled it would treat him as the organiser of a coup d’état and throw him out.
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