Before Christmas I thought a General Election was the last place we would end up – but the odds have shortened.
It still not a certainty; after all none of the parties are ready, none have a clue what our manifestos might say about Brexit, and MPs with majorities of 5,000 or less will feel distinctly nervous.
But opting for an election and falling into one by accident are two different things, and it is the accident of which we should be wary. With relentless determination, Parliament continues to reject pretty well every opportunity to resolve the current Brexit impasse.
The deal on offer, with all its imperfections, and with the Attorney General’s qualified advice, is still the best way of safely landing this spluttering political aircraft. It permits us to leave, to negotiate our trading arrangement (a much greater task than the withdrawal agreement) and satisfy the frustrations of the majority of people who voted to leave back in 2016. Unless we can agree a way forward here, we can hardly expect the EU to endorse one there. And if we can’t complete this deal our ability to govern, with or without the DUP, is at risk. And with that comes our sudden descent into election territory.
Soon after last night’s vote – at which the last defeat of 230 was reduced by a disappointing margin to 149 – I found myself shut in a tiny, airless office somewhere below the chamber, drinking a warm white wine out of a plastic cup with an unlikely cast of Brexit players: Steve Baker from the ERG, Damian Green, Nicky Morgan, Iain Duncan Smith, Nigel Dodds of the DUP, Kit Malthouse, and Jacob Rees-Mogg on the phone. It was like the opening scenes of the Dirty Dozen, where a bunch of misfits and rogues were brought together and honed into a slick fighting unit in the real-life cause of ‘Project Amnesty’. It was dubbed a suicide mission at the time...
Under the guidance of Kit, we resurrected the Malthouse Compromise, warmly referenced by the PM just a few weeks ago: our plan to show colleagues, the government and Brussels that there is a formula that this disparate group can unite around. The plan would delay our departure from the 29 March until 23 May. It would facilitates the prospect of doing a deal. Assuming we leave by agreement on 23 May it extends our transition period until 31 Dec 2021, until which we honour our financial and legal obligations.
In short, it lands Brexit (but not at any cost), it honours the referendum outcome, it respects the concerns of remainers, and it enables the government to carry being the government.
Some say the idea simply enhances the prospect of a no-deal Brexit in too short a timescale. That is possible, but then all of the proposals, including the Prime Minister’s existing deal, carry that risk. We just think that our idea more carefully manages that risk given that last night’s result shows the current plans still look a long way off getting through the Commons.
Perhaps most confusingly of all is the fact that recent polls put the Conservatives ten points ahead of Labour. How can this be, and indeed does it actually mean anything at all?
My guess (and it is no more than that) is that polling is not exclusively a reflection of Brexit but a whole load of other stuff, including anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. There is not the same obsession with Brexit in the real world as there is in the cauldron of Westminster – it may be important, but it is boring and complex and an easy topic to mute. And so that poll lead? It could evaporate in an instant, just as it did back in 2017. An election into which we fall, brought about by indulgence and incompetence, is hardly a springboard to get the voting juices flowing.
People still say that Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable, just as they did last time round, but beware – a Brexit election will be a boiling pot of discontent and anger, a by-election on a grander scale, with rafts of candidates representing every shade of the Brexit rainbow. 32% could be enough to crown a new PM, perhaps even a Marxist one.
I sometimes think that some MPs prefer fighting to winning. It’s a sport, played out in grand and historic surroundings, to an enthralled and attentive – yet unrepresentative – audience of political devotees. There is room for that of course but not now, not unless we show we can resolve the greatest challenge of our time.
Simon Hart is the Conservative MP for Camarthen West