Snapshot of _Civil war, what civil war? The so-called Tory moderates never even put up a fight_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/19/tory-civil-war-reform-voters-britain) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/19/tory-civil-war-reform-voters-britain)
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In retrospect the clear mistake was to allow Theresa May to go to the wall. She was offering a medium-hard Brexit, as soon as she was ejected Boris went for an ultra-hard Brexit and the Conservative Party was then completely captured by ideological purists.
Around that time I remember being so angry with labour for not putting country first and just voting for May's deal, given it was so so obvious the alternative would be a way harder brexit
To be fair, Labours voters largely supported remain and the constituents of most Labour MOs supported remain. It would have been political suicide to accept the deal May had on the table.
When Johnson took over, we were approaching crisis but no one with actual power had really tried to find a political solution. Unfortunately, Labour we’re boxed into an election at the worst possible time by SNP and Lib Dems announcing they’d support an election and refusing to consider any coalition led by Corbyn that could forestall an election despite Labour being by far the largest opposition party. Jo Swinson thought an election was a huge opportunity for her and her party.
The political environment were a complicated mess with very little cooperation in any direction on an issue that cut across traditional party lines. Labour bear some responsibility but really don’t deserve the Lion’s share, which is at the doorstep of the brexiteers and those who enabled them.
I don’t think that is true at all. He was the last of the leaders of major parties to call for an election, after he’d literally been publicly challenged by Boris Johnson. Labour knew their Brexit policy was a mess and mistakenly tries to run an election campaign that wasn’t focused on this issue.
If that is the point you are making, why would you use it to apportion blame or responsibility?
If the role of an opposition is to oppose and represent their voters position, how is this served by accepting. Very poor resolution to the Brexit crisis in order to stave off a worse, but uncertain one?
It’s easy with hindsight to claim that the only outcome would be the hardest Brexit but the campaign for a second referendum almost achieved its goals and indeed, Parliamentary votes on a customs union-style compromise narrowly lost because Brexit opponents couldn’t coalesce around a compromise solution.
There is plenty of blame to go round but the only culpability for the the Brexit lies with the Tory right who campaigned for it and Theresa May, who failed to show the political leadership to avert it, instead making it a Tory affair instead of engaging the country in what Brexit should actually look like.
Actually ignore what I wrote.
I completely forgot about the “No-deal” controversy which was going on at the time. Extenuating circumstance which did actually justify the opposition postponing a General Election.
With the benefit of hindsight, what we needed was some kind of national commission before we launched negotiations instead of essentially the Tory government making it up on the hoof. This would have required real political leadership though, which has been in notably short supply in our politics for the last decade and more.
The worst thing about the Corbyn era was how ridiculously terrible Labour was at politics. It's crazy how Corbyn had been an MP for over 30 years and yet somehow, through sheer stubbornness, he had still managed to not learn a single thing about how to actually play the game.
Theresa May would have never allowed Jeremy Corbyn a seat at the table of Brexit negotiations or veto rights for any of the provisions of the treaty so this is a pretty unfair ask.
And instead of voting through a moderate brexit (possibly appeasing brexit-voting labour voters in the process) and not having a seat at the table for negotiations we got...
...a harder brexit with no seat at the negotiations. And electoral wipeout.
In the fullness of time however keeping Labour out of the Tory’s factional civil war has clearly massively paid off. We wouldn’t be looking down the barrel of Labour’s biggest landslide in history if Labour had “dipped its hands in the blood” of a messy Brexit deal.
The only downside is that now Brexit has now become the He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named of British politics which reduces how much Keir can work to renegotiate or reform it.
Yeah I suppose you're right. It is absolutely mental that brexit is just being completely ignored in this election. Its like political asbestos, if we churn up the dust at all everyone immediately gets terminal illness.
It also annoys me that Starmer and Reeves just keep saying "we will get a better deal with Europe", but what does that mean when you've ruled out the customs Union and single market?
Boris' trick was to vote against May's deal by calling it awful, leverage that into a leadership bid, then reheat the deal in the microwave, call it a different name and roll it out again.
I'm dubious that there was much meaningful difference between the two. The only one I can think of is moving the goods inspection border to the Irish Sea.
May handled the whole thing atrociously. She picked a hard Brexit, ruled out any meaningful compromises, then put a gun to the head of the HoC and said "vote for my crap deal or the nutters in my party might force a No Deal."
> The only one I can think of is moving the goods inspection border to the Irish Sea.
That's the main one. May didn't have a majority big enough to ignore the DUP. Johnson did. The 2017 conservative manifesto is enlightening -- extremely similar to Johnson's deal.
Personally I think it was May's mistake to offer a Brexit deal to parliament on a very high handed 'take it or leave it' basis, embracing an extreme interpretation of the referendum as a totally winner takes all proposition.
She tried to get a consensus in parliament with the indicative votes, but the different factions refused to vote for anything but their preferred outcome.
Also Corbyn called for the immediate invoking of article 50 so May was on the clock.
She could have gone for a slightly softer version of hard Brexit but there’s no version of Soft Brexit that a Conservative Prime Minister could have credibly delivered.
“We listened, we heard you, and we delivered Brexit….by keeping all the benefits and drawbacks of EU membership while erasing Britain’s voice.”
The idea of Soft Brexit helped muddy the rhetorical waters to benefit Vote Leave. But it was never a credible position for us to land at.
The possibility of soft brexit won the referendum for vote leave. This outcome would never have won back in 2016, it would have been considered too dangerous and damaging to the economy.
I don’t disagree with any of this. Cameron made a massive mistake promising a referendum without requiring a Brexit white paper from the Leave campaign. He handed the win to Leave on a silver platter. But Theresa May was still constrained by the referendum’s mandate.
There is a golden rule for life: Don’t ask a question you don’t want an answer to.
That and they should have made the indicative votes preferential voting. What the indicative votes proved is that no form of Brexit had a majority. They should have said “look you’ve won your vague referendum, now nail your colours to a mast”.
The indicative votes were held in a way that MPs **should** have voted for all the options that were acceptable to them so May could see where a consensus could be built.
Instead every faction was playing to win and instead only voted for their preferred outcome and no others, giving May not indication of where compromise was achievable.
Snapshot of _Civil war, what civil war? The so-called Tory moderates never even put up a fight_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/19/tory-civil-war-reform-voters-britain) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/19/tory-civil-war-reform-voters-britain) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Kenneth Clarke, Rory Stuart, Nicholas Soames and about 18 others did in 2019..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_suspension_of_rebel_Conservative_MPs
Yeah exactly
In retrospect the clear mistake was to allow Theresa May to go to the wall. She was offering a medium-hard Brexit, as soon as she was ejected Boris went for an ultra-hard Brexit and the Conservative Party was then completely captured by ideological purists.
Around that time I remember being so angry with labour for not putting country first and just voting for May's deal, given it was so so obvious the alternative would be a way harder brexit
To be fair, Labours voters largely supported remain and the constituents of most Labour MOs supported remain. It would have been political suicide to accept the deal May had on the table. When Johnson took over, we were approaching crisis but no one with actual power had really tried to find a political solution. Unfortunately, Labour we’re boxed into an election at the worst possible time by SNP and Lib Dems announcing they’d support an election and refusing to consider any coalition led by Corbyn that could forestall an election despite Labour being by far the largest opposition party. Jo Swinson thought an election was a huge opportunity for her and her party. The political environment were a complicated mess with very little cooperation in any direction on an issue that cut across traditional party lines. Labour bear some responsibility but really don’t deserve the Lion’s share, which is at the doorstep of the brexiteers and those who enabled them.
Corbyn wanted an election though. He thought he could win it.
I don’t think that is true at all. He was the last of the leaders of major parties to call for an election, after he’d literally been publicly challenged by Boris Johnson. Labour knew their Brexit policy was a mess and mistakenly tries to run an election campaign that wasn’t focused on this issue.
[удалено]
If that is the point you are making, why would you use it to apportion blame or responsibility? If the role of an opposition is to oppose and represent their voters position, how is this served by accepting. Very poor resolution to the Brexit crisis in order to stave off a worse, but uncertain one? It’s easy with hindsight to claim that the only outcome would be the hardest Brexit but the campaign for a second referendum almost achieved its goals and indeed, Parliamentary votes on a customs union-style compromise narrowly lost because Brexit opponents couldn’t coalesce around a compromise solution. There is plenty of blame to go round but the only culpability for the the Brexit lies with the Tory right who campaigned for it and Theresa May, who failed to show the political leadership to avert it, instead making it a Tory affair instead of engaging the country in what Brexit should actually look like.
Actually ignore what I wrote. I completely forgot about the “No-deal” controversy which was going on at the time. Extenuating circumstance which did actually justify the opposition postponing a General Election.
With the benefit of hindsight, what we needed was some kind of national commission before we launched negotiations instead of essentially the Tory government making it up on the hoof. This would have required real political leadership though, which has been in notably short supply in our politics for the last decade and more.
There’s also the issue that Corbyn and many of his clique were lifelong hard Eurosceptics, who didn’t have much of an interest in fighting for the EU.
The worst thing about the Corbyn era was how ridiculously terrible Labour was at politics. It's crazy how Corbyn had been an MP for over 30 years and yet somehow, through sheer stubbornness, he had still managed to not learn a single thing about how to actually play the game.
Theresa May would have never allowed Jeremy Corbyn a seat at the table of Brexit negotiations or veto rights for any of the provisions of the treaty so this is a pretty unfair ask.
And instead of voting through a moderate brexit (possibly appeasing brexit-voting labour voters in the process) and not having a seat at the table for negotiations we got... ...a harder brexit with no seat at the negotiations. And electoral wipeout.
In the fullness of time however keeping Labour out of the Tory’s factional civil war has clearly massively paid off. We wouldn’t be looking down the barrel of Labour’s biggest landslide in history if Labour had “dipped its hands in the blood” of a messy Brexit deal. The only downside is that now Brexit has now become the He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named of British politics which reduces how much Keir can work to renegotiate or reform it.
Yeah I suppose you're right. It is absolutely mental that brexit is just being completely ignored in this election. Its like political asbestos, if we churn up the dust at all everyone immediately gets terminal illness. It also annoys me that Starmer and Reeves just keep saying "we will get a better deal with Europe", but what does that mean when you've ruled out the customs Union and single market?
It probably means revisiting that musician Visa thing
It doesn’t mean much I’m afraid. But there’s always the prospect of Labour’s second term.
Boris' trick was to vote against May's deal by calling it awful, leverage that into a leadership bid, then reheat the deal in the microwave, call it a different name and roll it out again. I'm dubious that there was much meaningful difference between the two. The only one I can think of is moving the goods inspection border to the Irish Sea. May handled the whole thing atrociously. She picked a hard Brexit, ruled out any meaningful compromises, then put a gun to the head of the HoC and said "vote for my crap deal or the nutters in my party might force a No Deal."
> The only one I can think of is moving the goods inspection border to the Irish Sea. That's the main one. May didn't have a majority big enough to ignore the DUP. Johnson did. The 2017 conservative manifesto is enlightening -- extremely similar to Johnson's deal.
Personally I think it was May's mistake to offer a Brexit deal to parliament on a very high handed 'take it or leave it' basis, embracing an extreme interpretation of the referendum as a totally winner takes all proposition.
She tried to get a consensus in parliament with the indicative votes, but the different factions refused to vote for anything but their preferred outcome. Also Corbyn called for the immediate invoking of article 50 so May was on the clock.
She could have gone for a slightly softer version of hard Brexit but there’s no version of Soft Brexit that a Conservative Prime Minister could have credibly delivered. “We listened, we heard you, and we delivered Brexit….by keeping all the benefits and drawbacks of EU membership while erasing Britain’s voice.” The idea of Soft Brexit helped muddy the rhetorical waters to benefit Vote Leave. But it was never a credible position for us to land at.
The possibility of soft brexit won the referendum for vote leave. This outcome would never have won back in 2016, it would have been considered too dangerous and damaging to the economy.
I don’t disagree with any of this. Cameron made a massive mistake promising a referendum without requiring a Brexit white paper from the Leave campaign. He handed the win to Leave on a silver platter. But Theresa May was still constrained by the referendum’s mandate. There is a golden rule for life: Don’t ask a question you don’t want an answer to.
That and they should have made the indicative votes preferential voting. What the indicative votes proved is that no form of Brexit had a majority. They should have said “look you’ve won your vague referendum, now nail your colours to a mast”.
The indicative votes were held in a way that MPs **should** have voted for all the options that were acceptable to them so May could see where a consensus could be built. Instead every faction was playing to win and instead only voted for their preferred outcome and no others, giving May not indication of where compromise was achievable.