Leading article

There is a large vacuum at the heart of this general election campaign. Aside from the topic of our relations with the EU, and Nicola Sturgeon’s statement that she would decline to press a nuclear button which is never going to be hers to press in any case, no leader has had anything of interest to say on foreign policy. This is not for want of matters to discuss. The elections in Hong Kong at the weekend presented an ideal opportunity to bring up foreign policy. A small political earthquake occurred in a former British colony, with reformers triumphing at the polls just as they had drawn huge support on the streets.

To say one thing for John McDonnell, he shows a refreshing preparedness to use a general election to lay out big ideas. While so many candidates for high office will retreat into platitudes rather than risk upsetting some target group of voters, the man who could be Chancellor of the Exchequer in three weeks’ time made a speech on Tuesday signalling what would amount to an even sharper change in Britain’s economic direction than that brought about by Mrs Thatcher’s first election victory in 1979. It is the most striking contribution to the election campaign — and one which the Conservatives need to challenge far better than they have done so far.

Contrasting Boris Johnson’s enthusiasm for a general election with Jeremy Corbyn’s reluctance, it would be easy to assume that the result was pretty well assured: the Conservatives will win a majority. The pollsters and the bookmakers seem to concur — as they have done before misjudging the result of virtually every major election on either side of the Atlantic in the past few years. But make no mistake: the Prime Minister is taking a huge gamble in pushing for an election now. In the Conservatives’ favour is the prospect that the resurgent Lib Dems could split the Remain vote, and that Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity seems to have reached depths seldom seen in democratic politics.

It has become perceived wisdom that we are heading for a ‘people vs parliament’ election. But that is a false construct. Who gets to sit in parliament is the one matter in our political system over which the people have almost total control. The battle currently underway is to limit the powers that parliament has - putting certain issues beyond the reach of democratically-elected politicians. At its heart lies a fear of democracy, a fear of the decisions that people might make when more of UK life is under the control of those sent to parliament by UK voters. It is worth looking at this democrophobia in some detail, as it is an ailment that afflicts both Labour and Tory MPs and lies behind much of current political debate.

The Brexit deal agreed with the EU is a spectacular vindication of the Prime Minister’s approach: to go back to Brussels with the genuine prospect that Britain would leave with no deal on 31 October. The EU started off by saying it would never reopen the withdrawal agreement, but with a no-deal Brexit back in prospect, compromise — and thus a deal — has been possible. And yes, parliament has said it would force the Prime Minister to ask for an extension of EU membership; but No. 10 said it would find a way to not do so. It seems that this was enough to focus minds in Brussels. Boris Johnson's deal is the opposite to that struck by Theresa May in that the more you look at it, the better it seems.

The past few months have been characterised by high drama which, for all the excitement, has resolved nothing. We are back in a familiar cycle: posturing, bluster and a last-minute burst of Brexit talks. It's possible that Boris Johnson will emerge with a deal and declare triumph by 31 October: he has always regarded this as possible, even likely, no matter how high the odds are stacked against it. But it's just as likely that this will all end in failure. If Britain does end up leaving the EU without a deal, the moment when such an outcome became inevitable will be traced back to Tuesday’s telephone call between Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel. In that call, according to No.

The party conference season has showcased two very different visions of Britain. Jeremy Corbyn speaks of the country as one giant Victorian-style workhouse. We are living in zero-hours Britain, apparently — a land where workers subsist on starvation wages and cannot even rely on those. So this is why Labour proposes a great upheaval, mass nationalisation, the confiscation of private property and — as of last month — the abolition of private schools. Corbyn would plunge Britain into a socialist experiment more radical than any seen since the 1970s — but the abject failure of the free enterprise system, he says, demands no less.

The past three years of agonising non-progress on Brexit have damaged Britain in many ways. Our political institutions have looked ridiculous and, through endless uncertainty, unnerved markets. But we have also learned much about the EU. Its behaviour, and that of its officials, has served to reassure those who were uncertain about their Brexit vote that the UK could never be happy as part of this club. Better to be the EU’s greatest ally than its most reluctant and disruptive member. But post-Brexit relations will be shaped, in no small part, by the process of leaving. The Prime Minister’s trip this week to Luxembourg was a good example of what can go wrong.