Leading article

Jeremy Corbyn has never been very keen on parliamentary democracy. He may be changing his mind now. The British electoral system has allowed him to strip the Conservatives of their majority, an extraordinary result that not even he had thought possible. As a reward, he can watch the government squirm as well as shape its policy. All he needs to do is threaten a vote which Theresa May thinks she might lose, and she buckles — as we are now witnessing. For some time, the Prime Minister had stood firm on the public sector pay cap, arguing that when you factor in generous pensions, the average government worker is still paid 10 per cent more than their private sector counterpart.

There is a growing perception that Britain is floundering in its EU negotiations, with a professional team from Brussels running rings around our bumbling amateurs. It is an idea that is being put about by the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, who this week appealed for Britain to begin ‘negotiating seriously’. As he has found out, the strange dynamic of British public debate at present means that EU spin is repeated uncritically by those hostile to Brexit. It can seem, at times, as if we are in the grip of hysteria normally seen during the final days of an election campaign. This is not to say that the British side has been faultless. The government has struggled to articulate the clear case for Brexit that we heard during the Leave campaign.

George Tomlinson, the post-war education secretary, declared that politicians should leave exams to the teachers because ‘the minister knows nowt about curriculum’. Today, however, the curriculum seems to be in a state of permanent revolution. The new GCSEs, for example, are marked on a nine-point scale: a grade of 7 or above indicates what used to be an ‘A’. For every five students who hit the 7 threshold, only one will get 9, the top mark. How employers are meant to understand this is another question. The GCSE overhaul is the latest of a series of reforms, started by Michael Gove seven years ago, which are intended to ‘restore confidence’ after years of grade inflation. During the Labour years, ministers denied that exams were getting easier.

Jeremy Corbyn finally broke his silence on Venezuela this week, but in the manner of a man who has his head buried in a very large bucket of sand. He condemned violence ‘on both sides’, painting the country’s problems as a battle between factions rather than a case of a repressive government snuffing out popular protests. No one would know from the Labour leader’s words that President Maduro’s regime is engaged in what the UN Human Rights Office described this week as a ‘widespread and systematic use of excessive force’. More revealing still was Corbyn’s reply when prodded on the economic and social conditions which led to the protests.

Besides being important in themselves, the trade talks between Britain and the United States which began this week are symbolic of the opportunities that should become available as we leave the European Union. For years we have dealt with the US, our biggest single customer, under burdensome tariffs and other regulation — but we had no choice. The EU handled trade policy and it never succeeded in completing a trade deal with any of its major trade partners. Britain, by contrast, has always been more global than Europe in its outlook. The vote for Brexit was, among other things, a vote to raise our sights to more distant horizons. At the time of the referendum, a bilateral trade deal with the US looked unlikely for political reasons.

It used to be said that loyalty was the Conservatives’ secret weapon. While other parties might descend into internecine warfare, the Tories would always, when circumstances demanded, show just enough respect for their leader. The words ‘loyalty’ and ‘Conservative’, -however, lost their natural affinity during the Major years. Since then, to borrow a phrase from the left, the leadership of the party has descended into a state of permanent revolution. After the failure of her general election campaign, Theresa May seems to have become a tortured prisoner of her cabinet. Talks of leaks are exaggerated.

Just a few weeks ago, the Conservatives triumphed in the local government elections and Theresa May was hailed as an all-conquering Brexit Boudicca who could do no wrong. Now, after her general election humiliation, an opposite view has taken hold: that the government is a disaster, the country is in an irredeemable mess, Brexit has been derailed and nothing can go right. This is a sign that parliamentary recess is overdue; a great many people are -exhausted and a little emotional. But the facts, for those with an eye to see them, do not give grounds for such pessimism. The Tories have lost their majority and deserved to do so after an awful campaign.

There is unlikely to be much of a legacy from Theresa May’s premiership, which could yet be truncated a short way into its second year. Yet one very good thing looks like coming out of it: the strengthening of the United Kingdom. The Union suddenly looks in better health than it has done for several years. Nicola Sturgeon did not quite scotch her dream of a second independence referendum this week, but in delaying the required legislation until the autumn of 2018 at the earliest she has bowed to the inevitable. She has been sent, as the Scottish national anthem says, homeward tae think again. Meanwhile, the importance of Northern Ireland in Westminster has been enhanced. The deal between No.

The unexpected outcome of the general election has led some to hope that a weakened government will be forced to pursue a ‘softer’ Brexit. They are right to think that the emphasis of the negotiation will have to change, but they use the wrong adjective. The choice before David Davis and his team as they start work in Brussels is not and never has been between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ Brexit; it is between an open Brexit and a closed Brexit. The former is one where Britain retains open trade with, and a high degree of free movement to and from, other EU countries — as well as taking fresh opportunities to liberalise trade with the world beyond.

The lessons to be learned from the Conservatives’ poor showing in the election could fill more pages than the national curriculum. Don’t unleash on the public a manifesto which has not even been tested among senior ministers. Don’t think you can get through a seven-week election campaign by endlessly repeating the same mantra, especially when you are being ridiculed for it. Don’t underestimate how quickly public opinion can change. Sell yourself, your party and its ideas, rather than just attacking your opponent. Yet there is a serious danger that Theresa May and the rest of the Tory party could pick up the wrong message.

As if we needed reminding, this past week has shown that the Islamist threat is a truly global problem. In the space of a few days, Isis claimed responsibility for attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market; and elsewhere, for the attack on the Iranian Parliament and the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran. It would be hard to think of more diverse targets than drinkers at London pubs on a Saturday night and the tomb of the theocratic Shia cleric who inspired the 1979 Iranian revolution. Yet for Isis there is logic. All are enemies: infidels, heretics, apostates. The Tehran atrocity shows again that what we are witnessing is a civil war within Islam. To the Sunni militant, the enemy could be a girl at a music concert or a worshipper at a Shia mosque.

On the eve of the US presidential election, experts at Princeton university decided that Donald Trump had a 1 per cent chance of being elected. Before the last general election, Populus, the opinion poll firm, gave David Cameron a 0.5 per cent chance of winning a majority. Much is made of the need to look at ‘the data’ when considering political arguments, but so often it is a wildly inaccurate guess with a decimal point at the end to give an aura of scientific specificity. So when we read that Jeremy Corbyn has just a 17 per cent chance of becoming prime minister, this does not mean that the election is in the bag. The Tories are still quite capable of blowing it. It’s understandable that voters have misgivings about Theresa May.