Brexit

One of the professional drawbacks of coming from Scotland and then moving to London is that I don’t really know an awful lot about England. True, I spent a few years in East Anglia on my way south, but it was a particular part of East Anglia that possibly has rather more dreaming Gothic spires, rusted bicycles and robotics labs than the norm, so I’m not sure it was wholly representative. Still, I know the cities. I have spent enough time in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield, say, to know that they are not so terribly different from Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness or even the bits of Edinburgh without the cobbles.

Six years ago, Matthew Parris suggested in The Spectator that David Cameron’s first act of parliament should be the Blanket Repeal of Legislation (Failure of New Labour, 1997-2010) Bill. That would have been a repeal bill worthy of the name. Theresa May’s proposed 'Great Repeal Bill' is not. Brexit we know about: that decision was taken on 23 June. But beyond Brexit, the Bill won't repeal anything. On the contrary, it will 'convert existing EU law into domestic law' so it is about continuity, rather than annulment. It should really be called the Great EU Regulation Continuity Bill. Nothing wrong in that; it's necessary legislation. But why spin it as radical change?

What is Theresa May’s greatest weakness as she goes into conference season? The Prime Minister had such a good start to the job that it’s easy to forget that she has the same problems that David Cameron did in terms of parliamentary arithmetic and fractures in her party over Europe. For Cameron, the parliamentary arithmetic was most difficult because there was a hardened core of eurosceptics who distrusted him, and because he and George Osborne had a habit of trying to sneak half-baked policies such as huge cuts to tax credits past MPs and hope that they wouldn’t notice (which they nearly didn’t).

Opponents of demagogues from Donald Trump to Nigel Farage have suffered from a huge political disadvantage. They were either politicians who were or had been in power, and had to take responsibility for all the failures and compromises power brings as inevitably as blisters on weary feet. Or they were voters, who thought that mainstream politicians were preferable to the leaders of the far right and left. Demagogues could dismiss them as establishment lackeys, Blairites, liberal elitists, Republicans in name only, and so on. And the dismissals could work. For how many wised-up 21st century voters wants to think him or herself as some establishment drone, some dupe of a failed status quo?

John McDonnell is now speaking at the Labour conference, and will pledge to match the regional funding that communities will lose as a result of Brexit. This has been billed as 'one of the Labour Party's biggest policy statements since the Brexit vote', which is another way of saying 'one of the Labour Party's only policy statements since the Brexit vote'. The turmoil in the party since that vote and its dismal performance in the polls (which, despite urban legend, was the case before the attempted coup against Corbyn) means that it's largely pointless to evaluate this policy statement as though it might actually happen. Labour isn't going to be in government any time soon. But what Labour can do right now is hold the Tories to account on Brexit.