2018 is set to be a year of political reckoning in both the
UK and the USA. It’s very easy to imagine the crises that are likely to unfold,
but much harder to predict their consequences or the way in which they will be
resolved.
Trump will clearly come under increasing pressure as a result
of the investigation into Russian collusion by former FBI Director Robert
Mueller. If there is to be any realistic prospect of the current President
being removed through an impeachment process, we’ll need to see some spark of
activity in 2018. Otherwise we’ll be moving inexorably towards the next primary
cycle and attention will turn to the removal of Donald Trump in the traditional,
tried-and-tested way – at the ballot box.
The mid-term elections in November might prove to be decisive
in terms of forcing the hand of Republican Senators and Congressmen. After all,
if polling evidence is to be believed, the Democrats look set to make
significant gains with Trump’s popularity at a record low. The realisation may
dawn that propping up the White House incumbent threatens the very existence of
the GOP.
But plenty can happen before we reach those critical
elections.
My feeling has always been that Trump will ultimately be
brought down because of an international crisis rather than a domestic one. As
he comes under increasing pressure and scrutiny, he really only has two places
to turn. He can mobilise his vocal base to rally and protest in the states
where he’s still popular. And he can aim for the distraction of military intervention
abroad.
As we head into 2018, the message from the White House is
that China is flouting the latest sanctions on oil sales to North Korea, providing
Pyongyang with an illicit lifeline in defiance of the United Nations. How long
before Trump decides that a confrontation with the man he dubs ‘Little Rocket
Man’ would be the perfect way to deflect from the scandal engulfing his administration?
A pre-emptive strike on Kim Jong Un’s nuclear facilities would
be absolutely reckless, but there are many American commentators far more clued-up
than Trump, who fear that North Korea’s missile and nuclear capability is about
to reach a critical tipping point. Kim is profoundly irrational and
provocative, which provides cover for the 45th President and might
even make his actions seem reasonable.
Back in the UK, the only war on the horizon is a civil one –
between those who voted for a break with the European Union and those who
wanted to stay. The referendum in 2016, which was supposed to resolve this
issue once and for all, did nothing of the sort. It merely created a fundamental
schism which splits people along all kinds of lines: age, education, geography,
culture and political allegiance.
Theresa May was temporarily buoyed by the news that the UK
had reached the second round of the Brexit talks, designed to thrash out a new
economic and trading relationship with the EU. But everyone knows this was achieved
by big concessions on the so-called divorce settlement and an untidy fudge over
the vexed issue of the Irish border.
As my co-presenter on Colourful Radio’s weekly news review
show, Michael Ohajuru, so elegantly put it, we’re in danger of running out of
long grass.
People talk about clocks ticking, but this particular
timepiece is attached to a detonator. And what many don’t realise is that it’s
set to explode quite a bit earlier than 2019. That’s because any deal not only
has to be approved by the British Parliament (thanks to a backbench revolt by
Tory rebels), but also the European Parliament and possibly the Parliaments of
the various member states.
If we reach the summer and negotiations are failing to bear
fruit, substantial problems loom.
There are all kinds of potential scenarios, of course.
The DUP might decide they can no longer back the May
government if she is unable to provide clarity over the border issues in Ireland,
although it would be hard to justify to their supporters the forcing of an
election which might usher Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street.
The pro-EU Tory rebels might extract more concessions,
angering still further the bulk of Tory MPs, constituency activists and many Conservative
voters who yearn for a clean break from Brussels.
The hard Brexiters – who are well represented in the Cabinet –
might seek to engineer a crisis in which they claim that continuing the
negotiations is a waste of time.
So, in theory, Jeremy Corbyn’s belief that there might be
another general election in 2018 isn’t complete fantasy. But the veteran left-winger
should beware of what he wishes for.
If the government did fall or May felt obliged to call
another election, this campaign actually would
be the Brexit election that she wrongly imagined 2017 might have become. It
would be a vote triggered by a Brexit crisis and the focus would be on the ways
in which we rescue ourselves from the quagmire.
The pressure from many Labour MPs and activists would be for
Corbyn to go into a 2018 election vowing to reverse Brexit or, at the very
least, put the deal to another referendum. But this goes against all the instincts
of the current Labour leadership, which came of age in an era of kneejerk anti-Europeanism
on the left. John McDonnell sees the single market as a major obstacle to the
implementation of his socialist economic policies and would, I’m sure, prefer that
he was free of the shackles of EU regulations.
Let’s say that Corbyn acquiesced to pressure from the Labour
grassroots and became more overtly hostile to Brexit. Is this a position from
which he can win a general election?
Many Labour MPs represent seats that voted to leave Europe and it’s hard to imagine that all the heartland voters who came out to back Corbyn in 2017 would do so again. So perhaps we could see Labour doing even better in cities such as London, but losing working-class seats to the Tories in the north of England?
Many Labour MPs represent seats that voted to leave Europe and it’s hard to imagine that all the heartland voters who came out to back Corbyn in 2017 would do so again. So perhaps we could see Labour doing even better in cities such as London, but losing working-class seats to the Tories in the north of England?
It’s not even beyond the realms of possibility that we could
hold another election in 2018 and end up with a result ever bit as inconclusive
as the one produced a year earlier. At which point, the long grass will most
certainly have dried up.
Thanks for clearing the muddy water a little Phil.
ReplyDelete