Crush the saboteurs! The headline in the Daily Mail, the newspaper that now wears the mantle of the voice of Theresa May with a flamboyant confidence, was reassuring to anyone who might have wondered if they’d overegged their reaction to the election announcement. Yep, that’s right, she really doesn’t think opposition is acceptable.
But for the Mail, there’s __more to it than that. The saboteurs are not just messing with the Brexit agenda, nor even the popular will. They are jeopardising the promise of a nostalgia-rich future of the kind inhabited by Jonathan Waterer, a Devon farmer who shuns tractors in favour of shire horses. Pages two and three of today’s Mail are devoted to a double-page spread of the majestic sight of five shires ploughing abreast. Not great for grain yields, maybe, but fantastic to look at, and without the common agriculture policy there won’t be any Eurocrats telling him he’s breaking the rules.
May is really asking for what was once called a doctor’s mandate. That is, the power to do whatever it takes.
Meanwhile, in the Sun, to which she gave an “exclusive chat”, she was quite explicit about the need to stop MPs “subverting the will of the people”. The front page hinted at the fury that might be unleashed – a poll to “kill off” Labour, “smash rebel Tories” and commit “Blue murder” – if she was thwarted by elected representatives doing the job for which they are paid.
Of course, May is not to blame for the way her actions are interpreted. But there is something chilling about the way she is ready to ride in their slipstream.
On Radio 4’s Today programme this morning she couldn’t muster a single persuasive argument for her rash and startling U-turn. She could only repeat that despite having lost not a single vote on the article 50 legislation in the Commons, she needs a bigger majority.
As so often before, the prime minister is playing a very canny game which is only lightly disguised by her vicar’s daughter reputation for plain dealing. She does not need to explain that she will use her sustained poll lead to weaken Labour, maybe taking 50 or __more seats from them and giving herself a 100+ majority. She must hope that Brexit troublemakers on the backbenches will be so dazzled by the prospect that they won’t notice that such a big majority would rob them of most of their power. That’s assuming that the new intake aren’t even more rabidly enthusiastic for galleon Britain than the existing ones.
It doesn’t take much of a thought experiment to see how useful it will be for her not to have to face any significant threat in the Commons during the period of negotiations, and by delaying the next election until 2022, to have shifted the election time table two years back in her favour. For those of us who want the softest possible Brexit, this is probably good news.
But the language she – and her amplifiers in the media – is using is calculated to deliver exactly the opposite message. What she is really doing is asking for what was once called a doctor’s mandate. That is, the power to do whatever it takes. It’s politically convenient, but its relationship to the central democratic idea of accountability is remote.
That makes the pusillanimous capitulation of MPs in the Commons on the Fixed-Term Parliament Act, before a single speech has been made, all the more pathetic.
Anyone with a vote in the Commons today who has read the intimidatory messages in this morning’s headlines, and is still prepared to go ahead and let her have her election, should be sent to remedial civics classes at once. They need to stop and think about what this means for parliamentary democracy.
Like the proverbial turkeys, MPs seem set on conspiring in their own emasculation. For if this election goes as expected, it will mean the creation of something that looks like an elective dictatorship. Even if it ends in five years’ time, it will have eroded the habits and conventions of parliamentary opposition.
Each headline suggesting that the prime minister’s critics are saboteurs who are overdue a re-education session hoeing cabbages in the Fens, undermines popular faith in the process of democracy, just as surely as labelling judges “enemies of the people” whittles away at faith in the processes of the law.
The more that the Commons behaves as if elections were simply a measure to be gamed, the way the prime minister is now, the more excluded voters will feel. No one’s self esteem is raised by being treated as a number; no one feels better for being conned by the deceitful sleights of hand that are the stuff of daily political life.
Theresa May’s strategy is transparent. There is no need for this election. So stand up and resist. Britain is not run by plebiscite, it is a parliamentary democracy. And it needs fighting for.