The title of this piece was also the radio sign on message of American reporter Ed Murrow during the fiery days of the Blitz. A war of a different sort, though maybe just as momentous for the future of Britain and in some ways against the same foe, is being waged in London tonight. The outcome will decide, as did the Battle of Britain and D-Day, whether Britons are ruled from London or Berlin.
As many of you know, British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government lost a vote last night in the House of Commons. The subject in question was whether parliament would ratify her plan for a soft Brexit. May and her team hoped they would lose by under 150. She was defeated 432-202, by 230 votes. 118 members of her own government voted against her. In fact, Tory vice-chair, Tom Pursglove, switched sides during the vote itself. It was the most severe parliamentary defeat of a sitting government in British history. The next worse humiliation was a 1924 Labour government mauling of 166 votes.
Immediately after the London vote May invited loony Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to bring a vote of no confidence. He took the bait and the vote will be at 7 p.m. tonight. With her governing partner the DUP still in support of her position in office, she has the numbers to survive and forestall an election. Why Corbyn played into her hand, knowing she would win, is anybody’s guess. It’s possible he thinks just the vote itself will increase pressure on May or that Tory rebels will sink her, hoping to pick up the spoils. But May winning there will take a bit of the sting out of her losing last night.
May will get a significant shove to resign. To no avail. She just put down a Tory coup. She doesn’t have to face another one until December at the earliest.
If Corbyn somehow does win a no-confidence vote, the government falls, and an election is called? The latest polls put the Tories 6 points up. Thus Jeremy is not only the deepest shade of Bolshie red, he couldn’t politically think his way out of a wet paper bag.
She lost yesterday as her proposal, a soft Brexit leaving Ulster hanging out to dry on the backstop per trade, was the worst of all worlds for all factions. For the DUP itself it was a blatant sellout, a morsel thrown at the feet of the EU hoping they would smile and nod. For the hard Brexiteers her position seems like a reversal of the Brexit vote, still tying Britain to the EU for an extended period over trade and other issues. For the Remainers, who hate Brexit and voted against it in the national election, it didn’t go far enough in kowtowing to Brussels. For those who want a second Brexit vote in direct contravention of the people’s will as expressed in the first vote, it was a further chance to make the whole process look ridiculous and thus make it easier to agitate for the mulligan. Even May’s own people (she’s a Remainer herself), some of the 202, would privately admit she’s doing all she can to placate the EU and still retain the premiership. National interest seems to be of secondary importance.
Almost missing from that list, aside from several dozen hard Brexit supporters like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, is any group who gives a whit for what 17 million British voters, the largest turnout in their political history, had to say on the subject. The political class who summer in Provence and take junkets to the silly EU parliament in Strasbourg will have their way and the British people can sod off. “Sod off” would be translated to an American colloquial reference by using two other words. Maybe three.
“Take out, excise, surgically remove the backstop, OK?” Johnson himself commented to Sky News, “That’s the problem, that’s the lobster pot, that’s the trap that keeps us locked in the customs union and means we have this terrible Hobson’s choice between, as it were, sacrificing Northern Ireland or remaining subject to the E.U. without having any say in the E.U.”
The British Left and other assorted forces campaigning to make Britain more like that bastion of tranquility and economic vitality…um…well…France, hail the vote as another nail in the coffin of the democratically decided Brexit vote. Quelle surprise.
To give we colonials a detailed Americanization (as in one of my top five films of all time, “The Americanization of Emily.” It features a gorgeous young Julie Andrews as a wartime London girl with a morally casual attitude) of the vote: What if after the last presidential election the House decided, because it didn’t like the fact that Trump won, that presidents would no longer be elected by the people and the Electoral College, but by the House itself? Saving that, we’d have another election and keep having them until Hillary won. I’m not talking the media/establishment attempted coup we actually see playing before us. I’m talking about nullifying by decree the results of a national election. In this scenario Trump is still in office fighting the good fight and very well may win. Just like in real life. But what does it say about the state of freedom in a country that would countenance this kind of brutish political behavior in the first place?
At the height of the ironic amusement? Those pushing for a second vote are calling it “The People’s Vote,” as if only arachnids voted in the first round. These are the same spin doctors who sold the term “The People’s Princess” to posthumously describe to a gullible and tearful public a member of British royalty, herself far removed from “the people.” As in the term “People’s” Republics, the very phrase used in a political or PR context ought to give us cause for suspicion.
All this cynical skullduggery is why the knives in the front and back British political system is “how fun” indeed to political types, as opposed to our generally mundane elected bureaucracy of mediocrities. It’s also why the original British version of House of Cards is infinitely more enjoyable than the unrealistic soap opera melodrama of the American version.
Putting my Anglophilia on hold for a moment, the UK’s parliamentary system is at its nadir tonight, giving the worst performance since Neville Chamberlain’s appeasers of the 1930s. The class-besotted and old-school network that at times runs Britain well has forgotten whom they should appear to serve and now makes no pretense about who’s in charge in London, and it’s not the voters. Not to mention, this isn’t good for American national security. The UK is our firmest ally and this instability does her no good in that regard.
Though the chaotic no-deal option is actually best for Britain, eventually allowing her a Canadian-like trade stance, the end of March Brexit deal deadline approaches. More tumult then will cause the Remainers to swoon and clutch their pearls. Even for hard Brexiteers, it may not be as joyous as perceived.
If the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had not happened, Her Majesty could intervene and guarantee the rights and decisions of her subjects over her nobles. A nice addendum, that would be, to Magna Carta.
But that’s not going to happen. What is likely is that this system will keep buggering on until little more by little more British sovereignty is eroded and finally given fully to Brussels, which ultimately means to Berlin. There could be a hiccup here and there, but the EU train runs inexorably to the Alexanderplatz.
So much blood, so much treasure, even The Empire, sacrificed in the 20th century to hinder this dark fate, this loss of self-rule. But that great expense in global stature and British life shouldn’t make it any harder for a Remainer to take the Eurostar to Paris for a spot of lunch, to be followed by a nice Riesling on the banks of the Rhine, now should it?
Perhaps the fields of Flanders and the miles of beach of Dunkirk vouchsafe a different answer.
