Section:GDN 1J PaGe:4 Edition Date:190827 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 26/8/2019 18:48 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian Tuesday 27 Aug ust 2019
4 Opinion
Y
ou can tell there’s a general election
coming, because that’s the subtext
to everything else that happens.
Boris Johnson uses the G7 summit to
grandstand to the domestic tabloids.
Meanwhile the fractious coalition of
anti- no-deal forces meets today to
try and form a coherent plan to stop
Britain crashing out of the EU – and to force an election.
If the object was to fi ght no deal through
parliamentary process, the only people you would need
in the room would be Dominic Grieve and Keir Starmer,
with maybe somebody taking notes for John Bercow.
But today’s get-together, convened last week by Jeremy
Corbyn , is as much about a general election, which few
people now doubt will happen sooner rather than later.
Given that, it would have been better to enter the room
in the spirit of anticipated unity, rather than publicly
set out your red lines beforehand, as Jo Swinson has
done. She reportedly wrote a letter to Corbyn yesterday,
arguing that his insistence on leading a temporary
government of national unity would be likely to scupper
a vote of no confi dence in the government.
One of the many things I look forward to, at the end
of this whole ignominious business, is the prospect of
politicians fi nally ceasing to fl aunt their infl exibility as if
it were a virtue. Because it isn’t.
Alex Clark
writes for the
Guardian and
ObserverYet if Corbyn, Swinson and co can recognise a few
elemental truths about their predicament, the meeting
today could yet deliver something invaluable to those of
us outside it: hope.
All remain parties and actors need to stop performing
their oppositional moves and accept as an inevitability
that they have to work together. Labour historically,
and Corbyn personally, have shown no aptitude or
enthusiasm for progressive alliances, but the leader
of the opposition must recognise that activists and
members are going to work together regardless, as they
did in 2017 (and as they did in 1997). There is a very plain
advantage to be had for both Labour and the Liberal
Democrats from reaching an understanding (the Greens
stand to gain the least, I would guess; Caroline Lucas,
fortunately, doesn’t fi ght for her own or her party’s
collective ego).
According to yet-to-be-published projections made
by Best for Britain, of the 150 marginals across England
and Wales where a remain alliance could make the
diff erence, in 111 the numbers dictate that the Lib Dems
swing behind Labour. The benefi t to Labour is obvious.
For Swinson, 40-odd seats would still represent a
massive uptick in her party’s fortunes.
Remainers on the centre-right, who are currently
cleaving to what’s been called the Meatloaf stance
(“I’d do anything for Europe, but I won’t make Jeremy
Corbyn prime minister”) have to think more deeply
about their objections. Whatever threat Corbyn may
pose to capitalism, it is as nothing compared to the threat
from vulture capitalists and high priests of disruption
and chaos emptying their pots of cash into Dominic
Cummings’ cauldron.
If the danger represented by this government bore
any relation to its competence, we’d have nothing to
worry about. But the disunity of the forces opposing it is
giving it a potency it does not deserve. We will only haul
ourselves out of this nightmare period when the politics
of solidarity and co operation wrests the controls from
the politics of delinquency and destruction. That has to
start in this meeting. There’s a good argument for them
all to smoke a joint before they go in.I
t is also increasingly clear that Labour has an
additional challenge of its own: the party needs
to pivot to “revoke”. Not as a peace off ering to the
other parties, but because it’s the only position
that now makes sense. The idea of a Labour-
negotiated deal, which protects workers’ rights,
drives forward international cooperation on
the environment, and maintains the EU as our
major trading bloc, while diff ering meaningfully from
membership of the EU , is fanciful. A second referendum,
meanwhile, is pointless given that any general election
will, itself, function as one: the Brexit parties are there
for Brexiteers to vote for. Of course, if a government
of national unity itself chose to revoke article 50, then
arguably that would create a democratic defi cit. But if,
in the context of an election, the country is asked point
blank whether it wants to leave or revoke, no such crime
against the will of the people has been perpetrated.
The Conservatives and the Brexit party are making the
vast unsubstantiated promise that a combination of grit,
optimism and tech will solve every problem associated
with Brexit. Some of us spend our time wondering why
these arguments hold fast against any evidence to their
contrary; why they’re so immune to reality and reason.
But Labour now needs to make a vast promise of its own:
revoke. In that moment, Brexit will be revealed for what
it is – a civil war embroiling all of us that should have
stayed within the confi nes of the Conservative party,
where it belonged.
Boris Johnson and Cummings will not be waiting with
ba ted breath to see if a vote of no confi dence prevails.
They will have their decision tree, with a general election
on one branch, a no-deal Brexit on the other; it all leads
ultimately to the polling booth, and all who oppose them
should be ready for an election on the fi rst possible date:
17 October , six weeks after parliament reassembles. And
readiness is not a reheating of Facebook ads and leafl ets
with slightly-too-complicated promises; it is a united
promise to revoke, from allies who put their nation
ahead of their tired hostilities.T
he prime minister is making stuff up
about pork pies and the president
of the United States wants to nuke
hurricanes , but amid the late summer
madness, we – we the people – have
Ben Stokes. On a blazing bank holiday
weekend for the ages, the hero of
Headingley near single-handedly
(for we must not forget the bespectacled, brilliant
Jack Leach ) provided a moment of respite from the
catastrophic chaos the powers that be seem all too
happy to unleash upon their citizenry.
Just to be clear, here is what the immigrant Ben
Stokes is not: he is not a distillation of the “Dunkirk
spirit”, to be co-opted by nostalgic disaster merchants
keen to claim credit for all that is good and wander
back off to the champagne tent to inspect their
portfolios when it goes tits up. He is, rather, an elite
sportsman – an expert, if you will – who spectacularly
adapted his play to navigate a way through the
trickiest of situations. Unlike those in potentially
analogous circumstances, Stokes had the time he
needed: but what he still had to fi nd were skill, nerve
and, perhaps most importantly, respect for the game
he was playing and the opponents he faced. There’s
a lesson there. And after a period of calculated
defensiveness, he got busy.
For those watching in the ground and on screens
everywhere, it was a masterclass in digging in and
knowing when to deploy the fl air, the risky reverse
sweep that nets a six, the cheeky cut. There was luck as
well, of course, and that special growing sense that the
day was a day for an extravaganza.
Above all it was a huge cheer-up, a shot in the arm
in the midst of national dejection and disarray. With
the summer nearly over and the prospect of Hallowe en
bringing not merely the usual collection of ghouls
and sugar-crazed chancers, but a seismic shift in the
country’s global fortunes, we should allow ourselves,
just for a day, to indulge in a bit of patriotic delight.
Within the boundaries of decorum, naturally.
The point about sport is that it happens over and
over again, which is both terrible – can’t we just freeze-
frame Stokes’s fi nal air punch and forget the rest? – and
brilliant, because redemption is always possible as long
as the ball’s in play.
We lose ourselves in it because it’s not, contrary to
Bill Shankly’s famous dictum , even more important
than life and death itself. Rather, it is a temporary
cessation of the world’s hostilities, an opportunity
for a collective shrugging off of responsibility and
burden. The losses and the humiliations are terrible,
but they are not insurmountable. The victories,
though: well, when they’re as sweet as this one, they
deserve to be savoured for as long as possible. The Old
Traff ord Test is not, sadly, far away, and of course we
may all be weeping into our beer within a fortnight.
But not today.Zoe
Williams
Alex
Clark
Forget a second
referendum.
Labour has to
back revoke
All hail Ben
Stokes for a
moment of
sporting relief
An anti-Brexit protester outside Downing Street, May 2019
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