20 Britain The EconomistAugust 10th 2019
2 ises to propose one soon after the Com-
mons returns on September 3rd. Mr John-
son’s government has a working majority
of just one, so it requires only a handful of
Tories to switch sides for a vote to succeed.
Yet Mr Johnson will say he needs more time
to secure a deal. It is hard for backbenchers
to vote down their own government, which
may be why since 1945 only one vote of no
confidence has succeeded, against La-
bour’s James Callaghan in 1979.
The rules were also changed by the
Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011. Previ-
ously, any vote of no confidence would
trigger the prime minister’s resignation
and a general election. But the 2011 act al-
lows a period of 14 days during which ei-
ther the sitting prime minister or an alter-
native tries to form a government that can
win mps’ confidence. Only if these at-
tempts fail must an election be called, on a
date fixed by the outgoing prime minister.
As Catherine Haddon of the Institute for
Government, a think-tank, notes, it is not
even clear under the act that the prime
minister must resign, though a refusal to
do so would produce a constitutional row
that might even involve the queen.
Some mps hoping to block no-deal are
discussing the formation of a cross-party
“government of national unity” to replace
Mr Johnson’s, with the express purpose of
asking for another Brexit extension to al-
low time for an election. The idea would be
that a veteran such as the Tories’ Ken Clarke
or Labour’s Margaret Beckett might be its
nominal leader. Yet it is hard to see this
working. Labour is not keen, and is likely to
insist instead that any alternative govern-
ment must be led by Mr Corbyn. Rebel To-
ries are most unlikely to support this.
Big battles between the legislature and
the executive are usually won by the for-
mer. But the anti-no-deal majority is less
coherent and focused than are hardline
Brexiteers. This may explain one more sug-
gestion from Mr Cummings: that any elec-
tion after a vote of no confidence is put off
until November, ensuring that no-deal
Brexit happens meanwhile. The cabinet
manual says that, during an election cam-
paign, no big decisions should be taken by
a caretaker government. But Brexiteers re-
tort that, since October 31st is enshrined in
law as Brexit day, the big decision would be
to stop it, not to let it proceed.
For Mr Johnson, the politics of this are
uncertain, at best. If an election were held
before Brexit, Mr Farage would whip up
support by telling voters they were about to
be betrayed. On the other hand, engineer-
ing a no-deal Brexit against mps’ wishes
would outrage many people. And an elec-
tion held amid the likely chaos that would
follow a no-deal Brexit could help opposi-
tion parties. Some therefore wonder if the
government will schedule a ballot for No-
vember 1st, “Independence Day” itself. 7T
here areno traffic lights on the Ork-
ney islands. Despite having the highest
rate of car ownership in Scotland, with 919
vehicles per 1,000 adults, the archipelago is
so thinly populated that there is no need
for stop signals. Drivers politely make way
for each other on the narrow lanes, waving
as they pass. The occasional roundabout
regulates busier junctions.
Orkney’s rural nature makes it a plea-
sure to drive in. But it also makes it a night-
mare for mobile connectivity. “By the time
something is rolled out to the extremities
of the country...it is out of date,” complains
James Stockan, the leader of the Orkney Is-
lands Council. That is only a slight exagger-
ation. The first 4gsignal arrived in Kirk-
wall, Orkney’s biggest settlement, in 2016,
nearly four years after it came to urban Brit-
ain. Smaller islands, such as Papa Westray,
have no 3gcoverage, let alone 4g.
In all, only 35% of Orkney households
can make a voice call on all four networks,
and 4% can do so on none at all, according
to Ofcom, the telecoms regulator. It is
worse for data services. Only 18% of pre-
mises can access 4gon all four networks
and 7% get no signal. Skara Brae, a Neolith-
ic site protected by unesco, has no net-
work coverage, forcing tourists to wait un-
til they return to Kirkwall to post pictures
to Instagram.
It is not just social-media addicts who
suffer. Farmers have trouble accessing
mandatory forms; jobseekers struggle tomake applications; civil servants miss out
on online training. As mobile networks
start to roll out 5gcoverage this year, Mr
Stockan is keen to avoid the delays of the
past. He would like Orkney to “jump over
one generation to the next”.
Such talk of leapfrogging usually focus-
es on the poor world, where charities and
tech firms promise to send balloons and
drones to bring the internet to people with-
out landlines. Yet something similar is
now under way in Orkney. 5gRuralFirst, a
consortium of 30 organisations backed by a
£4.3m ($5.2m) government grant and led
by Cisco, which makes networking gear,
has been running a private 5gnetwork on
the island for the past year. Investment by
mobile-network operators purely because
of consumer demand “is not likely to hap-
pen”, says Greig Paul of the University of
Strathclyde, which is part of the consor-
tium. RuralFirst is trying to figure out how
to make it commercially viable.
Its main idea is to find local industrial
uses for the tech. That is part of the promise
of 5gnetworks in general: not only can they
offer much greater speeds, but they are de-
signed to be super-responsive and capable
of connecting to many more devices at
once. “If we can drive industrial use then
there will be more demand, which means
more revenue, which means more capaci-
ty,” says Mr Paul.
In the Orkneys, local businesses seem
keen. Scapa, a whisky-maker, sees poten-
tial in automating bits of production and
tracking employees throughout the distill-
ery. Richard Gauld, who runs a small wind
farm, says replacing copper wires with 5g
would make the local electricity grid safer
and more efficient. Out in the Scapa Flow,
Richard Darbyshire of Scottish Sea Farms
says 5gwould offer a more reliable connec-
tion from base to barge. That would allow
his men to feed fish remotely in bad weath-
er, and support high-definition live video
from the salmon pens.
There are also ideas for ways to cut
costs, such as making more efficient use of
radio spectrum, using software to do
things that typically require hardware, and
sharing infrastructure among mobile net-
works. The biggest expense is access to
spectrum, which costs billions at auction.
That will soon be less of an obstacle. On
July 25th Ofcom announced that it would
offer spectrum to local communities for as
little as £80 a year.
The Orkney programme runs until the
end of September, after which the consor-
tium will evaluate the business case for 5g
in rural areas. “If it works for us, maybe we
can offer the service to other small commu-
nities that want to have their own 5gcell,”
says Greg Whitton, who runs CloudNet, the
local internet service provider. Getting on-
line on the island could soon be as easy and
speedy as driving around it. 7KIRKWALL
A plan to bring super-fast mobile
networks to the middle of nowhereRural internetOur island
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#NoFilter—but no signal either