The Green Ribbon

Election 2019 - Northern Ireland seats

Some pointers on the key parties and seats in Northern Ireland, where the 2019 elections raise a number of key questions: 

Will unionist voters stick with the DUP in the wake of Boris Johnson's Brexit deal, or punish its MPs for sustaining Johnson's Government? Can the UUP benefit from their rivals discomfiture, or are they inextricably bound together in the cause of unionist unity? Could it be the emerging anti-Brexit force of Alliance which profits instead? 

Will the tribulations of Brexit reinforce nationalists' 2017 decision to opt for Sinn Fein, a party focused on Dublin and Brussels rather than Westminster, or lead them to reconsider in favour of the SDLP?

Is Johnny Mercer actually a non-exec at Crucial Academy?

The Conservative MP for Plymouth Moor View has been in the news a lot lately as a key backbench hold-out on Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement, one who has accused the Tory whips of seeking to dig up dirt on him in order to secure his vote.

However, a BBC story on Wednesday suggests that he does face issues which merit substantive scrutiny.

MP Johnny Mercer's salary funded by failed bond scheme marketing agent

By Chris Quevatre & Tom Palmer

A company that marketed a failed bond scheme that lost savers £236m has been funding an MP's private salary.

Johnny Mercer receives £85,000 from Crucial Academy, a company ultimately funded by Surge Financial Limited.

Surge Financial Limited took 25% commission for marketing bonds by London Capital and Finance (LCF), which is now in administration.

Mr Mercer - who is facing calls from investors to quit as an MP - said he had done nothing wrong.

The Conservative MP for Plymouth Moor View is a non-executive director of Crucial Academy, which trains military veterans and aims to find them employment. (Full story)

One intriguing issue here is the status of Mercer's non-executive directorship. Here's the declaration that Mercer made last year to the Commons Register of Member's Interests:

 From 14 Sept 2018 until further notice, Non-executive Director of Crucial Academy Ltd, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5AB, for which I will receive £85,000 per annum. Hours: 20 hrs a month. (Registered 18 September 2018).

Mercer also refers in his response to the BBC to 'working as a non-executive director of Crucial Academy.'

Yet, as Alex Harrowell points out, it's difficult to find a record of this directorship at Companies House. It doesn't seem to appear on the Crucial Academy entry or on the page where Mercer's own consultancy is listed. While there may be a valid explanation, at first sight, it does raise questions about Mercer's judgement and what exactly his role was.

Tory MP declarations and the outlook for tonight's no confidence vote in Theresa May

Election Maps UK has a crowdsourced list of declarations by Tory MPs of how they will vote in tonight's vote of confidence on Theresa May's leadership of the Party. This should be taken with a pinch of salt, as the vote itself with a secret ballot. It's currently running 170-80 in May's favour. This would see her surviving, but politically wounded, the more so if her opponents can get towards the 100 mark.

It would take a simple majority of Tory MPs to defeat May and see nominations for the leadership opened. If more than one candidate gets sufficent votes, the contest would go to the Conservative Party in the country, the first time a Prime Minister has been chosen in this way. This would greatly increase chances of a new leader prepared to opt for a 'No Deal' Brexit over Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement. This would put pressure on the Grieve/Soubry wing of moderate Brexit-critical MPs to find some way of avoiding a No Deal outcome, potentially risking the Government's majority.

Conversely, in the more likely event that May wins, the Government's majority is still at risk. The DUP will continue to oppose the Withdrawal Deal, but may nevertheless choose not to support a vote of no confidence in the Government. This political paralysis would leave the UK on course for a No Deal Brexit by default.

Thus, all paths at the moment seem to lead to new pressure on moderate Tories to find a way to avoid a deal. Their key strategist, Dominic Grieve, has much to think about.

In coming weeks, however, there are also risks for the DUP,  if opposition MPs start to cave in to Theresa May's position rather than risk No Deal. If the backstop is forced on them, the DUP may feel that they can tell their supporters they have done all they could, but would that be true if they have been sustaining the Government in the meantime? Labour's unionist-friendly rhetoric of last week may have been intended to raise that question.

Corbyn and the Czechs

This morning's Sun leads with a rather odd front page splash claiming Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn met Czech intelligence agents in the mid-1980s.

Professor Anthony Glees told the paper that "These files show there was contact between Corbyn and a Czech intelligence official, even if he did not know it." Yet this would have been true of many MPs of all parties who had contacts with East European diplomats. Indeed, the expansion of such contacts would have been one manifestation of perestroika in what was the early Gorbachev era.

Veteran investigative journalist David Leigh has said of the story, based on Czech intelligence files: ' I would guess this is just about as credible as a Sun expenses claim for 'lunch with contact'.

Leigh ought to know. His 1988 book, The Wilson Plot, documents the long running vendetta of a coterie of British intelligence officers against Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. One key source of anti-Labour smears was material provided by former Czech intelligence officer Josef Frolik.

Ian Paisley Jr facing a test of Werrity

Cross-posted from Patreon. Become a Patron!

Ian Paisley Jr is one of ten DUP MPs one whom the survival of Theresa May's Government now depends, so it is not surprising he is coming under increasing media scrutiny in the new Parliament.

On Friday, the Daily Telegraph reported that he had failed to declare £100,000 in holiday expenses paid for by the Sri Lankan Government.

In 2012, Paisley had been part of an unoffical Commons delegation to Sri Lanka, which was cancelled because of concerns about war crimes and human rights abuses by the Rajapaksa Government. In 2013, the year of Paisley's alleged undeclared visit, a previous Telegraph investigation led the Conservative Party to ban its MPs from an all-expenses paid trip to the Commonwealth Head of Government's conference in Colombo.

Paisley responded to Friday's Telegraph article with a characteristically robust denial. The paper nevertheless added some intriguing details in a follow-up story, including the claim that the holidays were organised by the Sri Lankan politician. Sajin De Vass Gunawardena.

Brexit Terms and the Commons - The Numbers for Round Two

Back in October, I looked at the likely voting numbers in the Commons ahead of Labour's motion for a parliamentary debate on Brexit strategy. Despite a notional Government majority of 16, the Government elected to accept Keir Starmer's opposition motion on 12 October, suggesting that they feared defeat.

I have updated the figures below ahead of Labour's opposition day debate on 7 December, which will call for the Government to publish a Brexit plan before invoking Article 50 to leave the European Union.

Relevant developments include by-elections in Batley and Spen (A Labour hold that was vacant in October following the murder of Jo Cox) and Richmond Park ( A Lib Dem gain), and the resignation of Stephen Phillips. The upshot is that the Government's nominal majority has fallen by 3 votes since October, although Phillips was a likely rebel.

If reports of at least 20 Tory rebels are accurate, then even with the DUP, the Government might need the support of Labour Brexiters and there are a limited number of those if the rebellion is any larger. The Government will no doubt attempt to mollify rebel backbenchers, but a climbdown may be harder than in October as Labour's demands become more concrete.

The problem with the Quilliam Foundation

This post originally appeared on openDemocracyUK on 7 November 2016.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) has a long history of fighting racism, extending back to roots in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, so its Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists published last month, attracted widespread interest from those involved in combatting Islamophobia. Unfortunately, this latest publication has been controversial because it includes Maajid Nawaz, the co-founder of the UK counter-extremist think-tank Quilliam Foundation.

Nawaz has denounced this characterisation as 'Islam-splaining', describing himself as 'a brown, liberal, reform Muslim' and denouncing his critics as the 'regressive left', a charge echoed by Nick Cohen in the Spectator. Some elements of SPLC's critique of Nawaz were indeed questionable. It is not clear that the inclusion of some of his more personal peccadilloes shed any light on the charge of extremism. To accuse any self-identified Muslim of anti-Muslim extremism should always give one pause, given the risk of setting oneself up as arbitrator of others’ religious beliefs. There should be a high bar, and the scattershot nature of some of the SPLC's criticisms suggests that bar has not been met, even if other points do illustrate the profoundly illiberal impact of Quilliam's brand of counter-subversion.

This does not mean that a Muslim can never be said to be an anti-Muslim extremist. A good example is provided by a previous row involving Quilliam and a close British analogue of the SPLC, Hope Not Hate. In December last year, Hope Not Hate published a report on the so-called 'counterjihad movement', a self-identified coalition of hardline, far-right anti-Muslim groups, which spawned among other organisations, the English Defence League in Britain.

The Brexit bonanza for border smugglers

As Theresa May meets with representatives of the devolved governments of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales today, one key issue she will have to consider is the status of the Irish border after Brexit. Despite Westminster's focus on controlling the movement of people, the movement of goods could be an equally thorny problem

The issue was highlighted recently in a parliamentary question from the Ulster Unionist MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone:

Tom Elliott: I appreciate the Secretary of State’s point about an open border with the Republic of Ireland, given that four counties of the Republic of Ireland border my constituency, but how does he envisage stopping the smuggling that may take place after Brexit?

David Davis: That is a very good and difficult question. The simple truth is that we have to make a judgment, as is the case with all borders of that nature. Norway and Sweden have a good example of an open border, as do Canada and America. There are small-scale movements, but big-scale movements can be found and dealt with.

There may be good reasons for the Brexit Secretary's preference for an open border given the basic difficulty of mounting physical controls. This is what the British Army had to say on the matter in its review of Operation Banner, it's deployment to Northern Ireland during the Troubles: 

Parliament should accept the Brexit mandate, but test its limits

It was pointed out before the EU referendum that having a popular vote to defend parliamentary sovereignty was something of a quixotic exercise. Perhaps the fact that they majority of the public voted differently to the majority of MPs suggests that they were less worried about the parliamentary bit and quite happy to assert British popular sovereignty.

The implications of this are now beginning to play out. The Telegraph reports that Theresa May intends to give notice of Britain's intent to leave the EU, under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, without further reference to Parliament. To my unpractised eye, withdrawal from a treaty looks like the kind of thing that normally falls within the royal prerogative. Yet there remains the question of whether the Government could take such an irreversible step out of the EU without Parliament having repealed the European Communities Act. Might that not be one of the domestic constitutional requirements alluded to in Article 50 itself?

There are real dangers for continuity remain MPs in taking a stand on parliamentary sovereignty, if that means directly challenging the popular mandate for Brexit. Given that there is little sign of any favourable shift in public opinion since the referendum, it risks a backlash that would entrench the Brexit majority and make any prospect of winning a different mandate in the future even more distant than it is now.

A much better strategy is to focus on the limits of that mandate. The Leave campaign during the referendum deliberately avoided putting forward a single policy model for Brexit, which in itself suggests that any given model might be less popular than Brexit itself. Some Brexit campaigners, such as Dan Hannan, argued for a Swiss or Norwegian model that included freedom of movement, something that was anathema to many others.

It will be that the latter group included the great majority of Brexit voters, but the majority of a majority is not necessary itself a majority. Parliament therefore has every right to hold the Government to account over the type of relationship with Europe that it seeks. In this respect, today's statement from Labour's Barry Gardiner hit just the right note:

“Those commentators who argue that the Prime Minister should circumvent a parliamentary vote and use the Royal Prerogative to leave the EU should consider what constitutional precedent they seek to invoke.

“The logic of saying the Prime Minister can trigger Article 50 without first setting out to parliament the terms and basis upon which her government seeks to negotiate; indeed without even indicating the red lines she will seek to protect, would be to diminish parliament and assume the arrogant powers of a Tudor monarch.

"Parliament cannot be side-lined from the greatest constitutional change our country has debated in forty years.”

This amounts to a call for Parliament to have a say over the process, not a veto over the Brexit mandate. It might seem flawed, in that the Brexit process can only start when Article 50 has been invoked, but Theresa May has effectively conceded the point by saying that she will not trigger article 50 until a UK approach and objectives have been established. Parliament is surely entitled to satisfy itself that this is the case.

In this situation, a Corbyn-led Labour Party would need to raise its parliamentary game. But Owen Smith's strategy of calling for a second popular vote may not be ideal either. Launching a frontal assault on the Brexit mandate may be helpful to him in the Labour leadership contest, but it provides ammunition to populist euro-scepticism without actually strengthening Parliament's hand. If as Smith says, there is a anti-Brexit majority in Parliament, then the aim should be to challenge not the principle but the concrete implementation of Brexit, and to stand up for all those constituencies which the Leave campaign said would not be harmed by Brexit (workers, farmers, current foreign residents, Scotland, Northern Ireland, etc).

If the Government's plan failed to stand up to that scrutiny, it might be the Brexit camp which would be forced to seek a new popular mandate on a much more concrete prospectus. Euro-sceptics would undoubtedly feel aggrieved by such an outcome, but it would be the product of their strategy in the first referendum. Right now, they would probably win that renewed mandate, but it is impossible to know what the political landscape will look like in 2020.

Whether this strategy is realistic depends ultimately on whether that notional pro-European majority in Parliament still exists in the face of the referendum outcome and the disappearance of Cameron-Osborne patronage.

 

 

Labour's future: The case for a progressive alliance

The debate over Labour's future has seen a number of interesting contributions in the last day or two, looking beyond the immediate struggle between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith. This is perhaps related to the fact that the faultline over the leadership runs straight through the soft left, from which this spate of contributions has come.

This is most apparent in the case of Owen Jones, whose critique of Corbyn is being heavily parsed on Twitter. Other key contributions come from Paul Mason and Neal Lawson, both of whom raise the possibility of a progressive alliance between Labour and other left of centre parties. It may be significant that this idea was also canvassed by shadow defence secretary Clive Lewis in an interview with Jones.

I think Ellie-Mae O'Hagan may be right to suggest that Jones's piece is less about an opening to Owen Smith's leadership challenge, than a reflection on the consequences of a very likely Corbyn victory. It is worth noting Neal Lawson's observation that ' The likely reality of course is not just that Jeremy will win, but that his successor will come from the same vein within the party.' Owen Jones has in the past canvassed the scenario that this handover might take place before a general election. Such questions may well come to the fore within Labour if Smith is defeated.

As regards the strategy rather than the personalities, I've left the following thoughts on a progressive alliance in a comment on Paul Mason's post:

The idea of a cross-party progressive movement against a hard Brexit is an important one, but it might be a mistake to present it as a short-term answer to the question of a Corbynite election strategy. Starting off with debates around electoral pacts and PR, pushes it straight into the arena where partisan interests are strongest.

Surely, it’s better to keep the focus on policies where common interests are strongest. One, maybe old-fashioned, model might be a platform like Charter 88, bringing together multiple parties with organised civil society institutions, unions etc, as well as stigmergic networks.

The role of those institutions would be to give the coalition sufficient heft to ensure that the various opposition parties voted together enough to exploit any cracks in the Tory majority. In effect, we need an extra-parliamentary movement for a parliamentary opposition.

As much as we shouldn’t fetishize Westminster, Tory hegemony may actually be weaker there than in the media. Indeed, Osborne’s strength may have been in using the latter to bolster the former, cultivating the lobby to psych the PLP about legislative ‘traps’.

A few Government defeats might improve morale across the board and open up space for larger discussions. This maybe assumes that there won’t be an early election, but it’s hard to see an electoral alliance being negotiatied ahead of an autumn poll, in any case.

I've also storified some similar thoughts on Twitter: