Brexit Finally Gets A Look In During The Brexit Election

Timmy NoVotes grilled by Andy NoQualms

Brexit finally got to the centre of the stage in the election campaign yesterday.  Theresa May gave a speech on it, which sort of confirmed the impression she has been giving that she is firmly in the hard brexit camp.  While short on detail it was long on the kind of rhetoric that I assume leavers like.  Given that she now heads a coalition that includes former voters that makes sense.  I don’t think it was interesting or surprising enough to have any big impact on the course of the election, but given that the Conservatives seem to be solidly in at the very least the low forties and probably in the mid forties in the opinion polls not rocking the boat is pretty much what she needs to do.


Labour on the other hand did finally start to make some noise on the subject in the form of announcing their Brexit negotiation team.  This is pretty much the Labour A team.   It is Kier Starmer, Emily Thornberry and Barry Gardiner.   I don’t think the party has a better set of people available for the job.  Lets leave aside the possibility that Labour might win and that they might actually have the job of doing the negotiating.  Labour isn’t going to win.  But they should be able to set up an alternative narrative to the Tory one going forward.  That can only be a good thing.

I can’t help pondering that the ideal outcome from the election would be a hung parliament with numbers that forced a three party arrangement.  I don’t think that is mathematically possible under any circumstances in the British system.   But it is what is needed right now.  The ideal team would be Kier Starmer, Nick Clegg and Philip Hammond.  I know that supergroups like Crosby, Stills and Nash often don’t live up to their expectations, but when your expectations are as low as mine that doesn’t really matter.

The other thing that happened yesterday was a really weird interview between Tim Farron and Andrew Neil.  Normally good natured and well behaved, Tim suddenly revealed his naughty side.  He continually refused to answer the questions and instead talked over Neil with a load of obviously pre-prepared stuff including a pile of folksy but not all that relevant reminiscences.  It was most peculiar.  I imagine the thinking was that the Lib Dems have been largely ignored in this election and that he needed to make a splash.  As strategies go it wasn’t a bad one.  And it might even be the best one available.   There is no such thing as bad publicity in politics.  But just because it is the best thing to do doesn’t make it a good thing to do.  I have a feeling that people who haven’t even considered voting Lib Dem this time will now have considered it and decided to reject it.  Of all the party leaders at the start of this election I would have said that Tim Farron was the one most likely to come out the other side still holding onto his job.  After yesterday I am not so sure.