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Observer book of the week

The politics professor deftly chronicles the errors and ideologies that have brought the post-Brexit Conservative party to the brink of ungovernability

Sun 26 Mar 2023 02.00 EDT

Napoleon was history on a horse. Since the Brexit referendum, Britain has been history in a clown car. We are now on our fifth prime minister in the six tumultuous years since that fateful vote. Some describe this revolving door of chaos as the Italianisation of our politics. Many have marvelled at how a country that used to have an international reputation as boringly predictable has so often resembled a banana republic with crap weather. And these years of almost unremitting mayhem have been unleashed by the Conservatives, a party that traditionally marketed itself as made up of hard-headed realists who could be relied on to provide stable, credible and professional government.

A lot has been written about what the Brexit misadventure has inflicted upon our country. Here, Tim Bale, one of the very best of our political historians, examines what it has done to the Conservative party. He contends persuasively that the Brexit virus has transformed the Tories from a mainstream party of the centre-right into an unstable amalgam of radical rightwing populists, hyper-libertarians and market fundamentalists.

The Conservatives the clue was in the name used to be the party that revered and defended the institutions. Now Tories act like or at least think it convenient to pose as an anti-establishment outfit. Which requires epic amounts of cheek, given theyve been ruling for nearly 13 years. They rage not just about the woke and lefty laywers, but also against the judiciary, the civil service, parliamentary scrutiny, the universities, the BBC, the Bank of England, the CBI and any of the other shadowy forces determined to deny the people the common sense policies they supposedly long for. Traditional Tories used to flinch at ideological fanaticism, thinking both themselves and Britain best served by the pragmatic adaptation to circumstances. Juvenile zealotry and extreme partisanship have become very prevalent in todays Tory party.

The author is an expert, deft and fluent guide to the story. He brings clarity of explanation to even the most tortuous twists of the tale while offering penetrating and frequently caustic commentary on the consequences, many of them never intended by their architects.

One of his compelling themes is the disproportionate power of what he calls the party in the media by which he principally means the rightwing press. They have been significant actors by being hugely influential over Tory members and MPs as well as possessing an outsize voice in the national conversation. Without their clamorous support for the enterprise, which had been preceded by years in which they fomented hostility towards the EU, you can make a strong argument that Brexit would not have happened at all. The rightwing media also played a critical role in propelling the UK towards a much harder form of Brexit than could be rationally justified by the closeness of the referendum result (52-48) or the great economic hazards entailed in opting for an especially severe form of rupture with the UKs most important trading partners. It was in part to pander to them that Theresa May embarked on the withdrawal negotiations with delusionally uncompromising positions. When she declared, to the horror of key members of her cabinet, that she would be prepared to walk away with no deal at all, the rightwing press was ecstatic. STEEL OF THE NEW IRON LADY blared the front page of the Daily Mail, with an accompanying cartoon of May standing in defiant pose on a chalk cliff, the union jack fluttering on a flagpole behind her and the EU flag underfoot. Even the usually more temperate Times went with: May to EU: give us a fair deal or youll be crushed. As Bale drolly notes, it was never convincingly explained how the UK was going to crush the collective strength of the EUs 27 member states.

The Tory party in the media played an equally baleful role during the pandemic by allying with the anti-lockdown libertarians in the Conservative parliamentary party and amplifying their opposition to life-saving restrictions. On the telling of Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson regarded the Daily Telegraph as his real boss. It was not just Johnsons own libertarian impulses, it was also fear of provoking opposition from the rightwing media that resulted in him introducing measures to curb the virus later and more feebly than he ought to have done.

Another theme of these torrid years is weak prime ministers presiding over hideously dysfunctional regimes at Number 10. The strong and stable May became flimsy and ever more wobbly after an atrocious election campaign in which she threw away her parliamentary majority. Johnson won a near-landslide in December 2019, but had little idea what to do with office other than pig out on its perks. Truss was an excruciatingly bad communicator with a calamitously dreadful plan. A run of low-calibre leaders has been accompanied by a collapse in the deference Tory MPs used to display towards their chiefs to the point where it is now regularly suggested that the party has essentially become ungovernable. The factionalising of the parliamentary party has seen its MPs divide themselves up into an alphabet soup of agitative groups. Theres the belligerently anti-woke Common Sense Group. The anti-lockdowners organised themselves into the Covid Recovery Group. Then theres the Northern Research Group, representing red wall Tories. These titles were adopted in conscious imitation of the most potent of the parties-within-a-party, the European Research Group, the voice of the Brextremists. The ERG has often been lampooned as a collection of monomaniacs, oddballs and fruitcakes, but by god, have they been successful in imposing what was once a very fringe agenda on the government and therefore on the country. At the time of the referendum in 2016, the great majority of the Cameron cabinet and most Conservative MPs backed remain. By the time of the exit from the EU, the cabinet was packed with Brexiters and the ERG had played an instrumental role in impelling the UK into a rock-hard form of departure that had never been on the original prospectus of the leavers.

Yet what exactly has their triumph been for? The penalties for Brexit are as legion as they are more and more manifest. Pollsters report that increasingly large majorities of the public now wish the UK had never left the EU. Even the fiercest advocates of the enterprise struggle to enumerate any tangible benefits. This excellent book opens with an apposite quotation from Polybius: Those who know how to win are much more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories. May interpreted Brexit as being centrally about taking back control of Britains borders. For Johnson, it was, at least rhetorically, if not much in reality, about levelling up the left-behind areas of the country that had expressed their discontent by voting leave. For Truss, it was all about purging Britain of the EU-inspired rules and regulations that had purportedly been holding back the UKs growth potential for decades. She grabbed the premiership by persuading Tory party members that she knew where to find the end of the rainbow and the pot of Brexit gold that had eluded her predecessors. At the time of the maxi-disaster of the mini-budget, the rightwing media was in raptures. AT LAST! A TRUE TORY BUDGET enthused the Daily Mail in gushing admiration of Truss and Kwamikaze Kwarteng and their slug of recklessly unfunded tax cuts. KWARTS NOT TO LIKE? asked the Sun. Financial markets answered that question by dumping UK debt, crashing the pound and pushing mortgage costs up to levels not seen in decades. Truss sacked her chancellor. A few days after that, she was obliged to sack herself. The foundational myth of Brexit, that British governments would henceforth have the freedom to do pretty much what they wanted, ought surely to have been exploded by Trusss self-immolating experiment.

Mad Queen Liz gained the unenviable distinction of becoming the briefest prime minister in our history. That was not the only dismal new record set in this period. Bad King Boris was the first to be sacked as prime minister by his own MPs for lacking the basic probity to hold the office.

The arrival of Rishi Sunak at Number 10 has prompted debate about whether we are witnessing a reversion to something more resembling an orthodox Tory government. Boring is back, claims Michael Gove. Bale cautions us against investing too heavily in this idea that the Conservatives are morphing back into a more conventional centre-right party. He registers the irony that they are now led by an incredibly rich Atlantic-hopping member of the global elite, precisely the kind of citizen of nowhere scorned by May in her first conference speech as prime minister. Yet Bale also notes that in his appointments, such as Suella Braverman as home secretary, and in some of his rhetoric, Sunak is as ready as May, Johnson and Truss to try to exploit populist tropes at the same time as being ultra-Thatcherite in many of his attitudes towards society.

Bale concludes with another warning, this time for all those who ache to see them out of office: support for the Tories in their current incarnation might just prove more resilient than many of their opponents imagine. He would not yet bet the farm on them losing the next election. However dreadful they so often are at governing, the Tories have a history of being scarily successful at winning power.

Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer

The Conservative Party After Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation by Tim Bale is published by Polity (25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

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The Conservative Party After Brexit by Tim Bale review why conservatism turned into chaos - The Guardian

When Jesse Ventura speaks at the Minnesota State Capitol, people listen. And it is only partly due to the fact that he often speaks very loudly.

The former one-term governor remains a celebrity in state politics, and his appearances can draw crowds and attention. Such was the case earlier this month when he testified on an issue at the core of his political persona. Senate File 1827 would make it much harder some say impossible for a third party to achieve major party status.

Major party status means the party can automatically qualify its primary election winner for the general election, whereas minor parties must follow a process of signature gathering to place candidates on the ballot. Under current law, when a candidate from a minor party wins 5% of a statewide vote, that party achieves major party status and enjoys the benefits for the next two years.

But the bill brought by House and Senate DFL sponsors and supported by the chairs of both the state DFL and Republican parties would increase the vote threshold to win major party status from 5% to 10%.

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During fiery testimony before the Senate Elections Committee, Ventura blasted the major parties and accused them of trying to stifle other viewpoints.

If these rules had been in place back in 1998, the state of Minnesota would not have had a chance to elect Gov. Jesse Ventura, he said. Im sure that pleases both of the parties because I believe that is why this is being done, so there can never be another Gov. Jesse Ventura. The people of Minnesota wont be able to shock the world again.

Ventura in 1998 ran on the Reform Party ticket, a party that had gained major party status in the 1996 election when Dean Barkley won 6.98% of the vote as a candidate for U.S. Senate. During that same election, however, Ross Perot won 11.75% as the Reform Party candidate for president, so it would have had major party status by 1998 even under a 10% threshold.

Still, his plurality victory over GOP nominee Norm Coleman and DFL nominee Hubert Skip Humphrey was a surprise, one that Ventura said on election night would shock the world.

Sponsors of the 10% bill point to recent struggles that the two most recent major parties the Legal Marijuana Now Party and Grassroots Legal Cannabis Party have had with their new status. As minor parties, party offices and active members have control over which candidates run under the party name. They lose that control when they become major parties when anyone with money for a filing fee can enter the party primary.

In 2020, the DFL and some in the legalization parties complained that candidates with GOP leanings filed as legalization candidates to skim votes from DFL nominees. In at least one case, the defeat of once and future incumbent Rep. Brad Tabke was blamed on a questionable legalization candidate. (Tabke ran again in 2022 and won his seat back.)

In 2021, a bill with DFL sponsorship would have given a major party a legal path to challenge in court any insincere candidates. It went nowhere. In 2022, DFL and legal marijuana advocates launched efforts to convince legalization voters to support DFLers rather than legalization party candidates as the best way to pass recreational marijuana.

Now comes SF1827 and its House counterpart, House File 2802.

It makes it much more difficult to do whats called spoilers, to put spoilers on the ballot, said Senate Elections Committee chair and bill sponsor Jim Carlson, DFL-Eagan. Theres been a lot of mischief around the state, and its been more than one party. House Sponsor, Rep. Luke Frederick, DFL-Mankato, called what happened with the questionable marijuana legalization candidates shenanigans.

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The chairs of both the DFL and GOP parties submitted letters of support.

Ken Martin

GOP chair David Hann said making it harder to be considered a major party under state law will save taxpayer time and resources, minimize voter confusion, and improve administration of our states elections. Hann also said because all major parties receive money via the states public financing of campaigns, a higher threshold will help improve stewardship of taxpayer dollars.

MinnPost photo by Tony Nelson

Minnesota Republican Party Chair David Hann

Both chairs said minor parties could still gain access to the ballot through nominating petitions with signatures totalling 1% of the vote in the last election for that office.

Secretary of State Steve Simon has not taken a position on the bill.

Oliver Steinberg

Grassroots Legalize Cannabis failed to meet the 5% threshold at the 2020 and 2022 elections and is no longer treated as a major party. Legal Marijuana Now, however, retains that status due to winning 5.9% of the vote in the 2020 U.S. Senate general election.

Other minor party members were much less enthused with the 10% bill.

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I hope you guys are all proud of yourselves for putting this forth, former Libertarian Party candidate Chris Holbrook told the House Elections Committee. Im assuming thats why you all ran for office, to use the power of law to ban your opponents from running for office.

MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan

Chris Holbrook

Chip Tangen said he attempted to run for secretary of state as a Libertarian but failed because, unlike what Martin described as the need for a nominal number of signatures, it is difficult.

There are 201 seats in the state Legislature, he told the House committee. Since the year 2000, a total of 12 Libertarians have managed to claw their way onto the ballot through petitioning. Parties must collect signatures in a two-week window in the spring, they must use legal-sized pages and signers must ink a pledge that says they will not take part in any other partys process.

Cara Schulz, a Burnsville City Council member, suggested letting minor parties have conventions and then be allowed to place their nominated candidates on the general election ballot. But bills to reduce the odds of them making major party status were a means of killing competition.

If you want to abuse your power to keep your power, just push this bill forward, she said. And Phil Fuehrer, the chair of the Independence Party, said the bill is being pushed with anecdotes without acknowledging how difficult it is to reach 5% of the general election vote. Since 2002, he said, 101 candidates have run from 20 third parties, and just three have achieved major party status.

Richard Winger is a writer who follows election law nationally, especially how it treats access to the ballot for third parties. He said that while Minnesota is one of 21 states that makes a legal distinction between major and minor parties, other states allow third parties on the ballot without petitioning like Minnesota does.

Minor parties cannot thrive in a system in which all of their nominees have to file difficult petitions, Winger told the Senate committee. And Minnesotas petitions for independent candidates are miserable. Winger also responded to sponsors claims that a 10% vote threshold is comparable to other states. Only two states match that total Virginia and New Jersey and only one is higher with Alabamas 20%.

Minnesota is already one of the most difficult states in the union, Winger wrote in response to an email. The Minnesota vote test for being a qualified party is 5%, but the median vote test in the 50 states is only 2%. As one of the Libertarian witnesses said, the Libertarian Party at one time or another has been a qualified party in 44 states, but never Minnesota. So already Minnesota is unusually difficult.

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The House committee held the bill for possible inclusion in an omnibus bill. The Senate bill was approved by the elections committee on a party line vote.

You might have seen the letters (from the two party chairs) and thought this was a unified agreement that we came in with ahead of time, said Sen. Andrew Mathews, R-Princeton. That is not the case.

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Jesse Ventura, others oppose restricting major party' in Minnesota elections - MinnPost

Most people have no idea that pinball was illegal in New York from the early 1940s until 1976, when a journalist named Roger Sharpe finally won his crusade against the city to free the flippers.

The story of that insane ban is the subject of the new movie Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game, which Richard Brody of The New Yorker called "better than all ten of the Best Picture nominees."

The film is written and directed by Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg, longtime producers at Reason best known for collaborating with Remy on his massively popular song parodies and for making libertarian versions (often featuring Andrew Heaton) of Star Trek, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and other pop culture franchises. A production of MPI Original Films, Pinball is available for streaming on Apple TV, Google Play, Amazon Prime Video, and other platforms.

I talked with the Bragg brothers about how they came to tell Roger Sharpe's story, what goes into making the perfect satire in an era when reality is far stranger than anything we can imagine, and the libertarian message of Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game.

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The Bragg Brothers: Remy Videos, Libertarian Parodies, and 'Pinball.' - Reason

For a group of people eager to position themselves as thought leaders this was not exactly a PR triumph. Others in the industry saw the display as counterproductive.

Theres a universal agreement that libertarian VCs screaming for bailout money was not helpful, said one person involved in managing Silicon Valleys response to the crisis, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about tech industry peers. Elevating startup founders or even business owners outside of tech those are better faces for the industry than a guy in Atherton whos scared that his portfolio companies might get hit.

At the same time, anticipation was growing for some VC comeuppance, among tech critics on Washington Twitter.

Uninsured depositors who are sophisticated risk-managers are going to take a loss. There is no bailout here, tweeted Matt Stoller of the Economic Liberties Project, which advocates for more aggressive federal intervention to counter monopolies.

The stage looked set for a big, messy collision between two countervailing forces. Except that turned out to be little more than a revenge fantasy.

In fact, Washington was ready and willing to step in. Coming off a historically bad year for bond markets, Silicon Valley Bank was far from the only depository institution to take a huge hit on its bond portfolio. And Silicon Valley startups were far from the only businesses with huge piles of uninsured cash inside banks.

And most of Silicon Valley was earnestly happy to have the help. Good news, Sacks tweeted, with an applause emoji, when the Fed, Treasury and FDIC announced their rescue plan.

Does this mean the end of the sparring between the Valley and the capital? Of course not.

Now that Silicon Valley has what it wants from Washington, the VCs may be free to go back to plotting the capitals planned obsolescence. And members of Congress want to keep hauling Big Tech CEOs before them for browbeatings.

But both sides have quite a bit at stake, and as the SVB collapse makes clear they know it.

Washington needs tech entrepreneurs to stay in the U.S., and not get too disillusioned. As the current generation of Silicon Valley offerings make it easier than ever to start a global business from anywhere, the possibility that the next generation of global tech giants arise somewhere other than the U.S. has become more real.

Washington needs tech entrepreneurs to stay in the U.S., and not get too disillusioned.|J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

As for Big Tech as those once-nimble startups have matured into corporate giants, theyve become more and more tethered to the federal government. As Amazon and Facebook explore fields like drone delivery and payments, their collisions with government policymakers like the FAA and state money transmission authorities become more frequent and consequential.

This has affected their corporate cultures, according to Nu Wexler, a former congressional aide and veteran of Google and Facebook who now works in public relations. The companies were more libertarian just because they were operating in more unregulated spaces, he said.

Last year, even as Elon Musk railed against the powers that be on Twitter, his network of satellites was helping to keep Ukraine online as it responded to Russias invasion. Even Thiel, despite his libertarian provocations, is financially intertwined with the Pentagon and the intelligence community, some of the biggest customers for his data analytics company, Palantir.

The libertarian ethos of startups and their most vocal backers may be in for some tempering, too. Last year, A16Zs Katherine Boyle published an investing thesis titled Building American Dynamism that called for building companies that support the national interest, including in national security. Once, in Silicon Valley, the idea of American dynamism might have seemed cornily patriotic. Today, at A16Z, its just the name of a fund.

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When Silicon Valley Libertarians Realized They Needed the Government, and Vice Versa - POLITICO

MONTPELIER On the day after Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to reestablish diplomatic relations widely seen as helpful to efforts to end the civil war in Yemen the Vermont Progressive Party State Committee unanimously endorsed resolutions calling on Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., to introduce legislation to permanently stop U.S. complicity in the Yemen war.

The resolution fell on the heels of Yemen war protests in Brattleboro, Burlington and Norwich, calling on Sanders, Balint and Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., to introduce a new Yemen War Powers Resolution. Vermont protests were planned in coordination with similar protests across the country.

The Vermont Progressive Party calls on Vermonts congressional delegation to lead the way in reorienting U.S. foreign policy to peace and justice, prioritizing human life and global cooperation over domination and exploitation, the partys state committee resolved earlier this month. It further resolved: The Vermont Progressive Party calls on Sen. Bernie Sanders to reintroduce the Yemen War Powers Resolution in the U.S. Senate before the 8th anniversary of the war on March 25. Furthermore, the party calls on Rep. Becca Balint to co-lead the introduction of this resolution in the House before March 25th.

Olga Mardach-Duclerc, the chair of the Libertarian Party of Vermont, said her party urges Senator Sanders and the rest of the Vermont delegation to stand up to the warmongers in D.C., in true representation of the will of Vermonters, and reintroduce the Yemen War Powers Resolution. ... The Libertarian Party continues to call for an immediate end to U.S. support of genocide.

If the Yemen War Powers Resolution is brought to the floor for a vote, Congress could order the president to end U.S. participation in the conflict. Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Sanders sponsored last years bipartisan bill, which was cosponsored by over 130 members of Congress.

Activists say starvation and disease are a daily presence in Yemen; millions of children are malnourished and two-thirds of the country is in need of humanitarian aid. Saudi Arabias blockade is said to drive the crisis. For example, almost no containerized goods have been able to enter Yemens principal port of Hodeida since 2017, depriving the Yemeni people of medical supplies and other essential goods.

The Saudi-led war on Yemen could not have started or continued, for eight years, without U.S. support. The war was announced from Washington, D.C., and it is time that its end is also announced from D.C., said Dr. Aisha Jumaan, founder and president of the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation.

Organizations that signed the call to protest the war included the foundation, the Yemeni Alliance Committee, About Face: Veterans Against War, Veterans for Peace, Progressive Democrats of America, the Libertarian Institute, Avaaz, CODEPINK, Peace Action, United for Peace and Justice, Democratic Socialists of America International Committee, Womens League for International Peace and Freedom, U.S. section, among others.

Saturday will mark the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the Saudi-led coalitions bombing of Yemen. To mark the occasion, at noon that day, Action Corps will join Peace Action, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Yemeni groups, and others from the U.S. and U.K. for an online rally to build momentum to end the war in Yemen. Confirmed speakers include Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Ro Khanna, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Dr. Shireen Al-Adeimi, and the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis.

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Vermont's Progressive and Libertarian parties call for Yemen ... - Brattleboro Reformer