Frank Field, the veteran Labour MP, made a startling claim the other day in support of his longstanding antipathy to the EU. “If you want to have a pop at the government don’t wait until the general election,” he advised Labour-voting readers of the Times. Vote for Brexit on 23 June, he suggested, and give David Cameron “a punch on the nose”.
It must be a tempting thought on day one of the “official campaign” – it’s apparently been a bad tempered phoney war up to now – when a Telegraph poll reports a closing gap and many Labour voters still don’t know their diffident party’s position.
Now Field is a clever chap. MP for Birkenhead long enough (1979-) to have been persecuted by boneheads of the Militant Tendency, he makes shrewd observations about Labour’s protracted failure to recognise the hopes and fears of working-class voters who have deserted to Ukip.
In his capacity as chair of the Commons work and pensions select committee he has also made a good start in holding to account “King” Phil Green over the BHS debacle. Good luck, Frank!
But Field has always been a failure in the low politics side of an MP’s skill set: how to work with less able colleagues, when to grease the boss, when to shut up. Having likened Gordon Brown’s distracted manner to “the first Mrs Rochester” (Brown can spot that Jane Eyre reference) he still hoped to get a job from him in 2007, having lasted a single year under Tony Blair. What a waste, Frank!
But using the Brexit debate to further unrelated political ends is a dangerous business, dishonourable, too, by Field’s famously fastidious standards. People do use referendums as a stick to beat an incumbent government, we know that. But they shouldn’t. As all successful GCSE candidates know, they should answer the question they were asked.
That’s why Cameron should have followed the precedent set by the Tory heroine Margaret Thatcher when she signed the integrationist Single European Act (1986) and gave not a moment’s thought to a referendum: to her generation it was what Mussolini would have done. Besides, she was a leader, so she led.
By contrast, Dithering Dave followed Tony Benn, an unworldly fellow posh boy who did his own side a lot of harm, not least via the Brexit referendum of 1975 which he devised (expecting to win) shortly after dropping the Wedgwood bit of his name.
Field, who has long joined forces with Tory moderate Nick Soames (a pro-European Etonian) to warn against excess immigration, thinks that by dangling Tory turmoil in front of their noses he can beef up the Brexit vote among angry working-class Labour voters, some of them his Merseyside constituents.
At least as likely, as wholesome Tory pundit Tim Montgomerie countered (paywall), it will drive risk-averse voters of all classes, keen to avoid more instability in an increasingly unstable world, to support the status quo. Not everyone is angry, some are merely mildly upset but in full possession of their faculties.
That must be why craftier remain politicians like Ken Clarke (he was a minister for every day of the Tories’ 18-year rule, Frank) also warn that Cameron wouldn’t last “30 seconds” if Brexit wins on 23 June. He gets it.
Even clunky Brexiter Chris Grayling says there’s no need for Cameron to go if defeated. He must have noticed that the PM’s personal ratings remain quite high, despite the battering he’s getting. Ready for Boris Trump anyone? Perhaps not.
The important point here is that we cannot be sure of the politics that will flow from the referendum verdict – whichever way it goes – any more than we can of the economics.
Both sides make spine-chilling claims about the end of the world, even London house prices falling or VAT cuts to energy bills. My, my, that’s £112bn we’ve already spent of those Brexit “savings” of £10bn.
Sensible people say Britain will muddle through whatever happens and that hard choices won’t go away. But most grown-ups with any expertise in their field (science, medicine, farming, money and manufacturing etc) look at the numbers and conclude, often unenthusiastically, that the downside risks of leaving are too high.
Let’s stick to the politics. An Irishman living in Britain (yes, he can vote, thanks) tells me he will be voting for Brexit to “hasten a united Ireland”, much as some Scots will do the same because they think that result will trigger a second Scottish independence referendum. That’s why those magnificently transparent opportunists who run Sinn Féin are also on the remain side nowadays.
They all may be right, but I would not bet the farm on it. People also sidle up to me and say, “If Brexit wins Ireland would end up leaving the EU too, you do realise, though no one says so”. Independent Scotland and a 32-county Ireland would be expensive hobbies, fit for poets and dreamers.
Talking of Jeremy Corbyn, he’s getting it in the neck from both directions. His attempt to square his own leftwing, siege-economy instincts with the pro-EU insistence of his shadow cabinet is leaving voters confused and colleagues frustrated.
Yet Tory Brexiters like Peter Oborne berate him, Frank Field-style, for betraying his beliefs and the working class. That sounds like very romantic officer class stuff.
So, as usual, Corbyn risks falling between several stools. It’s not hard to feel sorry for him, he makes little impact beyond the Corbynite base which, being essentially introverted, is quite happy to watch the world whizz past.
That may be why some backbench Tories no one has heard of, like Andrew Bridgen MP, and some voters unfortunately know too well, like Nadine Dorries, are treating themselves to “plotting” a vote of no confidence in Dave, who must be reassured by the idiotic sight of them. Even Field spots their weakness. Who says all MPs are out of touch elitists when they have Andrew and Nadine in their ranks?
Win or lose, my current hunch is that Cameron will soldier on for a while, patch up the cabinet and try to make the best of whichever hand he is dealt, hoping most MPs will cold-shoulder overexcited colleagues who, on left or right, always put purity before pragmatism and power for a purpose.
Dave knows shifty Boris too well (is he for or against Turkish EU entry this week?) to pass the reins to him without a fight on George Osborne’s doomed behalf, though I would watch Theresa May. She has played a very crafty campaign so far, just got on with her job, so busy she has little time to say much.
The truth is we are living through times as uncertain as I can remember since the Cuban missile crisis – here’s Chomsky’s version, too. And today the nationalist backlash is everywhere. Watching Donald Trump making glib and ignorant promises to US bikers and veterans at the Rolling Thunder rally increasingly inclines me to the ugly realisation that he may now beat Always Beatable Hillary for the White House. British emigrant Andrew Sullivan calls this an “extinction level event”, such as the dinosaurs encounter with the asteroid.
If so, Trump will be helped by Bernie Sanders supporters, educated young women among them, who have enjoyed feeling the Bern and think that switching their allegiance to The Donald will prolong the warm experience. In other words, disorientated confusion rules in a world where French ex-communists vote for Marine le Pen like turkeys for Christmas and German neo-Nazis favour Brexit.
No wonder a Labour politician whose name I’m not allowed to mention wrote at the weekend that half the Brexit camp will vote in fear and disgust at globalisation and what it means for them in terms of jobs, social protection and a changing society: understandable, they’ve been let down, but shortsighted.
The other half, the ones who will be in charge, will vote Brexit to get rid of namby pamby EU regulation and social protection. They want less regulation and more immigration, more free trade and fewer benefits, Thatcherism Plus. If the boring “elite” is for remain, the pirates are for Leave.EU. Spread-bet tycoon Captain Jack Sparrow is aboard the Jolly Brexit with Long John Silver, the Mayfair hedge fund manager, on the bridge.
We cannot be sure what will happen after 23 June. But it won’t be dull.
