The UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, went on a walking holiday in Wales, then came back to London and announced a general election in her country. Something fresh in the Welsh air perhaps? Or an Easter epiphany? Neither. Simply power politics at play, in the mother of all parliaments.
Jeremy
Corbyn, leader of the opposition British Labour Party, has already
said he favours an election, so he and the majority of his fellow
opposition Members of Parliament (MPs) will vote in favour of
overturning the Fixed Term Parliaments' Act, which was meant to spare
citizens the ordure of electioneering and the boredom of voting,
while securing stability at levels of governance and administration,
even though the civil service and the large corporations run the UK,
more a permanent government than a fixed-term one.
The MPs'
vote takes place today (19.4.2017) and Theresa May will have her way. Voters
in the UK will face towards the 8th June general election
with dread, fear and some excitement. Many will echo the discontent
voiced by Bristol resident Brenda, who groaned 'not another one'.
And, no, the parliamentarians are not joking.
Exactly
why Theresa May pulled an election bunny out of her Easter bonnet is
revealed by a consideration of her position, as she leads the UK
negotiations to leave the European Union (EU). She knows that
delivering on the two big elements: full control of immigration and
disengagement from the European market; is not wholly feasible.
Compromise will be required in the face of pressures from the
European Union, from her own civil service and the major corporations
who make profits in the UK and other countries in Europe. She needs
more seats on her team, so that when things get sticky, she can tell
her hard-core Euro-sceptics to sit on their hands, while she accepts
the support of her own newly-elected acolytes on the government
benches in Westminster.
This is
the kind of move that makes UK subjects who voted for Brexit nervous.
If the Fixed Term Parliaments' Act can be by-passed as neatly as a
traffic accident on the M25 round London, then what's to stop Theresa
May and others from pulling a similar stunt on the actuality of
Brexit?
All of
this should give some hope to opposition parties, but, political
matters being so Brexit-spancilled at present, all the opposition
parties can do is dance around the May pole and finish up pretty much
where they started, which for the Liberal Democrats means a few extra
seats and a notion of yet another weakly-glimmering false dawn and, for the
British Labour Party, a full-blown reality annihilation following the
virtual one the party has been living through for months.
It's hard
to make predictions, beyond likely a hefty increase in seats for
Tories, a few more for the Liberal Democrats, a thumping loss for
Jeremy Corbyn and his colleagues, the Scottish Nationalists taking a
small dip, mainly due to election fatigue, and Nigel Farage's
farrago, UKIP, gone altogether, because they're wannabe Tories
anyway.
Meanwhile,
in Northern Ireland, (do we hear Theresa May call 'where?') attempts
to forge a legislative assembly, with a functioning executive, from
the base metal conjured out of the most recent election (Brendas
across all six counties of the region are scunnered with the
politicking) are likely to be deferred/postponed/kicked wildly into
touch. Subjects and citizens alike will wait. Yet again.
Because
nothing is ever fixed or permanent, when it comes to power and the
terms on which it serves itself, first and foremost. Theresa May
returned from her walking holiday in Wales, kept her hiking boots on
and trod the people’s interests into the mud round Westminster,
raised two fingers to stability, while lilting in a lyrical Welsh
brogue
Theresa
May yn ei wneud wrth iddi ewyllysiau.
Theresa
May do as she will.
No comments:
Post a Comment