Theresa May prepares to speak to the media outside 10 Downing Street, in central London, April 18, 2017.
By Stefan Wermuth/Reuters.
It is one of the great ironies of Brexit that the United Kingdom’s messy divorce from Europe, sold as an effort to reclaim parliamentary sovereignty, has instead delivered its opposite. Last Monday, the House of Commons voted in the early stages of the European Union Withdrawal Bill to give the government sweeping powers to make laws without parliamentary scrutiny. These powers are named after Henry VIII, England’s most authoritarian monarch, but they in fact bear a greater resemblance to Hitler’s Enabling Act of 1933, which allowed the Fuhrer to bypass the Reichstag and govern by proclamation.
Allusions to Nazi Germany are generally overwrought, but this is no exaggeration: Prime Minister Theresa Maydoes not have an absolute majority in the British Parliament, just as Hitler didn’t in the Reichstag in 1933, which is why she has been forced to resort to his strategy. If the withdrawal bill is passed as it stands, May will be able to make laws by decree and reverse and adapt primary legislation without consulting Parliament. It is the greatest attack on the British constitution in at least a century. Parliamentary sovereignty—the very thing that Brexiteers said they were voting for in leaving the E.U.—may be about to be vastly reduced by a cabal of right-wing Conservatives who say they are obeying the people’s will. Such power grabs, of course, are always done in the name of the people. The full title of the 1933 Enabling Act was “The law to remedy the distress of the people and the state.”
The derangement of Theresa May’s minority government in the United Kingdom is something to behold, and it is also more than a little frightening. Even in the America of Donald Trump, there has not yet been any real attempt, save a few controversial executive orders, to strip Congress of its powers. But in Britain—the Mother of Parliaments, according to the Victorian reformer John Bright—we stand idly by as May attempts to neutralize our elected representatives. It seems incredible to me that I am reporting on this, but even more alarming is that there is so little concern expressed by the majority of the press and the generally acquiescent BBC. The point is that after the referendum last year, and despite the poor result in the General Election, the right-wing of the Conservative Party has continued traveling in an increasingly undemocratic direction and has, so far, swept all before it. The normally rather sober Hansard Society, an organization dedicated to promoting and strengthening democracy, has called the “broad scope of the powers in the Bill, the inadequate constraints placed on them, and the shortcoming in the proposed parliamentary control of them” a “toxic mix” that will undermine Parliament’s ability to hold May to account or to meliorate the most damaging policies arising from Brexit.
MPs are so caught up in the madness of Brexit that, for the most part, they cannot see the power grab for what it is. Fears are expressed and noble speeches given but in the dead of night on Monday, MPs voted by 326 to 290, giving May an effective majority of 36. This included seven members of the Labor opposition, who astonishingly defied their party, which has just begun to soften its line on Brexit so as to accommodate increasing worries about the economy, employment and workers’ rights. These seven Labor members—Ronnie Campbell (age 74), Frank Field (75), Kate Hoey (71), Kelvin Hopkins (76), John Mann (57), Dennis Skinner (85) and Graham Stringer (67) have an average age of 72, which underlines a truth about the Brexit vote and the lurch to the right in Britain. They are the product of something profound going on among an older generation, even among some left-wingers. These people yearn for a past that does not exist and they do not give one solitary damn for the future of young people who will be forced to inherit the economic mess.
The nostalgic, selfish gene exists on both the right and left in British politics, which is what makes a hard Brexit much more likely, and also, incidentally, politics more difficult to read. Naturally, there are older politicians on both sides of the House who warn about the dangers to democracy contained in the bill, one being the veteran Conservative Kenneth Clark, but at base the great divide in Britain is between generations. The question is how much damage the older generation does before being replaced by younger people who are generally more accepting of immigration, do not revere Britain’s “heroic” past, and are part of a connected world that views national borders as less and less important. Withdrawing from Europe in the way proposed by the Brexit project is destructive to the economy and damaging to democracy but it is also simply unrealistic, as perhaps Theresa May (60) and her chief Brexit minister David Davis (68) will one day come to realize.
Still, the situation in Parliament is very serious. MPs mutter about waiting for the right moment to oppose the government, but the truth is that the energy is all with the anti-democratic side, the one that keeps citing the People’s will but wants to remove power from the People’s representatives. The whole of the Executive is now focused on diminishing the role of MPs and taking the country out of the European Union, come what may, in 18 months’ time. There is literally nothing else of note being debated in Parliament. Brexit sits like a massive weather system over the United Kingdom, draining energy from its national life and politics.
Some take hope from the leader of the Labor party’s new position, which is to suggest that Britain might retain access to the European Single Market, but this is absurd, if not totally incoherent. Keeping access to the market of half a billion people means that Britain would have to respect its regulations without having any influence on making them. The U.K. would place itself at a disadvantage without any gain. And on immigration there would be no benefit. Britain already has control of its borders, while the myths about Britain being overrun by foreigners are slowly being exposed by leaks. Two weeks ago, a leaked report showed that the vast majority of students (97 percent) and those who visit Britain on work and visitor visas return home when their time is up. It is shameful that this was not published before the referendum and probably gives as good a reading of May’s true political instincts as anything else. Her government is sitting on 50 separate Brexit impact studies, which it refuses to allow the public to see before Britain leaves the E.U.
All the government’s efforts are devoted to closing down debate and ramming laws through parliament without scrutiny. Over the fall, as this dangerous bill progresses, we will see whether Parliamentarians on both sides of the house have the mettle to fight for the independence of one of the oldest democratic systems in the world.