Advertisement

May calls snap June election in April; will it give her a fresh mandate from angry Brits?

Friday April 28 2017
May pic

ILLUSTRATION|JOHN NYAGA

The decision of UK Prime Minister Theresa May to call a snap election in Britain this past week was aimed at giving her what she terms “room to manoeuvre.”

If, as the opinion polls predict, the result is a foregone conclusion and Mrs May wins a landslide victory then the British prime minister will be in a position to face down any opposition within her own party and elsewhere in the UK parliament to the number one issue facing the country over the next two years ­-- Brexit.

When last summer the British people voted narrowly to leave the European Union, a decision, which continues to split the country, they did not resolve the issue of what happened next.

Critical among the issues that remain to be resolved is what sort of trading relationship Britain will now have with Europe and indeed the rest of it’s trading partners, including those in East Africa.

For not only is the nature of Britain’s trade relationship with its European partners uncertain in the future, equally uncertain is how the relationship with other important trading nations will unfold, because most of these agreements were negotiated by the EU.

Equally unresolved is the price Britain will have to pay for leaving the EU and the nature of their future relationship, particularly over the thorny issue of immigration.
Mrs May wants a free hand to enable her government to get the “best possible terms” in a new agreement with the EU but what this means remains uncertain.
What is certain is that the rest of the EU, will not give Britain terms that are as favourable as it has at present.

Advertisement

Britain could have a trading relationship similar to that of Norway or Switzerland with the rest of the EU, but such negotiations take time and the clock is already ticking down to the deadline day of March 2019.

The talk remains of a hard Brexit -- no deal with the EU and a complete severing of the old ties – or a soft Brexit, whereby Britain gets a new trade deal and has to compromise on some aspects of any new immigration agreement.

But such a deal does not depend on Britain, it depends on the rest of the European Union and the European parliament being in agreement and many doubt such a deal can be done in the timeframe available.

Those on the hard right of British politics -- a sizeable section in the Conservative Party as well as the UK Independence Party -- think Britain will do just fine outside the EU with no agreement, trade being done purely on WTO terms.

Critics, including just about every other party in the UK, think such an approach is economic madness and will deal a crippling blow to the UK economy.

With austerity still the name of the game in terms of government spending on public services and the health service, education and other public services all facing crises because of shortage of funds, another major hit to the economy would leave the UK government with a financial crisis, unable to deliver basic public services.

All of which might normally have been good news for the main opposition Labour party.
But having elected a left-wing leader in Jeremy Corbyn, who even his own party has already tried to kick out of office, Labour is so bitterly divided, critics say it will even have difficulty formulating an agreed manifesto for the next election.

The two other main political parties -- outside of Scotland where the Scottish Nationalists are again expected to sweep the board -- are UKIP and the Liberal Democrats.
UKIP appears to have shot its bolt with the party having won its primary goal – that of getting Britain to leave the EU -- and with a scarcely credible policy outside of this is unlikely to even achieve the one MP it managed in the 2015 poll.

The Liberal Democrats, who were slaughtered in the last election because of their decision to go into coalition with the Conservatives, will undoubtedly do better this time, particularly in areas of the UK that voted to Remain.

Lib Dem leader Tim Farron has a clear and coherent line on Brexit -- he believes there must be a second referendum on any terms the British government comes up with on leaving the EU -- and his party will attract support from the Remain voting constituencies where both Labour and the Conservatives currently have MPs.
So the most likely scenario is for a sizeable Conservative majority in June.

But as former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson once said, a week is a long time in politics.

The word on the doorstep is that people are quite angry with having to go through yet another election, only two years after the last and only one year after the referendum.
Moreover, Mrs May said only a few weeks ago that she would not be going to the country to seek another mandate.

People are also increasingly concerned at the state of their own personal finances and increasing levels of debt with wages for most people having been stagnant for more than a decade. Young people can’t get on the housing ladder because property is too expensive. Old people can’t get the social care they need because local councils are bankrupt. A degree course now costs upwards of £9,250 a year, just for the course.

Yes, people remain angry and the country is still bitterly divided over the issue of Brexit.

The most likely scenario is that the people will therefore decide that Mrs May is the safe pair of hands Britain needs to chart its way through stormy waters.
But after Trump, the Brexit vote and possibly even France in the next few weeks, nothing should be taken for granted in politics these days.

Paul Redfern is The EastAfrican’s London correspondent

Advertisement