One of the mistakes that people like me made was to write off Boris Johnson's chances of becoming Prime Minister. Why did we do it? Because we didn't listen carefully enough to Conservative MPs. The average Tory MP, when asked about Johnson, would say that they were unconvinced that he had the makings of a great PM, and that the Conservative Party's future lay with Jeremy Hunt or Sajid Javid.But then their eyes would light up like hubcaps and they would tell you about how, when Johnson visited their association, passers-by, not even members, would stop him and ask for selfies. In the end, faced with a tough election, they opted for the party's one genuine out-and-out star.
Now the PM may be on the verge of securing a deal with the EU, but his chances of getting Parliament to pass it are far from certain.
The DUP's preferred approach is to decide its position internally and then to follow the line in public. Labour has a similar, but subtly different approach: they air their dirty laundry in public but, just as the DUP does, most of the party's MPs fall in line with the leadership's position in the Commons, at least on Brexit. Will it happen again?
There is a group of Labour MPs who say they are willing and ready to vote for a deal, and 19 of them even went so far as to write to the EU Commission saying they were in the market for an accord. How seriously should we take them? About as seriously as we should have taken those Tory MPs who vowed they would never make Johnson PM.
Not all the Labour MPs who are in the market for a deal represent heavily Leave seats, or are concerned about keeping them at the next election. Some, like Jim Fitzpatrick, who represents the heavily Remain Poplar and Limehouse, and voted to Remain, believe that the referendum result, and Labour's promise to honour it in 2017, must be upheld, while others, like Kate Hoey, who represents similarly pro-Remain Vauxhall, are committed Brexiteers.
Others, like Kevin Barron, represent a pro-Leave seat, but plan to retire and as a result have no fear of the voters. MPs in the Fitzpatrick-Hoey-Barron group are the most reliable set of votes for a deal, because they want Brexit to happen and have no electoral consequences to worry about.
The problem is that most committed Labour Leavers are also longstanding members of the Left. They haven't spent decades outside the corridors of power only to risk Jeremy Corbyn's hold on the party by voting for a Brexit deal negotiated by Johnson. This group tends to believe that they can trust Corbyn not to stop Brexit. They may be wrong but their views mean that they aren't going to vote for Johnson's deal.
But the bigger group are MPs who are not Corbynites but are not retiring either - they want a future after Brexit. They know - as does the leadership - that if Labour MPs' votes put Brexit through, Jo Swinson will run round the country telling people that Labour facilitated Brexit.
The leadership will almost certainly make sure that it punishes anyone who votes for Brexit - and Labour would-be rebels will know that this is the case. So they will find an excuse to protect their interests, just as Conservative MPs - who once vowed that they couldn't possibly look past their great performer's drawbacks - discovered that, eventually, Johnson's star power mattered more than whatever doubts they had about him.
― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 17 October 2019 19:41 (four years ago) link