← The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Theresa May’s Brexit Saga Continues, with No End in Sight
00:15:52
Theresa May’s Brexit Saga Continues, with No End in Sight
Loading summary
Transcript42 lines
- [00:00]
A
As summer draws to a close and the kids go back to school, I know I'm going to want to keep in touch with my kids at a price I can afford. Back to school Shopping can be a hassle, but your phone plan shouldn't be. That's why I made the switch to Mint Mobile. For a limited time, Mint mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. So while other parents are sweating overage charges, I have a little bit more room in my budget for cool back to school threads. Say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plan's jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages, Mint Mobile is here to rescue you. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Dish overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. This year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month@mintmobile.com New Yorker that's that's mintmobile.com New Yorker upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.
- [01:16]
B
This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics. It's Friday, March 15th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. On June 23, 2016, voters in the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, setting off one of the most chaotic political periods in British history. After two and a half years of tortuous negotiations, the country is now two weeks away from March 29, long held up as the day when the UK would officially leave the EU. This week, parliament held a dramatic series of votes hoping to pin down the terms and timeline of the deal. Yesterday, a majority of lawmakers voted to delay Brexit. The much maligned Prime Minister Theresa May will now seek a formal extension to the Brexit deadline from the eu. She will also attempt to win lawmakers over to her Brexit deal for the third time, despite the fact that Parliament has already rejected it twice. On Tuesday, she warned her fellow MPs that an extension would not automatically solve the country's problems.
- [02:23]
C
The EU will want to know what use we mean to make of such an extension. And this House will have to answer that question. Does it wish to revoke Article 50? Does it want to hold a second referendum? Or does it want to leave with a deal, but not this deal? These are unenviable choices, but thanks to the the decision that the House has made this evening, they are choices that must now be faced.
- [02:59]
B
Sam Knight joins me from London to discuss this week's unprecedented breakdown in British parliamentary politics and how they could disguise some possibly good news about Brexit's future. Sam, welcome back.
- [03:13]
D
Hello. Good to be here.
- [03:15]
B
So it's been an incredibly raucous week over there. And for those of us who haven't followed every turn in the Brexit saga, could you just sketch the scene quickly for us, what votes took place and what their outcomes were without getting us too bogged down in the weeds?
- [03:31]
D
Sure. I can do my best. It is difficult to do that, but I will try. So this week, the big thing that happened was that Theresa May's sort of negotiated deal with the European Union was defeated for the second time in the House of Commons. You might remember that it was defeated for the first time back in January by 230 votes, which was the largest ever defeat for a sitting government in British political history, which goes back a long way. This time, she only lost by 149 votes, making it the fourth largest defeat that a government has ever suffered. But everyone could see this defeat coming. So even before she lost, we already had a sense that this would trigger a series of other votes. And so as soon as this happened on Tuesday night, we sort of galloped into the next phase of this. It's like, all right, well, we've rejected the deal again. Now the sort of the road forks and we get these various options. So for the sort of the next 48 hours, we had this kind of circus in the House of Commons voting on various different options for what to do next. And the key ones that emerged from that were, would British politicians reject the idea of leaving the European Union with no deal at all? And they did that. And then the other significant thing that happened was yesterday, again, a large majority voting for a delay.
- [04:54]
B
And what did she mean by revoking Article 50?
- [04:58]
D
So the mechanism by which Britain is leaving the European Union was this part of the European Treaty, the Lisbon treaty, called Article 50. It was kind of, I think it was written back in 2010 with this eventuality in mind with Britain one day deciding to leave the European Union, because it has always been this slightly ornery, half in, half out member of the bloc. It's this sort of short paragraph of text which this whole legal process has been resting on for the last two years and nine months. Effectively, how it works is if you want to leave the European Union, you invoke or trigger Article 15. You can do that unilaterally as a government, so Britain can inform the European Union that it wants to leave. And that's always raised the question that if we really changed our mind and didn't want to do it anymore, could we just take it back? Could Britain just say on its own, oh, actually, we want to untrigger it? And that's been tested in the courts, and that's the general theory that we could just unilaterally revoke it. But that would obviously kind of fly in the face of the referendum result, and it's sort of seen as politically not possible.
- [06:06]
B
Before this debacle, Americans sometimes looked longingly at Britain's parliamentary democracy, where voters can hold politicians accountable much more easily. But May keeps clinging to power. How has she managed that?
- [06:20]
D
Well, it's hard, you know, Brexit's so difficult because, you know, I regret this. I wrote a post for the New Yorker sort of back in December, when she announced Deal and no one wanted it. I said we'd now fallen into the black hole of British politics. And here we are sort of three months later and the hole is even blacker. Do you know what I mean? It's one of these difficult stories to follow because it keeps getting weirder and stranger. But I think, you know, this week we did set new heights for what's sort of happening in the House of Commons. Even if you're not paying attention to every twist and turn and every vote, which really not that many people are, you know, things to have in your mind are Theresa May has more or less lost control of about a third of the Conservative Party. So Conservative's got just over 300 MPs. About 100 of them are effectively rogue at the moment. She's got five members of her cabinet who are not supporting her in key votes. Last night we had a vote in which MPs suggested that they take over how business operates in the House of Commons rather than the government, which is something that really doesn't happen in British politics, and they failed by two votes. That would almost have been a kind of a coup, in a way, for the government no longer to be able to sort of dictate business. I mean, we really are in sort of constitutionally weird. We had place at the moment, and Theresa May is not in charge of this process.
- [07:40]
B
We sympathize with you over here with our own constitutional difficulties. How has Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, dealt with May's vulnerability and where does he stand on Brexit?
- [07:52]
D
You know, Brexit is this very difficult problem because it doesn't cut neatly between the two parties. Both parties are divided. It's not like the Conservatives want to leave the European Union and Labour want to stay, even though the majority of supporters of both parties, that's what they think. So both parties are split. So Jeremy Corbyn as an individual, has always been opposed to the European Union. From the slightly kind of rarish position in British politics of objecting to the European Union on the left, most of the kind of critics of the European Union see it as too much regulation, too much social democracy, too much taxes, too much kind of red tape holding back business. Jeremy Corbyn and people on the sort of the far left see it as too orientated to benefit large companies and sort of globalization, things like that. So he's always had quite a kind of niche position of not liking the European Union. But I think from a purely labor point of view, they want power. They can see that the government is terribly weak and has wrought this on the country. This is, you know, it was David Cameron who called the referendum, and it's Theresa May who's made a bit of a dog's dinner of executing it. And so I think it suits Labour to not really say very much. That's highly frustrating for a lot of their supporters who are very emotionally invested in this, but that's how they've played this so far.
- [09:09]
B
Yeah. And he's facing these revolts within his own party. And it is interesting that the Labour Party has its disgruntled left wingers, the Conservatives have their disgruntled right wingers. The parties are polarized. And again, this is something that we in the United States feel all day, every day.
- [09:27]
D
No 100%. You know, both of the parties are fractured. Although, you know, Brexit itself is. Is. It's not exactly a question of a left right or a question of values even. It's this awkward technical problem. It makes it a very kind of unsatisfying place for these things to play out.
- [09:48]
E
What the hell is going on right now and why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis, and maybe you are too, Katie. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.
- [10:15]
D
I want a shark that.
- [10:16]
E
That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.
- [10:21]
D
So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.
- [10:30]
E
Week we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times, meaning and context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point, as of yet undefined, in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [10:59]
B
Several weeks ago, a number of Labor MPs broke from the party to form the Independent group. And then they were joined, as I understand it, a few days later by several members of the Conservative Party. What is the significance of that move?
- [11:13]
D
So it's significant because just by the nature of British politics, they immediately become the third or the fourth largest group in, in the House of Commons. And that makes them visible. They're also essentially allied on the question of Brexit. All of them want a second referendum, which is the sort of generally an anti Brexit position to hold. I think one of the really striking things about this split from both parties, which people had predicted would happen for a long time, was even though this group of MPs share a lot of the same views, the looks on their faces while they did, it was so different. You really had the sort of sense of the seven MPs who left the Labour Party, they were sort of glum and ashen and fed up with Jeremy Corbyn's leadership on Brexit, and particularly on this question of anti Semitism within the party, which has been so damaging and so hurtful and problematic for Jewish MPs and for Jewish supporters of the party. They would have sort of dragged themselves to the launch of this thing, whereas the three Conservatives who went with them were sort of buoyant and skipping down the road, if you like, to be released from sort of coming along in the path of Theresa May's dogged and difficult Brexit policy. Sort of, you know. But they are. They are a new feature on the British political landscape, but it's tribal and not many people expect them to keep their seats at the next election.
- [12:27]
B
And there seems to be no realistic hope of a second referendum at this point.
- [12:32]
D
Look, really, no one can predict anything with much certainty. Even though this process that's been happening this week feels chaotic, and it has been deeply chaotic at times, it is how British politics works. And we are groping by this kind of series of exhausting votes day after day after day towards a more binary set of options. Do we approve the deal and have called a short technical delay with the European Union simply to implement the deal and to cross the T's and dot the I's or are we actually talking about a long delay, which could be anything up to two years? And when we are talking about a long delay to Brexit, then you really are into a realm of possibility where not many people expect Therese May to be the Prime Minister for too many months longer. So we're probably looking at a new leader of the Conservative Party that suggests that there might be a general election in that kind of territory. Then a second referendum, I don't think sounds as implausible as it has done.
- [13:39]
B
It's just amazing it was such a high wire act. It is also, though possible that she may yet get some version of the deal that she has so doggedly pursued all these years.
- [13:50]
D
You know, we're talking on Friday afternoon. You know, the news in Westminster today is there is a inverted Commons. Significant talks taking place between the government and the Democratic Unionist Party, the hardline Irish party that is supposed to support the Conservative Party, but has voted against it so far on Brexit. It looks like they are coming into line. If you've campaigned for Brexit for 20 or 30 years, as the hard right of the Conservative Party has done, the threat of a long delay or this being put off almost indefinitely is genuinely terrifying. This might be their only chance. And that will bring a lot of people round to Theresa May's deal next week. And at this point, it is looking like it's going to be incredibly close next Tuesday.
- [14:37]
B
But you seem relatively upbeat about this for all of the. For all of the unbelievable twists and turns it's taken. Explain yourself over here. When we talk about our difficulties, we're all a bunch of Cassandras, but you seem to see that this exceedingly messy process may, in the end yield something close to an acceptable result.
- [15:01]
D
Look, I don't want to sort of sound too chirpy and naive about this. Of course there's a cultural element to Brexit, and of course you can characterize it as a choice between open and closed or all these kind of fault lines within a society. But this isn't the kind of culture war that's taking place in America at the moment, do you know what I mean? These debates are technical and they're significant. And I think all of this arguing in Westminster, which is, which is so arcane and so difficult to understand, I'm afraid it only widens the gulf between politicians and voters. There is a feeling of disgust of what looks like the ineffectiveness of Britain's politicians at the moment. I think they are genuinely floundering with an unbelievably difficult situation. But I think that the long term consequence of this is not going to enhance politicians in anybody's minds and it will only sort of feel these sort of more worrying forces in our politics at the moment. But, but.
- [15:56]
B
So give it, give me the bright side here.
- [15:59]
D
Well, the, well, the. I'm just. You've got me, you. You've got me there. But there is something, there's something fascinating about these, these kinds of gymnastics that are taking place. No, it's a bit like. I don't know whether you do this, but when the Olympics happens every four years, my feeling when you kind of watch it on the TV is you really got to invest, do you know what I mean? You just got to put yourself through hours and hours, hours of it, and then you get the rewards. And Brexit's a bit like that. If you've been following it sort of closely. We are in unprecedented places in British politics at the moment.
- [16:27]
B
And just one final question. If her government does fall, who would be her successor? I mean, there's been talk about Boris Johnson, who would be the next leader of the Conservative Party.
- [16:36]
D
Well, I'm very baffled by this kind of theory that if Theresa may fall, then she would naturally be replaced by a more pro Brexit, hardline Conservative leader. So the people that get talked about Boris Johnson or Dominic Raab, who was briefly Brexit secretary over the summer, he's a kind of young, up and coming sort of pro Brexit kind of figure within the party. But I don't really see how that can work out given that although they occupy a lot of the headline, the most Brexiteer wing of the. The Conservative Party only really numbers maximum 80, 90 out of their 300 MPs. The weight of the party is still in the centre. But as we see in politics everywhere now, the people who attract the headlines are on the extremes and they have.
- [17:27]
B
The ability to tie the systems in knots.
- [17:32]
D
As they prove every day.
- [17:33]
B
Every day here too. All right, thank you so much, Sam.
- [17:37]
D
Pleasure.
- [17:41]
B
Sam Knight is a staff writer at the New Yorker. This has been the political scene. You can subscribe to this and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app and find more political analysis and commentary on new yorker.com Feel free to rate and review the political scene on Apple Podcasts. Our theme music is by Russell Gillespie. This program is produced by Alex barron for new yorker.com with assistance from Kylie Warner. More I'm Dorothy Wickenden.
- [18:18]
F
Right now we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Charlamagne, tha God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [18:47]
B
A BetterHelp ad Lewis Capaldi partnered with BetterHelp to get word out about how important therapy can be.
- [18:54]
G
I struggle most weeks to like get up, get myself up and ready and go to therapy or, you know, whatever. Like even like open the laptop to talk to my therapist. Sometimes can be really difficult, but I do it because I realize how important it is for me to continue to feel good like I felt the best I felt than a long time through therapy.
- [19:12]
B
Learn more about online therapy@betterhelp.com.
- [19:18]
D
From PRX.