I have an article in the New Statesman, asking why anyone would want to be Prime Minister if we vote to Leave. I’d be interested in what you think on this issue, so please do comment below.
If we vote for Brexit, and a Leave campaigner becomes Prime Minister, their every word of reassurance will be repeated back to them a thousand-fold.
As the country lurched into recession, economists would point out that 90% of them had predicted this. Voters would ask the new Prime Minister, why did you say Project Fear was a lie?
If David Cameron remained Prime Minister, and tried to mitigate the damage would be denounced as a betrayal. If he tried to stay in the single market, they’d scream, “We voted to end freedom of movement.” If he delayed invoking Article 50 they’d hound him till he did. And every set-back would be blamed on his “weak and pathetic” negotiating skills.
If Boris and Gove are sincere in wanting Cameron to stay as Prime Minister, the question becomes, would Cameron be foolish enough to hold on to this poisoned chalice.
See here to read the full article.
* George Kendall is the acting chair of the Social Democrat Group. He writes in a personal capacity.
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14 Comments
As the immediate problems arrived a new prime minister would blame it on 1. The Banks2.Immigrants3.European Union and would reassure everyone that over the next few years everything will improve. If it is Cameron he will just keep pointing over his shoulder appoint Boris to a poisoned chalice job and watch him disappear in a puff of egotism.
Would the public accept this, well if they had just voted to leave they could hardly complain,although they would. It is always someone elses fault
it depends who sets the ‘narrative’ post Brexit. Boris Johnson could easily be the Tories’ Brown, scheming, self-seeking, and on attaining highest office being found out. the situation will be dire enough – exit negotiations with an irked eu establishment, threat of scots secrssion etc, a collapse in the £, probably rising interest rates, job losses cutting tax revenues even further and – dare it be said – a peeved and peevish brexit backing public expecting instant gratification – ie. stop immigration, create jobs, give £325m every week to the nhs etc etc. add to that dissent within the tories and i’d wager Johnson would be gone before 2015. but then what?’
I understand that “The Sun” this morning bears a headline which admits that its editorial staff “can’t think”. Surely, that isn’t news!
But what are we going to do? Will there be any place for us if the political world changes.
You can see the scenario, Brexit wins, Johnson becomes PM, landslide for the Conservatives and we have no MPs at all. We will have got to think this through very quickly, and it will need new thinking not the old lines from the House of Lords grandees.
I think the section on Article 50 might need some more thought. The smarter leavers are desperate for Cameron NOT to invoke this, preferring ‘informal discussions’ first. Because once this is invoked, things get serious very quickly, and the nonsense / speculation would be replaced by hard reality on both sides.
Good article apart from that.
@bob sayer
I wonder if anyone would believe a post-Brexit PM, who had spent the entire campaigning dennouncing “Project Fear”, then having to deal with the reality of it.
But you may be right, blaming immigrants, banks and the EU may be their option survival chance, and that’s an incredibly grim prospect. Because, as if this referendum hasn’t been post-truth enough, the aftermath could get worse.
@johnmc
I think a “peeved brexit backing public expecting instant gratification” is a good way to describe it. The Leave Campaign have panglosssed over all the potential problems. If they’d been a little more honest, a post Brexit wouldn’t be so toxic – but honesty has not been their hallmark.
It might be funny to see them face the music, if it wasn’t the government of this country, which, if messed up, could lead to utterly dire consequences for a lot of people.
@theakes
I’m not really thinking about how disastrous it could be for us. Who knows, as the election would be pre-boundary review, we might come out of it with net gains. I’m worried about the country’s economy. Also, to be honest, I worry about the unknown malign effect this could have on geopolitics. We’ve grown complacent these past thirty years with a relatively stable world order, there’s no guarantee that will continue.
@tpfkar
The smart leavers want to delay Article 50, but I don’t think the political dynamics of the situation would allow that. No way to be sure, of course.
I’m just hoping this article will be irrelevant, and that Remain will win.
My bet is on Teresa May. Although she’s supposedly Remain, she’s said very little to upset anyone ( deliberately I think) & could be accepted by either side
Several of us Welsh Liberal Democrats are already talking about Welsh Independence if xenophobic lil englanders drag us out!
Let’s have Jeremy Corbin (with Teresa May as deputy PM) heading a Grand Con-Lab coalition to steer us through troubled waters at home and abroad and onwards to the sunny uplands just-in-time for the next general election. You know it makes sense.
JOHN INNES 23rd Jun ’16 – 9:23am Referendum in Wales first?
Suspect that I’ll be one of many insisting the Outers keep their promises to spend the same £385m per week over and over again on everything they can think of – the NHS, education, and regional development to name but a few; successfully conclude negotiations for more advantageous trade deals than we have now with the EU, China, NAFTA, India, the Commonwealth, South Korea, and all other emerging economies; support Wales to the same level as ERDF does now; and create 300,000 new jobs by 24th June 2018.
As for their foul, lying, and dishonest posturing on immigration, by that time their true agenda will have been made explicit – though to be fair, with Farage’s poster that process is well under way. He is truly the heir to Mosley, and Powell.
George, my ‘what if’ scenario had a narrow win, with the Brexiteers doing straw-polling of the Tory party and realising that ‘their’ candidates could not win a leadership election, but then negotiating a ‘permanent internal secession’ inside the party, so that the Conservative Party was formally reconstituted as a dual coalition between a Euro-pragmatist bloc and a separatist/sovereignist bloc, a la the German CDU/CSU.
Neither would be able to campaign in seats held by the other, but there would be regularly reviewed electoral pacts in key target seats.
I think this is probably the only route to Tory unity that would keep them fighting the rest of us, rather than a long civil war on In/Out lines that could eventually draw every other party into a fundamental realignment.
I think we’ll get the latter, anyway, to be honest, but its interesting to speculate.
I’m hopeful that Remain may win today. But every vote could count.
@Matt (Bristol)
I think if there’s a narrow Remain win, apart from some die-hards, the issue can go on the simmering back-burner for a few years. Especially if a Brexiter or a neutral became PM, then says, “Brexit lost. Let’s accept that and move forward.”
If it’s a Leave win, a Remainer Tory PM wouldn’t be viable.
There is near unanimity among economists that the effect of Brexit would be bad to very bad. The only way a Leave Tory PM could survive would be to scapegoat the EU, the banks and immigrants, inorder to deflect attention away from the fact that they had mislead the country that there wouldn’t be a severe cost to Brexit.
Don’t think that this’ll mean the Leave camp admit they were wrong. Brexiters will find a way to shift the blame, so that the Brexit camp remains strong, and the country split. There’ll be no way back from a Brexit vote, and UK politics will become even more poisonous.
@Nick Tregoning
If only a post-Brexit crisis could expose the Leave campaign as dishonest, so that everyone agreed that Brexit was, after all a mistake, and agree that a Brexit vote shouldn’t be implemented.
It won’t happen that.
Those who voted to leave the single market because of hostility to immigration will still demand that happens. The consequences for our country will be grim. And politics and governance in this country will be damaged for many years.
I’m just hoping it never happens