With today’s defection of the Tory MP Phillip Lee to the Liberal Democrats, the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has no longer a majority in the House of Commons.
On September 3, 2019 Phillip Lee took place on the opposition benches in the House of Commons, joining the ranks of the Liberal Democrats. He accused the Johnson government of putting “the lives and livelhoods [of the British people] at risk” by “pursuing a damaging Brexit in unprincipled ways”.
Since former PM Theresa May called early elections in 2017 and subsequently lost the Tory majority, surviving only thanks to the ten DUP members from Northern Ireland joining the government, the United Kingdom has been run by a coalition. Due to several defections, the majority narrowed down to one single seat, which was lost today with Phillip Lee joining the Liberal Democrats.
In parliament, Boris Johnson defended his Brexit plan today, arguing that, as always in the EU, a deal would be sealed in the last weeks before the deadline. So far, he has not presented a coherent plan. He said that the UK would look for a free trade deal with the EU as well as with other countries around the globe.
Boris Johnson has always argued that, once the UK left the EU, he would immedately strike a free trade deal with the USA. President Trump has had kind words for him and trumpeted about a great trade deal between the US and the UK. However, Boris Johnson omits a tiny little detail in his presentation of a rosy future for the UK: Donald Trump is not a free trader, he is a protectionist.
For Trump, free trade is not a win-win situation. It was President Trump who sank the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the free trade deal between the United States and the European Union. It was Trump who sank the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TTP) between the United States and several Asian nations. Of course, Trump argued that, as a master-dealmaker, he could strike better trade deals. However, until today, nothing has materialized. The trade war with China has not produced results yet. Donald Trump is a threat to world trade and might trigger a recession.
In the long run, the UK could surely survive on its own. But, generally, it takes years to negotiate trade deals. Furthermore, roughly 50% of the UK’s exports go to the EU and 50% of its imports come from there. Why leave the EU instead of helping the EU strike new free trade deals?
In the late 1960s, the Tories were the pro-EU force which led to the UK join the organization back then called European Communites (EC) in 1973. This was because the UK was in bad shape, and the Conservatives realized that joining the EU would benefit their country. It was the subsequent Labour government which wanted to renegotiate Britain’s terms of membership of the EC and then hold a referendum on whether to remain in the EC on the new terms. The Tories were in favor of the continued EC membership, Labour was divided. In the 1975 EC referendum, 67.2% of the British voted to remain a member of the EC.
Back then, a certain Jeremy Corbyn voted to leave the EC. For Corbyn, the EC and later the EU are some kind of neo-liberal organizations. Corbyn is a socialist who regretted the collapse of the Soviet Union and who hailed Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela. That’s another story. But not entirely. If Labour was not led by an incompetent socialist whom no reasonable person can trust, the opposition probably could have united a long time ago and come forward with a soft-Brexit deal or even an exit from Brexit; revoke article 50 is the best solution anyway. At present, the UK already has the best deal.
Currently, there are three major economic powers: the EU, the USA and China. The EU and the USA should stick together and force China to open up, to move closer towards free trade with the EU and the USA, to respect the rule of law, to respect the intellectual property rights of EU and US companies. It does not make sense for the UK to leave the EU. As a tiny country, it will have much less leverage in trade negotiations. As a member of the EU, it can influence the EU legislation. As an outsider, it could only accept what the EU members had agreed on. If you want full EU market access, you have to accept the EU rules and reglulations. You cannot have the cake and eat it.
Boris Johnson is a notorious liar, unfit to lead the UK. Back in 2016 (!), he told the jouralist Marion Van Renterghem that you cannot find “a nest of nuts” in London who wanted to leave the EU and that the UK wanted to stay in the EU to prevent the EU from doing stupid things. That was not so long before he came the Brexiter-in-chef (together with Farage).
A few weeks after becoming prime minister, Boris Johnson has already lost his majority in the House of Commons, not counting the many Conservatives who oppose a hard Brexit, including the former chancellor Philip Hammond.
The official photo of Phillip Lee. Photo copyright Chris McAndrew. Wikimedia Commons.
Article added on September 3, 2019 at 20:32 German time. Photo added at 23:57 German time.
