MEDIAWATCH: The post-Brexit struggle for power

Boris Johnson the front runner

 
1,246Views 0Comments Posted 26/05/2019

 

Theresa May’s announcement that she will stand down as Conservative leader and UK prime minister on June, 7  has triggered a leadership contest that will have a profound effect on the direction of Brexit says The Week..

Speaking outside No. 10 Downing Street, the prime minister said: “I have done everything I can to convince MPs to back [her Brexit] deal...sadly, I have not been able to do so.”

May’s “closest allies,” told the Daily Mirror that the PM accepted she has become a stumbling block to delivering on the EU referendum result. “There are very few people now who know exactly what she’s thinking, but she fully understands the position she’s in,” said a Downing Street insider.

With an EU withdrawal deal still not agreed, the leadership contest, which could last up to eight weeks, “is likely to favor strong Leave supporters such as Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Penny Mordaunt and Andrea Leadsom over former Remainers such as Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid and Matt Hancock”, says The Guardian

Market analysts in Europe believe the upcoming change at the top will have huge ramifications for the Brexit negotiations. Robert Halver of Germany’s Baader Bank told Euronews that May’s departure would put the long-running process “back at the beginning again”. 

“She has achieved nothing and what's terrible is, that this will kill any kind of Brexit deal. There is a big danger now, also in light of the expected poor EU election result for the British Conservatives, that hardliners will have the say which increases the risk of a no-deal Brexit,” he said.

So how might a change of leadership make a difference to the Brexit negotiations? The Week looks at the runners and riders, and their potential Brexit futures.

Boris Johnson
The favorite for the job has been here before - most famously when his leadership bid was wrecked by Michael Gove in 2016.

In his Daily Telegraph column, Fraser Nelson warns that Johnson “has to get everything right” if he is to succeed this time.

But it appears that support is building for the former London mayor. An unnamed minister told Nelson: “Our problem is now existential … a lot of people who hate Boris now see him as their only hope of dealing with [Nigel] Farage and keeping their seat.”

As PM, Johnson would almost certainly be out to win back Tories who have been wooed by the Brexit Party.

However, The Times Rachel Sylvester warns: “This is a man who wears his beliefs so lightly that he wrote two articles ahead of the EU referendum, one supporting Leave and the other Remain. There is every reason to assume he will pivot away from the hard Brexit position if it suits him politically.” 

Indeed, Business Insider reports that moderate Conservative MPs are considering embracing Johnson as their next leader precisely because they believe he is politically malleable. 

Dominic Raab
Second favorite with the bookies is Raab, an international lawyer whose world-trade know-how saw him picked by May to be Brexit secretary, only to quit months later after allegedly being sidelined in the negotiations in favor of civil servant Olly Robbins. 

A steadfast opponent of May’s proposed Brexit agreement, it is likely that Raab would push for a no-deal exit from the EU if he became PM.

“The contest will be a Leaver vs. Remain primary, with Boris and Dom fighting to be the party’s Brexit candidate,” a Conservative Eurosceptic told the Financial Times back in March. “Dom is a man of principle and he isn’t going to flip-flop.” 

But should Raab win, he would be up against a “parliament who will never vote for, and will do everything it can to stop, a no deal or even ‘managed’ no-deal Brexit”, says The Spectator’s Matthew Parris.

Indeed, John Curtice, an election expert, and professor of politics at Strathclyde University believes that there is “little chance” of no deal because MPs would turn against any government that forced it through.

“In effect, any PM who pushed for no-deal would see their government collapse in the autumn and risk a general election where there would be a significant chance that Labour would end up in government before the end of the year,” Curtice said during a debate on Brexit by academics in London.k.

Michael Gove|
Having worked his way back into the senior echelons of government, the environment secretary is seen as “someone who could hold the Conservative Party together, and might be a candidate Remainers could stomach because he’s hinted he could be open to a softer form of Brexit”, says the BBC. But it’s for exactly this reason that the Tory’s hardline Brexiteers believe him an unacceptable choice.

A Westminster insider told The Guardian that most of the cabinet hopefuls, including Gove, were “in a real bind” because they had backed May’s doomed withdrawal agreement up until the very last moment and would have to do a U-turn for any leadership contest.

“Anyone who doesn’t put no deal back on the table is going to have no chance with the members. But they have backed the PM’s deal all the way through and they can’t just blame her for it now without it looking really bad,” the source said.

Andrea Leadsom

Andrea Leadsom, another contender, helped seal May's fate when she resigned as House of Commons leader earlier this week in protest against the PM’s withdrawal bill.

Leadsom claimed that May's Brexit plan - which includes a promise to let Parliament vote on whether to hold a new EU membership referendum - did not “deliver on the referendum result” of 2016.

Along with the other Brexiteers outside of the Cabinet, Leadsom’s chances are likely to be boosted by the failure to reach an agreement on the terms of the EU withdrawal, allowing her to resurrect arguments for renegotiation, and if that cannot be achieved, a so-called “managed no-deal”.

By jumping ship at such a critical moment, Leadsom's supporters also “believe she will be given the credit for May's resignation”, adds the Daily Mails Andrew Pierce. But “alternatively, the charge of disloyalty may return to sink her again”, he warns.



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