PM MAY, under the guise of adopting a ‘one nation’ policy which treasures the poor and the needy much more than the rich, has sought to separate herself from the sea of anger against the Cameron-Osborne regime of which she was a part, and which was turning the UK into a land of the very rich and the very poor.
Cameron and Osborne went too far when they threatened the nation with reprisals if it did not vote to ‘Remain’ in the EU. The workers and sections of the middle class rebelled, seizing the opportunity to vote ‘Leave’, and rid the country of the top Tory leaders, first Cameron and then Osborne, in what was and is a political revolution that is still raging.
The situation is so incendiary that the 1922 Committee stepped in to ensure that the choice of Cameron’s successor would not be left to a ballot of the Tory rank and file. Democracy was dumped. The Committee forced May’s rival Leadsom to quit so that May could be crowned leader without the Tory rank and file interfering in the process.
The Committee rightly felt that a nine-week election campaign would end up with two or three Tory parties, and that too much democracy was very dangerous. Cameron quit, May was made leader and Osborne has now been sacked and his office handed over to former Foreign Minister Hammond, who campaigned to remain in the EU, as did May.
Hammond has made it clear that he is not Osborne by stating that there is not going to be an emergency budget to steady the situation with some Osborne-style cuts.
At the same time, May has now handed over the Brexit negotiations to a trio of ‘Brexiteers’.
David Davis is now the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU. He is a long-standing ‘Leaver’ who was the shadow home secretary under both Michael Howard and David Cameron. Davis, 67, lost to David Cameron in the 2005 Tory leadership contest. The new Brexit department is still emerging, but it is likely to take the lead in negotiating Britain’s departure from the EU. Supporting Davis will be Brexit leader Boris Johnson, now the new Foreign Secretary, and Liam Fox, the new International Trade Minister.
May, meanwhile, has sacked Johnson’s would-be political assassin Michael Gove, another Brexit leader, replacing him with Liz Truss, who voted ‘Remain’, as Justice Secretary. There are now clearly two wings of the Tory Party leadership, with May playing a Bonapartist role, straddling both to try and maintain the unity of the Tory party, to prevent a government collapse and an early election.
May is seeking to paper over the massive divisions with a declaration of a ‘one nation’ ideology, declaring that the party that hammered the poor with massive cuts of a very savage nature, now bases its policies on assisting the poor and the workers with the rich well able to assist themselves.
There are not many prepared to believe that May is an Ed Miliband mark II, but with a small majority and a very stormy economic and political situation directly ahead, her ‘one nation’ stance will be crucial in getting the support of Labour’s right wing to keep her government in office, in the event of a Tory split, or even to join it and form a national government if the plot to remove Corbyn fails.
However, the real controversy in the nomination of ministers was the fate of Health Secretary Hunt, a leading ‘Remainer’, first reported sacked by the BBC and then reinstated by May to carry on his war with the junior doctors. The fact that May could not dump Hunt may well bring the first major crisis for her supposed ‘one nation’ regime. If Hunt seeks to impose the new contract and does not dump it, there is no doubt that there will be an explosion of mass anger in the BMA and amongst the TUC trade unions.
Hunt is best advised to accept that his new contract is dead in the water, else the May government, supposedly inspired by a ‘one nation’ outlook, could well be the shortest serving government in the UK’s parliamentary history, such is the mass anger that will erupt if Hunt seeks to continue with contract
imposition.