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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/02/the-guardian-view-on-the-state-of-the-government-on-the-ropes
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| The Guardian view on the state of the government: on the ropes | The Guardian view on the state of the government: on the ropes |
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| Theresa May’s government, fragile for the past six months, has reached a new pitch of uncertainty. Beset by allegations of sexual harassment, wrestling with economic uncertainty; on Brexit, unable to show a coherent plan for the biggest challenge faced by any government since the war, the prime minister seems punch-drunk. Without a reliable parliamentary majority, her government is reduced to rushing round with a fire extinguisher trying to douse one blaze before another ignites. | Theresa May’s government, fragile for the past six months, has reached a new pitch of uncertainty. Beset by allegations of sexual harassment, wrestling with economic uncertainty; on Brexit, unable to show a coherent plan for the biggest challenge faced by any government since the war, the prime minister seems punch-drunk. Without a reliable parliamentary majority, her government is reduced to rushing round with a fire extinguisher trying to douse one blaze before another ignites. |
| Older MPs will be experiencing deja vu: the stench of a government and party in irreversible decline clung to John Major’s Tories in the mid-1990s. Yet this crisis is much deeper, and it threatens far more than the Conservative party. | Older MPs will be experiencing deja vu: the stench of a government and party in irreversible decline clung to John Major’s Tories in the mid-1990s. Yet this crisis is much deeper, and it threatens far more than the Conservative party. |
| Take the allegations of sexual exploitation, and worse: these are not the stuff of Sunday-tabloid prurience, they are a symbol of a transformation in attitudes that is still barely grasped at the centre of power. It has echoes of the 2009 expenses scandal, which exposed in some MPs an unrestrained sense of entitlement. But there are no expenses claims for duck houses, only, so far, a handful of women ready to brave brutal collective disapproval to speak out. The rest is rumour and innuendo and a flaky spreadsheet. Most women and many men who work in the political world recognise the need for reform, but that takes leadership. And so far the prime minister has failed to impose her authority on a crisis that has particular potential to damage her. She has missed a moment where she could have reasserted herself as a politician who has a record of making her party take women seriously, and fought successfully for more female candidates. Yet she is only belatedly trying to take on the party’s Westminster patriarchy by standing up to the men on the 1922 Committee who blocked earlier attempts to introduce a code of conduct. | Take the allegations of sexual exploitation, and worse: these are not the stuff of Sunday-tabloid prurience, they are a symbol of a transformation in attitudes that is still barely grasped at the centre of power. It has echoes of the 2009 expenses scandal, which exposed in some MPs an unrestrained sense of entitlement. But there are no expenses claims for duck houses, only, so far, a handful of women ready to brave brutal collective disapproval to speak out. The rest is rumour and innuendo and a flaky spreadsheet. Most women and many men who work in the political world recognise the need for reform, but that takes leadership. And so far the prime minister has failed to impose her authority on a crisis that has particular potential to damage her. She has missed a moment where she could have reasserted herself as a politician who has a record of making her party take women seriously, and fought successfully for more female candidates. Yet she is only belatedly trying to take on the party’s Westminster patriarchy by standing up to the men on the 1922 Committee who blocked earlier attempts to introduce a code of conduct. |
| On Wednesday night, she sacked the defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon, who was unable to reassure her that there would be no further reports of his inappropriate behaviour. She has lost a loyalist, a politician described as one of the retaining walls of the government, her minister for awkward interviews as well as the man in charge of a big, complex department. A prime minister with authority could have used the moment to strengthen her hold on cabinet. Instead, she has only reminded her party how she is a prisoner of the fragile balance between remainers and Brexiters, loyalists and the placemen waiting for something better. Promoting her young chief whip, Gavin Williamson, the man who had managed her leadership bid and negotiated the DUP deal, she made a minimalist reshuffle. It is not without merit: Mr Williamson is the first of the next generation to get high office. He’s her kind of Tory: comprehensive-schooled, northern, a man at home with the party’s new rust-belt voters. (His successor as chief whip, Julian Smith, is a Yorkshire MP who once argued that parliament should move north while the Palace of Westminster is refurbished – another small sign of the shift in the party’s geographical base.) But appointing the head of party HR, her own chief adviser on who should prosper and who be sunk, looked more like an act of weakness than one of strategic vision. | On Wednesday night, she sacked the defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon, who was unable to reassure her that there would be no further reports of his inappropriate behaviour. She has lost a loyalist, a politician described as one of the retaining walls of the government, her minister for awkward interviews as well as the man in charge of a big, complex department. A prime minister with authority could have used the moment to strengthen her hold on cabinet. Instead, she has only reminded her party how she is a prisoner of the fragile balance between remainers and Brexiters, loyalists and the placemen waiting for something better. Promoting her young chief whip, Gavin Williamson, the man who had managed her leadership bid and negotiated the DUP deal, she made a minimalist reshuffle. It is not without merit: Mr Williamson is the first of the next generation to get high office. He’s her kind of Tory: comprehensive-schooled, northern, a man at home with the party’s new rust-belt voters. (His successor as chief whip, Julian Smith, is a Yorkshire MP who once argued that parliament should move north while the Palace of Westminster is refurbished – another small sign of the shift in the party’s geographical base.) But appointing the head of party HR, her own chief adviser on who should prosper and who be sunk, looked more like an act of weakness than one of strategic vision. |
| The prime minister now appears weaker than ever, and her weakness is mirrored by a floundering economy. Thursday’s interest rate rise, the first in a decade, reversed the post-referendum cut of 0.25%. It was not an indication of a buoyant economy but a sign of weakness, a response to the inflation caused by the fall in the value of the pound and a sense that the Bank had to show that it would act if necessary, while signalling that it probably would do no more. Accompanying the news came a bleak warning about the economic impact of Brexit that is likely to impose serious limitations on her chancellor’s budget, less than three weeks off. | The prime minister now appears weaker than ever, and her weakness is mirrored by a floundering economy. Thursday’s interest rate rise, the first in a decade, reversed the post-referendum cut of 0.25%. It was not an indication of a buoyant economy but a sign of weakness, a response to the inflation caused by the fall in the value of the pound and a sense that the Bank had to show that it would act if necessary, while signalling that it probably would do no more. Accompanying the news came a bleak warning about the economic impact of Brexit that is likely to impose serious limitations on her chancellor’s budget, less than three weeks off. |
| The same weakness permeates the management of parliament and Brexit, where ministerial bravado has succumbed to tactical concession. On Wednesday, the government bowed to the case for limited publication of the sectoral impact assessments whose secrecy was only days earlier being described as vital to the UK’s negotiating strategy. And, less than a week after the Brexit secretary, David Davis, suggested airily that parliament may not have a final vote on the deal, it now seems likely the government will accept an amendment for a short bill legislating for it. The government survives from hand to mouth with no strategy, its authority ebbing away. More and more power lies with parliament. | The same weakness permeates the management of parliament and Brexit, where ministerial bravado has succumbed to tactical concession. On Wednesday, the government bowed to the case for limited publication of the sectoral impact assessments whose secrecy was only days earlier being described as vital to the UK’s negotiating strategy. And, less than a week after the Brexit secretary, David Davis, suggested airily that parliament may not have a final vote on the deal, it now seems likely the government will accept an amendment for a short bill legislating for it. The government survives from hand to mouth with no strategy, its authority ebbing away. More and more power lies with parliament. |