Unlike some of the people I meet, I am not beginning to feel sorry for Theresa May. In the way she has handled her referendum inheritance from David Cameron, she has aggravated the crisis at almost every turn.
The chaos the Conservative party has inflicted on this benighted nation is such that almost anything could happen in the next few weeks and months. Indeed, as a betting man (a small punter, not a serious gambler) I have placed a tiny bet that, notwithstanding the forecasts of almost every political pundit, her attempt to rally the electors to persuade their MPs to back her in the 11 December vote might just succeed against all the odds.
While we are on the subject of odds, as a racing man I should like to do a brief public service for the political class by pointing out that when they refer to the odds “on” someone succeeding in the next Conservative leadership contest, they really mean the odds “against”. As in a horse race, all the contenders have a chance, but some are rated to have a better chance than others, which means the odds against them are shorter than less-fancied candidates. Any horse or candidate quoted as “odds on” is very strongly fancied.
To give a topical example, the other day Paddy Power was quoting the odds on Theresa May failing to carry the House of Commons on 11 December as 5 to 1. That is to say, a stake of five pounds wins only one pound (plus the return of one’s original stake) if May loses, as expected by so many politicians and commentators. Indeed, most people seem to think it is a “racing certainty” that she will lose; but I have known racing certainties to come unstuck. Thus the then deputy governor of the Bank of England was considered, at 7-2 on, a racing certainty to succeed Sir Mervyn (now Lord) King as governor of the Bank of England in 2013: but along came Mark Carney on the outside.
Yes, Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, favourite whipping boy for such extreme Brexiter fantasists as Jacob Rees-Mogg. Carney’s latest crime is to warn the country that all versions of Brexit would make the nation poorer, and extreme versions of it – as his colleague, the deputy governor Ben Broadbent, puts it – would be worse than anything experienced since the 1920s and 1930s after the UK went back on to the gold standard at an absurdly overvalued exchange rate in 1925.
I must say: the more the governor is attacked by the lunatic Brexiter fringe, the more I warm to him. Just as Gordon Brown was the right man in the right place at the right time to handle the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007-09, so Carney is “telling it as it is” now.
It was Churchill who declared that he would like to see “finance less proud and industry more content”. Carney, while saying that the Bank believes the City could handle the fallout if Brexit goes ahead, emphasises that finance is the servant of the wider economy, not its master. This is in contrast to 2007-09 – a crash that was caused by a collective policymakers’ concession that banks were (almost) the masters of the universe.
The Bank of England is not alone. The Whitehall machine along with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and many other respectable thinktanks have produced similar analyses. Why, even the chancellor, Philip Hammond – he of the famous remark that the referendum was not a vote to make the nation poorer – has had to concede that all Brexit scenarios involve self-inflicted economic damage, with some being a lot more damaging than others.
Never mind, we have it on the authority of the prime minister that the country must “get on with Brexit” now so that the government can concentrate on what matters to most of us in our “everyday lives”: improving the NHS, building more homes, tackling injustice, etc.
Unfortunately, this, like so much that is coming out of May’s mouth, is, to put it politely, totally misleading. Any form of Brexit is guaranteed to make the country poorer – not least those citizens provoked by the impact of austerity into a protest vote for Brexit. Leaving the European Union is not the answer to their problems. On the contrary. It would intensify them.
I need hardly say that I hope to lose my bet on May winning the impending meaningful vote”. She needs to be forced into conceding the need for a second referendum, or “people’s vote”, in circumstances where people have a lot more appreciation of what is at stake. In which context, the fact that the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has come out in favour of a second referendum (in the absence of an election) is to be wholeheartedly welcomed.
