Weak and unstable
Recently some in the media have taken to describing both the UK in general and Theresa May's premiership as "weak and stable", playing on May's "strong and stable" campaign slogan.
My concern is that people are assuming that this stability is structural. Even in the face of weak leadership and controversial political decisions, UK politics has a fundamental basis that means nothing drastic will happen. This is wrong.
The political stability we are seeing now is circumstantial, a temporary alignment of disparate self-interest, and will be short-lived. The actual structure of UK politics is highly volatile.
There are a variety of actors in UK politics that all want to go different directions. Yet none of them is powerful enough to overwhelm the others. This means that there is no obvious winner. This means that everyone thinks they can win. The ERG, the Labour left, the Labour right, Tory moderates, Europeanists, EEA proponents, Boris Johnson and others. They're all up for a fight.
So far no one has moved because no one wants to be the first to move. Throwing all the pieces up into the air is risky - voters are rarely enthusiastic about instability and political actors fear they'll take the blame. The flipside is that throwing all the pieces into the air is one of the few viable moves open to weak actors.
Currently UK politics is facing critical decisions that could define the country for a generation or more. For many actors these decisions are tied into beliefs that they have held and nurtured over decades, becoming even a core part of their identity. In this situation, compromise will be seen as defeat. This high-stakes nature will further encourage actors to bet everything in order to win completely.
It's not impossible for an astute leader to guide a series of weak actors into a coalition to work together and see through the term. We do not have such a leader currently and none are, or will be, waiting in the wings. UK politics is not designed to produce coalition-builders. The system is centred around two big-tent parties that act as permanent coalitions. UK leaders are effectively handed a ready-made coalition.
For a long time these coalitions, our two main parties, held themselves together through the simple fact of party loyalty. That loyalty has been in decline since the 1970s. The parties are increasingly fractured and MPs increasingly rebellious. If one or both of the parties do not go into civil war, it will be due to little more than luck.
The moment you stop and look at the structure of UK politics, it becomes clear that it is far from stable. The nearer we get to the big decisions around Brexit becoming final, the higher the stakes will be, the more likely it will be that someone will move first. This first move will occur some point after July 2018 and likely before the end of October.
There is a roughly 20% chance that everything passes through, that big decisions are delayed and that legal texts are written in a way that produces no real commitment.
There is a roughly 80% chance that at least one of the following three things will happen before the end of the year: a general election, a referendum, the Brexit deal being defeated in Parliament.
My concern is that people are assuming that this stability is structural. Even in the face of weak leadership and controversial political decisions, UK politics has a fundamental basis that means nothing drastic will happen. This is wrong.
The political stability we are seeing now is circumstantial, a temporary alignment of disparate self-interest, and will be short-lived. The actual structure of UK politics is highly volatile.
There are a variety of actors in UK politics that all want to go different directions. Yet none of them is powerful enough to overwhelm the others. This means that there is no obvious winner. This means that everyone thinks they can win. The ERG, the Labour left, the Labour right, Tory moderates, Europeanists, EEA proponents, Boris Johnson and others. They're all up for a fight.
So far no one has moved because no one wants to be the first to move. Throwing all the pieces up into the air is risky - voters are rarely enthusiastic about instability and political actors fear they'll take the blame. The flipside is that throwing all the pieces into the air is one of the few viable moves open to weak actors.
Currently UK politics is facing critical decisions that could define the country for a generation or more. For many actors these decisions are tied into beliefs that they have held and nurtured over decades, becoming even a core part of their identity. In this situation, compromise will be seen as defeat. This high-stakes nature will further encourage actors to bet everything in order to win completely.
It's not impossible for an astute leader to guide a series of weak actors into a coalition to work together and see through the term. We do not have such a leader currently and none are, or will be, waiting in the wings. UK politics is not designed to produce coalition-builders. The system is centred around two big-tent parties that act as permanent coalitions. UK leaders are effectively handed a ready-made coalition.
For a long time these coalitions, our two main parties, held themselves together through the simple fact of party loyalty. That loyalty has been in decline since the 1970s. The parties are increasingly fractured and MPs increasingly rebellious. If one or both of the parties do not go into civil war, it will be due to little more than luck.
The moment you stop and look at the structure of UK politics, it becomes clear that it is far from stable. The nearer we get to the big decisions around Brexit becoming final, the higher the stakes will be, the more likely it will be that someone will move first. This first move will occur some point after July 2018 and likely before the end of October.
There is a roughly 20% chance that everything passes through, that big decisions are delayed and that legal texts are written in a way that produces no real commitment.
There is a roughly 80% chance that at least one of the following three things will happen before the end of the year: a general election, a referendum, the Brexit deal being defeated in Parliament.
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