23 May 2019
Front Runners
Boris, Brexit Party and Lib Dems.
By John Watson
“Three fences from the end and it’s the favourite out in front by four lengths. It’s his race now. He’s well ahead of the pack. But wait…. who is this moving up on the inside rail? Three lengths, two lengths, he’s closing it fast. Now we’re going into the final straight and the favourite is beginning to flag. Yes, the challenger is coming through, the horses are level and, what a surprise, an outsider priced at 4:1 comes in by half a length.”
How often have we heard that or something like it? The horse that was back with the pack comes through at the end. The football team (Tottenham and Liverpool supporters will be familiar with this one) whose chances had been written off scoring a famous victory on late goals. In fact in the world of athletics it is often dangerous to run from the front. A little back, within range to be sure but a little in the slipstream too; that is where many of the experts like to be.
The same goes for politics. Sometimes the front runner can simply barge on through, but to do that he has to be able to absorb more punishment than the rest. It is not enough that his principles are the most popular. Commentators will spend time analysing whether he would be an election winner/whether he could do deals/how good his record is/how reliable he would be in the long term. Challengers who come through later will also be analysed, but by then there is less time for questioning and anyway the public is beginning to get bored with the process.
Who then are the front runners now? According to The Times, the leading contender for the Conservative leadership is Boris Johnson. The MPs may not care for him but the party members do and over 30% would vote for him in a leadership candidate race. The pack is well back. Raab, Gove, Hunt, all back in the teens, watching and waiting while Boris faces the scrutiny and criticism which are the lot of a front runner. Maybe he will come out of it well; maybe he won’t. Either way it can only be a good thing that the party members have an extended look at him and time to reflect on the standing he will give them in the country. And should he fall, what then? Then we will need to look at the pack, but this set of runners will be questioned together so that the pressure on each of them will be far lower than that faced by Boris. Think of those sporting results and wonder.
And what about other front runners? As we go into today’s European elections, the parties out in front seem to be Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats. It is no coincidence that these are the two political parties who actually know where they stand on the central issue. Those who want to see Brexit delivered as soon as possible and those who want to see no Brexit at all, each know where to place their cross. It seems unlikely here that either of the two main parties will come speeding down the rails so we have to assume that the message from the public to the government will be something like “please get on with it”. What happens after that depends upon where Brexit ends up. If it goes through in a reasonably hard form (i.e. without an agreement or with Mrs May’s deal, whatever that may ultimately be) the members of the Brexit Party will probably take the view that its message has been heard and let it disappear, rather the way that the supporters of UKIP did after the referendum. If a proper Brexit is seen to have been denied, it will become a very aggressive protest movement and its anger will distort British politics for a long time to come.
The destiny of the Lib Dems is less clear. Their current popularity no doubt reflects their role as standard-bearers for Remain and that role will disappear once the current political crisis is over. If we stay, they will have succeeded. If we leave, it will be some time before the issue of rejoining is raised, if indeed it ever is. They need, then, to develop a raft of policies which will enable them to occupy the middle ground of British politics. If they do not do that, their new found support will drain away as the issues change and we will merely have added to the long list of “liberal revivals.”
Meanwhile a bigger race is being run. Voters across the EU will be electing members of the European Parliament and the polls currently show the European People’s Party and the Socialists and Democrats losing their overall majority while remaining the biggest block. How that will impact on the choice of a successor to Mr Juncker remains to be seen but is worth bearing in mind, when you look at the UK:EU relationship, that is not just the UK end of it which is fluid.
