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Theresa May likely to survive soft Brexit fallout

At the June 2016 Brexit referendum, the UK voted to Leave the European Union by a 51.9-48.1 margin.  In April 2017, the Conservatives led Labour by nearly 20 points in the polls.  Expecting a landslide Conservative victory, PM Theresa May called a June 2017 election, three years early.  Instead, Labour surged in the campaign, and the Conservatives lost their Commons majority.

The Conservatives won 317 of the 650 seats, Labour 262, the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) 35, the Liberal Democrats 12 and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) ten.  The Conservatives were forced into an agreement with the DUP.

Since the election, May has tended to defer important Brexit decisions, thus keeping the support of both the hard right Brexit faction and the soft Brexit faction within the Conservatives.  However, on July 6, May’s Cabinet met at Chequers, and settled on a soft Brexit, in an attempt to avoid economic fallout from a hard Brexit.

As a result of this decision, two prominent hard Brexiteers – Brexit Secretary David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson – resigned from Cabinet on July 8-9.  The hard Brexit faction of the Conservatives is deeply unhappy with the Chequers deal, and many are demanding May’s resignation.  But can they force May to resign?

To bring on a vote of no-confidence in the Conservative leader, 15% of Conservative MPs must write letters to the Chair of the 1922 Committee expressing no-confidence.  If this threshold is passed, all Conservative MPs have a vote, and a majority no-confidence vote is required to oust the leader.

While hard Brexiteers have the 48 MPs required to trigger a confidence vote in May’s leadership, they are far short of the 159 MPs required to win such a vote.

In parliament, while the hard Brexiteers can propose amendments to Brexit and other legislation, they are powerless unless Labour joins them.  While it is not pro-Remain, Labour’s Brexit policy is to the left of the Conservatives, and there will be few occasions when hard Brexiteers and Labour vote together.

An occasion where Labour and hard Brexiteers could vote together is on a formal confidence vote in the government.  However, hard Brexiteers are right-wing on other issues, and do not want to make Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn PM, as they perceive him to be a socialist.

If a Brexit deal is agreed with the European Union, parliament must ratify the deal.  For their own reasons, Labour, the SNP and the Lib Dems are likely to oppose the deal.  If the Conservatives were defeated in the vote on the Brexit deal, the UK would crash out without a deal on March 29, 2019.

So if Labour, the SNP and Lib Dems hold to their current position of opposing the Brexit deal, hard Brexiteers can secure the hardest Brexit – but likely with disastrous economic consequences.

A YouGov poll before the Chequers meeting gave the Conservatives a 41-40 lead over Labour.  After the Chequers meeting, the parties were tied at 39% each.  After the resignations of Davis and Johnson, Labour led by 39-37, with the Conservatives losing support to the UK Independence Party (UKIP).  This was Labour’s first lead in a YouGov poll since March.  Disillusionment with the Conservatives could damage them further in the coming days and weeks.

A major source for this article is Stephen Bush of the New Statesman’s Morning Call email (though it is more like Evening Call in Melbourne).

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Mexican election: landslide for the left

In the Mexican presidential election held on July 1, the left-wing candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known by his initials AMLO, won a commanding 53.2% of the vote, with Ricardo Anaya, who led a right-left coalition, in a very distant second with 22.3%.  The candidate of the current governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), José Antonio Meade, was third with just 16.4%.

AMLO’s vote share was the highest in a Mexican presidential election since 1982, and he is the first to win an absolute majority of the popular vote since 1988.  The PRI was dominant in Mexican elections during the twentieth century before they were defeated by Vicente Fox of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) in 2000.

Prior to the election, coalitions were formed that did not necessarily include like-minded parties.  AMLO’s coalition included his own MORENA party and the Labor Party, but also the evangelical Social Encounter Party.  Anaya’s coalition included his own PAN, but also the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and Citizens’ Movement.

Three hundred of the 500 members of the lower house were elected by first-past-the-post, and the remainder by proportional representation. 96 of the 128 senators were elected in 32 three-member electorates based on the states; in these electorates, the winning party won two seats, and the runner-up one. The remaining 32 senators were elected by proportional representation.

In the Senate, AMLO’s coalition won 43.7% of the vote and 70 of the 128 seats, while Anaya’s coalition won 27.6% of the vote and 38 seats, and the coalition led by the PRI won 22.6% of the vote and 20 seats.  In the lower house, similar vote shares gave AMLO’s coalition 312 of the 500 seats, Anaya’s coalition 128 seats and the PRI coalition just 60 seats.

MORENA won a total of 58 of the 128 senators, and 193 of the 500 lower house members.  Labor won seven senators and 61 in the lower house.  Combined, MORENA and Labor won 65 of the 128 senators, and 254 of the 500 lower house seats.  As a result, these two parties alone will have majorities in both chambers of the legislature, and AMLO will not need votes from the Social Encounter Party.

The left’s majority in the Mexican legislature is further bolstered by the PRD and Citizens’ Movement, which were formerly led by AMLO.  These two parties won a combined 16 senate seats and 49 lower house seats.

The president and the Senate have six-year terms, while the lower house has a three-year term.