The party leaders are losing control of the election debate

Almost single handedly the BBC interviewer Andrew Neil is exposing the thinness of the  main party leaders arguments – even those of  the normally poised and practiced Nicola Sturgeon. who was rattled as never before.    A minority Labour government would not need to be the SNP’s suitor – the SNP have nowhere else to go. A second referendum overturning the result of the first would deprive her of her best argument for Indy Ref 2. Would the EU welcome into the fold a Scotland still tied to England’s £ when the rules state new entrants must join the euro? What sense would there be in belonging to the monetary union when 60% of Scottish trade is with England?  Look at Ireland she retorted. Ah Ireland. But Ireland’s success  required not only a bigger market  but strong doses of EU structural funds  to come good – funds not to be likely available to relatively prosperous Scotland. And both Ireland and the UK were inside the EU with no trade barriers between them.

Tonight Neil refused to let Jeremy Corbyn rely on his usual speaking lines and reduced him to a whispering nervous wreck. It was Corbyn’s misfortune that the Chief Rabbi had  condemned Labour’s   failures to tackle anti semitism and hiding behind process. Neil naturally opened  with the Chef Rabbi’s devastating attack.

The claims that the party is “doing everything” it reasonably can to tackle anti-Jewish racism and that it has “investigated every single case”, are a mendacious fiction. According to the Jewish Labour Movement, there are at least 130 outstanding cases before the party, some dating back years, and thousands more have been reported but remain unresolved.

How far is too far? How complicit in prejudice would a leader of Her Majesty’s opposition have to be to be considered unfit for office? Would associations with those who have incited hatred against Jews be enough? Would describing as “friends” those who endorse the murder of Jews be enough? It seems not.

It is not my place to tell any person how they should vote. I regret being in this situation at all. I simply pose the question: What will the result of this election say about the moral compass of our country? When December 12 arrives, I ask every person to vote with their conscience. Be in no doubt, the very soul of our nation is at stake.

The Labour leader was asked four times whether he would like to apologise.He declined in specific  terms saying  that his government would  protect “every community against the abuse they receive”.

Corbyn was unable to say who would campaign for the Brexit deal he has promised he would negotiate and then put to the country, alongside remain, in a referendum. He admitted his tax policies would, in fact, mean some people on less than £80,000 per year would see effective increases. He said the compensation for  Waspi women caught in a pensions trap was “ a moral issue” but was uncertain about  where the necessary  £58 billion would be found. His fiscal ignorance was manifest.

Boris Johnson must be nervous about facing Neil tomorrow night even though he may be better at brazing it out. The obvious line of attack is the lack of credibility over “ getting Brexit done.

Sir Ivan Rogers the UK’s ambassador to the EU who walked out on Theresa May at the off has produced the latest of a line of devastating analyses  to take Johnson’s position apart. Johnson’s best hope is doing another U turn like his pivot form the backstop to the front stop

In practice, this prime minister is, for all his talk of getting Brexit done, now basically replicating the strategy errors of 2016 and 2017, which brought his predecessor down. This is diplomatic amateurism dressed up domestically as boldness and decisiveness.”

There has also been a resolute failure on both sides of the Channel to think enough strategically—geostrategically—about a relationship which is enormously important to the western world.

And which can either now go seriously pear-shaped for a really long time, or can still be rebuilt on new foundations. But only if there is the trust that is now largely missing on both sides.

Most of the EU elites therefore now see a Johnson outright victory as the quickest route to getting the intended Withdrawal Agreement through. If he wants, in order to force it through, to overstate what changes he achieved to it, or claim that the new frontstop deal does not rather sell his former Democratic Unionist allies down the river in a fashion for which he would have excoriated his predecessor, so be it. “Whatever he needs to say…” they shrug.

Put bluntly, they want to see whether a majority Johnson Government would be strong enough to ditch the “no dealers” and “clean breakers” within and beyond the Tory Party and acknowledge the reality of what the U.K. needs from a comprehensive trade deal with its main trading partners, or whether we are on another course altogether.

 I want to explain today why I believe the biggest crisis of Brexit to date actually still lies ahead of us in late 2020; to explain why that crisis is virtually inevitable and how I think it will unfold; and to a few offer thoughts as to what we should do from here.

I look at the likely dynamics of next year if we face this approach from the EU, as I believe we shall within about 3 months, and I am really not sure I see how or why any deal gets done.

We would end up with what exactly? A very thin, Canada minus minus deal with zero tariffs and quotas, but only with extensive “level playing field” permanent conditionality.

And only provided we do a deal on fish in which it is very hard to see why the 8 fishing member states will be prepared to see any losses as a result of Brexit in what is a pretty zero sum game sector. Or of they did, why the deal would pass their legislatures. Their moment of maximum leverage on fish is next year, and they know it…..

 In what is supposed to be “ the Brexit election” the subject itself has been sidelined to the role of elephant in the room. No party leadership has confidence in its own position. It really is “ up to us,”the voters.

These performances  almost make the Northern Ireland parties look good. Until that is the news story from home that caught my eye. John Finucane Sinn Fein’s candidate in North Belfast  and current Lord Mayor was cautioned by police for urinating in the street in June. I’ll resist turning it into a metaphor.

Brian Walker

Former BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London