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EDITORIAL
May e o problema na fila de trás
Esta versão
“my way” (de Theresa May) arrisca-se a deitar fora a última oportunidade de
reunir os britânicos em torno de um projecto comum. Isso exigirá liderança,
depois das eleições.
David Dinis
19 de Abril
de 2017, 6:02
No Reino
Unido chamaram-lhe uma “U-Turn”, uma inversão de 180 graus. Pode parecer uma
volta grande, mas Theresa May fê-la em 6 minutos e 51 segundos, o tempo de uma
declaração em Downing Street. Da mensagem, anote estas duas passagens: “As
divisões em Westminster vão pôr em risco a nossa capacidade de fazer do Brexit
um sucesso (…). Se não convocarmos eleições agora, o jogo político continuará”.
O Reino
Unido parte agora para eleições antecipadas, um ano depois do referendo da
saída, de May ser nomeada primeira-ministra e de esta ter dito, e repetido, que
não iria a votos antes de 2020. O imprevisível "U-Turn" tem, neste
caso, uma justificação simples: as sondagens que dão aos conservadores 20
pontos de diferença face aos trabalhistas. Mas também tem justificações mais
complexas, que têm menos a ver com Jeremy Corbyn e nos dizem mais sobre o
momento difícil que o Reino Unido está a atravessar.
Isto porque
o que se tem passado em Londres nos últimos meses não é um simples jogo
político. É a consequência de um referendo que resultou no "Brexit"
sem que alguém, seriamente, tenha preparado terreno, argumentário ou previsto
as consequências. Consequência: a primeira-ministra tem uma maioria no
Parlamento britânico, sim, mas apoia-se num grupo de deputados que não é o seu.
E que, como a sociedade, tem 1001 respostas diferentes para o que aí pode vir.
Hoje, a
maioria conservadora é curta e facilmente suplantada pelo chamado “banco de
trás”, a última fila do Parlamento onde se sentaram os mais eurocépticos,
aqueles que, entre os conservadores, mais empurrariam o Governo para um
“hard-Brexit” - uma negociação mais dura, uma solução ainda mais distante da dos
caminhos da Europa. Tem sido, portanto, difícil a Theresa May governar. E
seria, é bom reconhecê-lo, bastante difícil fazer assim as negociações de
saída.
Do ponto de
vista táctico, Theresa May aproveitou a oportunidade e abriu a primeira porta
para sair deste labirinto: procura a sua legitimação, tentando afastar os que
se sentaram no banco de trás, tentando também tirar força aos deputados
escoceses que há meses pressionam um segundo referendo.
A
estratégia, porém, tem riscos para a recomposição do Reino Unido como nação.
Sim, é legítimo que May queira liderar o processo do "Brexit" sem
mais obstáculos. Mas, num país dividido como nunca, esta versão “my way” (de
Theresa May) arrisca-se a deitar fora a última oportunidade de reunir os
britânicos em torno de um projecto comum - e não provocar a implosão de uma
sociedade perdida.
Esse risco
começa agora, na campanha eleitoral (e nós sabemos quão imprevisíveis os
britânicos têm sido em eleições). Mas terá, depois, mais dois duros anos de
obstáculos pela frente. Num percurso onde, por uma última vez, os britânicos
não terão a palavra final sozinhos - terão de a dividir com os outros 27 da UE.
“Estas
eleições serão todas sobre a liderança”, disse a primeira-ministra nesta
terça-feira. Para eles, britânicos, e para nós, europeus, era bom que May a
conseguisse mostrar, para além dos jogos políticos e da dispensa do banco de
trás.
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The Guardian view on the 2017 general
election: a poll that Britain does not need
Editorial
Theresa May’s wish for an early
general election is a U-turn that is bad for politics. The voters must not give
her a blank cheque on the Brexit terms
Tuesday 18 April 2017 19.09 BST Last modified on Tuesday 18
April 2017 22.00 BST
Even before day one of Theresa May’s prime ministership, she
was categorical about the undesirability of an early election. As Mrs May put
it in Whitehall on 30 June 2016 at the launch of her Conservative leadership
bid: “There should be no general election until 2020.” This was unambiguous
and, until today, it was the mantra to which she has stuck ever since. Her
spokesman said it most recently last month. Asked if there might be an early
election, Downing Street said it was “not going to happen”.
Yet now it is going to happen after all, and it is happening
solely because Mrs May sees Conservative partisan advantage in making it
happen. Today, Mrs May stood in Downing Street and announced with a completely
straight face that the government intended to call an election on 8 June.
Parliament will vote on the mattertomorrow. Unless more than a third of MPs
vote against Mrs May’s motion, Britain is heading to the polls in seven weeks’
time. Mrs May may have presented the decision as the government’s, but it is
very clear that it was hers alone.
So let us be very clear. Britain does not need, and its
people are not demanding, this general election. There is no crisis in the
government. Mrs May is not losing votes in the Commons. The House of Lords is
not defying her. No legislation is at risk. There is no war and no economic
crisis. Brexit is two years away. The press are not clamouring for an early
election. The government has not run out of ideas. The opposition is not ready.
Mrs May is enough of a Tory to know that British prime ministers who take over
in midterm have no constitutional “need” of a personal mandate, especially when
they are in as commanding a position as she currently enjoys. Yet now a
supposedly five-year parliament will have lasted for just two, solely because
Mrs May thinks this is a good time to crush Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party.
As U-turns go, it is an absolute screecher. The smell of
rubber on the Downing Street black top is acrid and foul. Judgments about Mrs
May will never be quite the same, and deservedly so. She has built her
authority by being, and by appearing to be, a leader who plays straight, gets
on with the job and takes politics seriously. Like Alice in Wonderland, she
said what she meant and meant what she said. Until 11am today that was more or
less believable – and to her credit. Politics in general was the stronger for
it.
But now there is a new dimension to Mrs May. She is now a
party political leader whose words can’t be trusted at face value as much, and
for whom politics is, after all, a game. The Tory party may win, if opinion
polls can be believed, because Mrs May is trusted far more than Mr Corbyn. But
the loss to wider politics ought to be severe. The damage inflicted by the
hypocrisy of the apparently sincere is more serious than the damage inflicted
by the transparently untrustworthy.
The likelihood that Mrs May will get her way in the Commons
does not make it the right outcome. Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, if
more than a third of MPs vote against tomorrow’s motion, there will be no
election on 8 June. That minority veto exists for a serious and good reason: to
prevent a dominant government party from steamrolling its opponents into an
early poll. Labour, on its own, has enough MPs to block the move, even with the
SNP and the Liberal Democrats voting with the government. Yet it is not going
to happen because Labour is intimidated and fatalistic. The motion itself, and
the likely Commons endorsement of it, are evidence of the weakness of our party
politics, not their robustness.
Some of Mrs May’s reasons for calling the election are
particularly unacceptable. To say, as she did, that a poll is needed because
“division at Westminster” is causing “damaging uncertainty and instability”
sails troublingly close to being a Thames Valley version of the sort of thing
that President Erdoğan might say in Turkey. Division in parliament is necessary
and inherent, above all on something as momentous as the Brexit terms. Brexit
reflects life-influencing divisions in the country. Mrs May’s decision and
language illustrate the damage that referendums do to parliamentary democracy.
The election is also an invitation to voters to buy Mrs
May’s Brexit terms sight unseen. She said today that she wants support “for the
decisions I must take”. But we do not know what those decisions will be. They
depend on negotiations that have barely begun with some EU partners who face
elections of their own, as well as on events. All this will involve give and
take. Mrs May is seeking a mandate to do something of which not even she knows
the main planks, the details and the trade-offs. She wants to get parliament
off her back in making the Brexit terms. This election must ensure that this
does not happen.
Many things may change over the coming weeks. At this early
stage the danger is that the 2017 election may be less a contest about who
should govern and more a contest about how much power the voters are willing to
entrust to Mrs May. The Tory manifesto will have to be watched like a hawk; it
will be an unusually crucial document. This is a premature election which the
country does not need, the people do not want and Mrs May does not require in
order to do her job effectively. Above all else, this election must not write
her a blank cheque over Europe.
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