The existing atmosphere among Labour MPs these days adheres to Edgar's law. It affirms that the extent of any misfortune is only measured relative to yet-to-come catastrophes. As the playwright has the exiled child of the sightless nobleman of Gloucester say in King Lear: “The worst is absent, provided that we can say ‘this is the worst’.”
A Chain of Intensifying Difficulties
According to this principle, there exists no survey so gloomy for Labour that cannot be coming after one even bleaker; no economic projection so poor that the exchequer won't exacerbate through contradictory signals regarding taxation; no doubts regarding the leader that won't be heightened through malicious leaks regarding a contest for leadership.
Immigration Rules Declaration
Considering this situation, the latest revelation of strategies designed to limit the number of asylum seekers granted entry to the United Kingdom, modelled on a famously strict Nordic approach, went down better with Labour MPs than might have been expected. There appeared glimmers of MP frustration yet no wildfire of dissent.
Hardening immigration policies does not represent the government's preferred area, but the current system is clearly failing and voters are angry. Most MPs comprehend the reasoning that acceptance and intercommunal harmony are more readily developed when there is confidence that the country's boundaries remain protected.
Increasing Dissatisfaction
Silent parliamentary rows may also represent threatening. Parliamentarians have realized that each issue is discussable under an aimless chief of adaptable beliefs. Current proclamations may be unannounced tomorrow. There's no requirement to rush over the top when victories can be won by attrition.
A common complaint concerns the Prime Minister is barely running the administration in any meaningful way, having delegated policy decisions to his chief of staff. This doesn't imply the leader misses managerial vigor, he merely chooses not to mediate in departmental disputes or participate in extended discussions.
Management Method
The leader joined political parties during later professional life, originally joining the legislature at the age of 52. He lacks instinct about movement history – the body of past debates, initiatives, figures and social allusions which link a chief to the wider movement and its feeling of shared purpose.
His most personal values remain unknown even to the cabinet. According to an experienced Labour figure puts it: “The Prime Minister is quite different as a prime minister by creating the perception that whatever he personally thinks is none of your business.”
Governmental Outcomes
The persona marketed representing the leader during the previous electoral contest has likewise failed to provide its promised advantages: executive proficiency leading to national renewal. Had the UK maintained a two-party system, the memory of how bad things were under the Tories might prolong tolerance for the party.
That presages a devastating defeat among government contenders in municipal and regional polls next May. It shall represent a time of great danger for the Prime Minister, if he endures through that period.
Leadership Questions
Absent in these assessments appears unity concerning the individual of a replacement and how their programme may differ from the current government's agenda. This flaw within succession arrangements is cited by the prime minister's defenders as part of various arguments to stick with the incumbent.
Even as unhappy parliamentarians may flinch at those warnings, they also hear through them the well-known, meaningless sound of limited aspiration which causes hopelessness regarding present circumstances. It is the sound of inability to describe the approach as merely a set of methods for maintaining position.
Ending Reflections
It is hard to summon loyalty toward such a purpose. Numerous parliamentarians have attempted. They have adhered to official positions, defended it on the doorstep, obeyed the whips, accepted guarantees that their concerns were heard.
Regicide contains considerable peril, but is it riskier versus acting as if that the current ruler possesses solutions to big questions which he doesn't identify? The literary maxim invites caution when removing a sitting prime minister. The successor might prove more disastrous.
“The burden of this sad time we need to follow; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”
