DEBATE: Will this year be as politically tumultuous as the last?
Will this year be as politically tumultuous as the last?
Robert Colvile, director of the Centre for Policy Studies and author of The Great Acceleration, says YES.
Sorry to puncture the New Year cheer, but the turmoil of 2018 wasn’t a one-off – in fact, it’s the new normal.
The parliamentary situation, with the Tories supported up by an increasingly restive DUP, means that just a handful of MPs can bring the government to a crashing halt.
Ministers will inevitably respond by postponing any contentious legislation. But there are still massive decisions to be made on Brexit, on which there seems to be little chance of consensus – either between or within the main parties.
But it’s not just about Brexit. My recent book, The Great Acceleration, showed how technology has sped up the media agenda (among many, many other things). This in turn has sped up politics – and created a feedback loop between them.
The result is a world in which there is a sense of perpetual chaos, of more things happening all the time. Soothing these choppy waters would be tricky at the best of times – and these very much aren’t those.
Olivia Utley, deputy editor at TheArticle, says NO.
From the Chequers resignations to the Windrush scandal to the Conservative backbenchers’ botched no-confidence vote in Theresa May, 2018 was an unusually volatile year in politics. And now it’s over.
Although it may not feel like it now, May’s withdrawal deal – which gives us a legally sound and plausible vision of how Brexit could look – might be the thing that puts an end to that volatility.
Of course, the withdrawal deal was unpopular in parliament – and the next three months will be fraught with difficulty as MPs desperately try to hash out alternatives.
But in the end, given that there’s no majority in the House for anything else, it seems probable that they will reluctantly resign themselves to May’s compromise, or something similar.
With the big, existential questions out of the way by March, sorting out the technicalities of Brexit – a task which will occupy the rest of 2019 – might end up feeling comparatively simple.
At any rate, it can hardly be more complicated.