New term – Brexit eclipses all

The new political season starts this week, with Parliament resuming briefly on Tuesday before stopping again for the Party conference season. Boris has raised the curtain with the first in what looks likely to be a series of incendiary attacks on the Prime Minister and her Chequers plan for Brexit.

The summer, as summers go, was relatively quiet politically speaking. Brexit rumbled on. Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn is still learning the lesson that what one might say as an obscure backbencher carries a different sort of impact when you become your party’s candidate to be Prime Minister.

The once ubiquitous Alex Salmond is without a constituency, without a party, and facing sexual harrasment allegations he denies. Northern Ireland hasn’t had a government for far too long. Nigel Farage is publicly mulling a run for London Mayor, which keeps him in the news and is a canny publicity stunt. Otherwise we are much as we were before we all went off on our holidays. This though has been the calm before the inevitable storm.

Labour MPs are going to have to make their mind up quite soon whether they will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Mr Corbyn in the run-up to and through the next General Election. It is all very well Frank Field bailing out but he was one of those who nominated Mr Corbyn for the leadership. When the Conservative Parliamentary party faced a prolonged period of leadership by Iain Duncan Smith they moved ruthlessly to remove him, even though they had put him into the final of the leadership contest and party members had voted for him. They then installed Michael Howard as leader, without any vote at all. He steadied the ship for the Conservative Party then and Labour MPs need to do something similar now or stop publicly moaning.

In Scotland, the SNP has been in power for eleven years. With or without Mr Salmond the party faces a much more challenging environment. Nicola Sturgeon has been a cannier leader than her bellicose predecessor but she faces tougher opponents than he did. Scotland has a more competitive politics these days with the Tories revived. A long period of one party rule, first by Labour and then the SNP, is not healthy for debate or for public institutions. The prospect of a real choice at the ballot box keeps politicians on their toes and engages the attention of the electorate.

Back at Westminster much is going on in departments with ministers launching initiatives, introducing reforms, welcoming record employment levels, and so on.

The failure to break the deadlock in the politics of Northern Ireland is particularly concerning. Jeremy Hunt has made an effective start as Foreign Secretary, the Chancellor is in trouble for not being cheerful enough about Brexit even though he is presiding over a relatively successful economy.

The Home Secretary seems to be doing as much as possible to change more or less everything he sees at the Home Office. David Gauke is proving to be as calm and competent at Justice as he has been in his previous jobs.

And so it goes on, department by department, largely unnoticed as on the whole good government should be. In a normal season this would be the quiet lull between elections, when political news is slow or contrived and journalists have to be enterprising to fill the pages of newspapers and websites. This year, Brexit eclipses all.

Brexit defines this Parliament and this generation of politicians. It defines the government, the Cabinet and the Prime Minister. What happens over the next few months will define the country for years to come.

Theresa May’s integrity can be judged by the fact that even now she cannot bring herself to say when asked that she thinks the country will be better off outside of the EU because she clearly does not think so. It would be easy for her to say she does. It would be advantageous for her politically in certain quarters – certainly in the run-up to the party conference to do so, but that is not her way and that is why – in my view – she is the right leader and the right Prime Minister for this most intractable of political challenges, because she has the integrity not to be pushed into saying or doing something she feels is not right.

That does not mean she is right, or that she is wrong, but what it does mean – and this should matter in public life – is that she has integrity. A deal will be done between the UK and the EU, I suspect. It will then be for Parliament to vote for it or not. In the end that is where a deal or no deal Brexit will be decided. Until this is settled, one way or another, British politics will continue at dizzying speed to revolve around Brexit.