Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tonitrus]

He could be talking about a Sinn Fein breakout in Canada. 

[HisMajestyBOB]

I would hope that an outbreak of Brexit in Canada would be immediately reported. And the US-Canada border should be locked down immediately to avoid further spread.

[celedhring]

Dunno, the Trump strain got hold of the US pretty quick.

[crazy canuck]

Think you got the wrong thread there, pilgrim.

So it is 

[Sheilbh]

Johnson reshuffle.

Really interesting point is his chancellor, Sajid Javid, resigned rather than accept merging his office with Number 10 and several of his advisors losing their jobs. He's been replaced by Rishi Sunak who will have a merged Number 10 and 11 team.

Not sure what I think of it. It's clearly signalling that there will be more spending and debt, which is probably a good thing. If it is a formalised institutional shift it could be really significant, every post-war PM I can think of has, at some point, basically seen themselves as stymied by the Treasury. The Treasury is always the roadblock to reform agendas or foreign adventures of every PM. And every ex-Chancellor has said that's, sort of part of the job - they all say the Treasury is full of very, very clever but very cynical people. The Treasury institutionally sees itself as the only revenue collecting department in government and everyone else is rather dismissively referred to as a "spending department" who are seen by the Treasury as always profligate and wasteful. That combination means that with the exception of Cameron and Osborne, I can't think of a post-war PM who hasn't ended up having significant rows at some point with their Chancellor who is often too powerful to fire because they have their own power base as the minister who signs off on spending plans.

This could signal a move to a far more political Treasury. Which could be a bad idea. But the PM doesn't have a "department" of their own with significant civil service support, there's always been talk of building out an Office of the Prime Minister but it's never happened and since Thatcher at least PMs have used fluctuating bases of advisors to sort of monitor and push through their agenda (Thatcher, Blair and Brown had a lot, Cameron and Major pretty threadbare operations). Grafting Number 10 onto an existing ministry might be another way of building that up. There is also the possibility that instead of the Treasury becoming political, Number 10 gets outwitted by the Treasury and ends up a little more institutional and restrained.

As I say I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not - I've always supported some form of department for the PM - but it feels like this won't work. I'd love to get Lord Hennessy's take.

[Josquius]

Call me a cynic but I can't help but think putting an Asian in the top job is specifically to deflect racism accusations amidst the anti immigrant purge.

[Barrister]

As I say I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not - I've always supported some form of department for the PM - but it feels like this won't work. I'd love to get Lord Hennessy's take.

I don't quite follow.  Don't you have a PMO - the Prime Minister's Office, which supports the PM?

Oh, and also...

It's clearly signalling that there will be more spending and debt, which is probably a good thing.

[Sheilbh]

I don't quite follow.  Don't you have a PMO - the Prime Minister's Office, which supports the PM?

Yes-ish. Technically they're supported by the Cabinet Office and they have a PMO which is made up of special (political) advisors and civil servants. But its size and structure is entirely at the whim of the current PM and it is very far from anything like a typical Department.

Blair reformed it substantially in 2001. Before him it was very slim indeed (we're talking 1-200 people working for the PM directly) and did policy (since Wilson), comms, political management and diary management. Blair restructured it policy and delivery (Cameron got rid of the delivery unit and moved its responsibilities to the Treasury), comms and strategy and government/political relations - his idea was that the PM needed people actually monitoring and pushing through their agenda with each department and a unit to think strategically about the government's agenda. His PMO peaked at around 700 during Iraq, but was back down under 300 by the time he left office. I think it was back to 1-200 under Cameron and May but I'm not sure.

It doesn't have a formal structure or a budget, which is why several PMs have considered setting up a Department for the Prime Minister and Cabinet like Australia and New Zealand. I think Wilson considered it first but was detered after going to a meeting with Lyndon Johnson and he felt it was impossible for a US President to do much because they were always being managed by their staff, hassled for signatures etc

Also compared to other countries the UK has very few directly appointed political advisors for the PM. There was a useful Institute of Government report (which includes Canada as a case study) here p 10 has some interesting stats:
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/Supporting%20Heads%20of%20Government.pdf

But they're still pushing for more institutionalised support for the PM as the sort of centre of government.

Edit: Also p 20 has a great chart of policy advising staff.

[Tamas]

I think all it signals is that Johnson is too insecure to have anyone but absolute yesmen around him.

[Tamas]

[Maladict]

Interestingly, the UK flag seems to have been added to the EU/Switzerland lane.
I guess he wants to be in the even slower one?

[The Minsky Moment]

The tweet guy is being mocked but perhaps he is right.  We don't know which Brexit he voted for - perhaps it was the Brexit where the UK would formally leave but replace with EFTA or something similar, as opposed to say the Brexit where Britain tries to turn itself into the ultra-capitalist Singapore of the North Sea or the socialist Brexit where the UK leaves so it can nationalize industries and pour in state aid without being hassled. Or any one of the many other mutually exclusive Brexits. 

Thing is, the Brexit on the referendum wasn't any one of these.  It was the pig-in-a-poke Brexit.  At the end of the day, what Britain voted for was the Brexit behind door number 1.  No surprise if it fails to live up to expectations.

[The Brain]

Exactly. No one in the UK voted for any special kind of Brexit. There was only "Brexit" on the ballot.

[Syt]

I don't know where the confusion comes from. As former PM Theresa May said time and time again, "Brexit means Brexit."

[Grey Fox]

Brexit, just like almost everything nowadays, was whites voting against being inconvenienced.