Microsoft: A Return to the Dot-Com Era

 

THERESA MAY IS A BRITISH AUTOCRAT.

eremy Corbyn, the left-wing leader of Britain's Labour Party and leader of the official opposition, has just voted to trigger a general election that he cannot possibly win.

To outsiders, this may appear to be self-sabotage by an unskilled politician. In the United Kingdom, it is seen as the surrender of a man who has exhausted all other choices.

Theresa May now has complete control of British politics. Those who observed the authoritarian rhetoric of her statement on Tuesday, in which she openly advocated for a fresh election, are concerned about the latest expansion of her near-total power.

 

Unlike the United States, Britain does not have fixed term limits for its elected representatives. The British Parliament must be dissolved and new elections held every five years, according to the legislation.

However, there was no minimum term length for a Parliament until recently. Only the queen, according to the unwritten understandings that characterize our constitutional monarchy, may designate a date for new elections; in fact, she invariably does so when a Prime Minister wants it.

Everything changed in 2011. Because the coalition administration of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats was unusual, a new constitutional framework was necessary. To reassure his junior partners that they would get a full five-year term in power – and that the Conservatives would not try to dump them if they outperformed them in the polls in the middle of the term – then-Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to pass the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, which stipulated that Parliaments should last no more than five years.

The provisions of the Act can be avoided if a two-thirds majority of the House of Commons supports the prime minister's call for an early election. It was a band-aid solution to a historic problem.

The British people have long believed that the prime minister of the United Kingdom had the authority to determine the date of the next election. An early election is usually a defining moment of leadership within the ruling parliamentary party: it is generally a calculated gamble in the goal of strengthening parliamentary majority. However, this Act is now only a stumbling block that prime ministers must navigate.

As a result, Theresa May effectively issued a challenge to the leaders of other parliamentary parties: join me in voting for an election and give yourself an opportunity to present your program to the public, or obstruct this election and be labeled a coward.

Ironically, the more Corbyn falls in the polls, the more any attempt to postpone an election will appear fearful. Nothing is more dishonorable than a politician who is too afraid to ask the voters what they think.

As a result, a British prime minister can call an election anytime he or she wants. And, having rendered the Fixed Term Parliaments Act outdated, Theresa May is likely to repeal it entirely during the next Parliament, providing she remains in power.

The odds of anyone else succeeding her as Prime Minister are slim. Jeremy Corbyn presently lags behind her by approximately 20 points in most surveys.

Of course, this is why she has called the election now. She's cashing in at the pinnacle of her political valuation: many expect that the Labour Party will be nearly annihilated as a political force on June 8.

Yet May appears to want to do more than simply defeat her political opponents in elections. She surged with righteous rage at the whole thought of political opposition in her appeal for a fresh election.

 

May has presented this election as a reaffirmation of her plan for negotiating Britain's withdrawal from the European Union (though no one in Britain can tell you exactly what that is).

She'll struggle to identify a clear adversary: only the small Liberal Democrat party, which was left with nine MPs after the breakdown of the Coalition, is pledged to opposing Brexit entirely. On the topic, the Labour Party is divided, with Jeremy Corbyn himself a Eurosceptic.

However, in Tuesday's remarks, she emphasized that the British people had overwhelmingly opted to leave the EU. "The country is coming together on Brexit, but Westminster is not," May remarked. Her speech painted an image of unified, Eurosceptic voters rallying behind their leader, while a gang of Westminster elites works hard to subvert popular will.

The next morning, the Daily Mail, which has been a vocal supporter of Brexit and May's leadership style since she assumed office, published an editorial. The front-page headline read: CRUSH THE SABOTEURS. This is a classic approach used by authoritarian leaders: portray any resistance as anti-patriotic, a fifth column attempting to subvert popular will. For long years, those in Britain most devoted to a dramatic split with the EU have pushed this argument. Following the High Court's decision that a legislative vote would be necessary to execute the referendum result, a recent Daily Mail front page depicted each of the judges involved, with the headline: ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE.

And, in Parliament today, May informed the public exactly what they needed to do to fight these enemies: "Every Conservative vote makes it more difficult for those who want to prevent me from finishing the work... Every Conservative vote strengthens my hand as I negotiate for Britain with the EU." We are not accustomed to voting to confirm a political strongman in the United Kingdom.

Theresa May is neither a pseudo-democratic dictator in the mold of Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey or Viktor Orban of Hungary, both of whom leveraged first election victories to assist a one-party takeover of state apparatus. Nonetheless, there were echoes of Europe's new authoritarianism in her comments on the steps of Downing Street on Tuesday and in the House of Commons today.

"Divergence in Westminster will jeopardize our capacity to complete Brexit successfully, and it will produce devastating uncertainty and instability in the UK." Was she implying that Britain's House of Commons, the home of civil discussion, should instead be characterized by agreement?

Theresa May now has the authority to force Jeremy Corbyn to sign his own death warrant. She should not, however, be permitted to humiliate opponents of her Brexit policy into a national silence.