Suspend, disbelief: Parliament and Brexit

Hello and welcome to The Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. After years of on-again, off-again deal-making, America will sell a pile of its F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan. Relations with America are quietly improving. And it's telling that even the island's more pro-China party approves of the sale. Beijing, of course, doesn't. And there's a plump, flightless bird in New Zealand called the kakapo. They're cute and critically endangered. But this year, their numbers are booming, in part because scientists are going to exceptional lengths to save them. The pressure is rising in the battle between Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his opponents in Parliament, among the British people, and even in his own Conservative Party. Today, the popular head of its Scottish branch, Ruth Davidson, announced her resignation. Yesterday, Mr. Johnson sparked outrage by announcing a suspension of Parliament for 5 weeks. The closure drastically shortens the time lawmakers could use to try to stop Britain leaving the European Union without a deal on October 31st. The response from opposition politicians was furious.

I think today will go down in history as the day UK democracy died.

What the prime minister is doing is a sort of smash and grab on our democracy in order to force through a no-deal exit from the European Union. Last night, thousands of people gathered outside Parliament to protest against what many described as a coup.

Boris Johnson isn't even elected. He was just appointed by some crusty old Tory members. He's abusing our democracy by shutting Parliament down so that him and his rich friends can push through Brexit. It's disgraceful.

He's using a system of parliamentary power to ultimately ride through Brexit, and I think that sets a new precedent.

The Prime Minister claimed this was a normal way for a new government to behave before setting out its plans for the country in a speech given by the Queen. But many think the circumstances are different this time.

I think what Boris Johnson is doing in suspending Parliament is legal and probably constitutional, but it is clearly also cynically aimed at shortening any time that MPs might have to try to do something to stop a no-deal Brexit on October 31st.

John Peat is our Brexit editor.

He's suspending Parliament for an unusually long time, and I think the only reason for doing that is to minimize the chances that MPs have of legislating or finding some other means to stop Britain crashing out on October 31st.

If it weren't hamstrung by this, how would Parliament want to go about doing that?

I think what MPs now plan is to try and pass legislation, which after all is their normal role, They did something similar in March when they passed legislation against Theresa May's wishes to ask her to seek an extension of the Brexit deadline. And they will try and do this again starting next week.

But how would that play out in practice?

It's quite difficult to predict what will happen in the House of Commons. But the Speaker, John Bercow, is clearly very much on the side of MPs who want to be given the chance to stop a no-deal Brexit. He believes that MPs should have a say before Britain leaves the European Union. So I think what is likely to happen is that he will permit an emergency debate. The emergency debate will be used to try to craft a bill that will demand that Boris Johnson goes to Brussels to seek more time. Whether there is sufficient parliamentary time to pass that bill into law is an open question. It could pass the Commons, but it also has to pass the Lords. And there are very few sitting days in which this can happen. So I think there will be a race against time to get this legislation through.

A race against time made radically worse by suspending Parliament in the first place. I mean, we've talked before about how much Mr. Johnson may or may not actually want to crash out with a no deal. You've said it might just be a sort of negotiating tactic to look tough. Yet this looks like he just simply wants it now.

I think he's doing two things. He wants to send a message to Brussels and other capitals that a no deal Brexit is a real possibility and that he is going to do his utmost to stop MPs, including MPs from his own party, from frustrating it. He also wants to send a signal to backers of Nigel Farage's Brexit Party that he agrees with them and he's doing his best to deliver what Farage calls a clean Brexit, what other people call a no-deal Brexit. Whether he really wants a no-deal Brexit, I think, is not quite clear because he's always said that he would prefer to leave with a deal. But given the time constraint, it's looking increasingly likely that it could end up being a no-deal Brexit.

So do you think that he has made good faith efforts to try to get a deal struck?

I think when he went to Berlin and Paris to meet EU leaders and then met them again at the Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, they were impressed with the view that he genuinely wanted to try to sort out a compromise that would pass parliament. Against that, they think his demand, which is to remove completely the backstop that is designed to prevent there ever being a hard border with Ireland is a very sort of strong demand to make when there's only 6 weeks or so to go. And there is no sign that they are willing to move sufficiently to satisfy what he wants. But I think there is a genuine attempt at negotiating going on. So it is still conceivable that some deal could be struck during the next month or so.

And are European leaders showing any sign of bending on their various red lines?

One thing throughout these negotiations has been that Britain has consistently underestimated how damaging a no-deal Brexit could be to the UK and overestimated the desire of other European Union leaders not to allow a no-deal Brexit. In Brussels and other capitals, they believe that a no-deal Brexit would be highly damaging to Britain. And they think the damage to the rest of the EU would be quite small. And I think that means that the use of a no-deal threat as a bargaining lever to try to extract more concessions from Brussels has never been terribly successful. And I don't think it's going to work now.

And so what options then are parliamentarians left with, with the small amount of time that they will have? How could they still fight back?

They will try to legislate to demand an extension of the Brexit deadline. That may or may not work in the next 2 weeks. If it looks like not working, they may well resort to a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson's government, which I think might be lost because he has a majority, a working majority of only 1, and there are quite a lot of Conservative rebels, including former ministers, who don't like Boris Johnson and would be willing to vote against their own government if that's the only way to stop no deal. What is not quite certain is what would happen if they won a vote of no confidence, because even after that, there would be 14 days during which Boris Johnson would remain as Prime Minister, could try and have another go at winning a vote of confidence before calling an election. And if he's forced to call an election, he might call an election for after Britain leaves the European Union on October 31st. So even that route is not a certain way of stopping a no-deal Brexit.

So on the face of it, it looks as if Mr. Johnson has more or less cinched this up. I mean, how How could this play out to your mind? What's the most likely outcome?

I think MPs for the next 3 weeks will do their utmost to try to craft some way of stopping Britain leaving with no deal on October 31st. But it's not clear that they can do that. And it's not clear even if they did do that what the answer would be to what happens next. Because stopping it happening on October 31st doesn't mean it wouldn't happen at a later stage, since Parliament has consistently failed to find any form of Brexit that it can support. And I think if you put that together with the fight between Boris Johnson and many of his own MPs and the opposition that is going to play out over the next month or so, we are probably heading for a general election. I don't know whether that will be before Britain leaves the European Union on October 31st or after, but I think an election is quite likely in the next few months.

John, thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you.

This week in the East China Sea, close to Taiwan, China will stage its third set of military drills in a month. This show of force comes in response to America's plans to sell F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan. 66 of them.

China for a long time has seen the sale of fighter jets from the US to Taiwan as a red line that the US can't cross.

Jane Rickards writes about Taiwan for The Economist.

So the unusually pricey deal of $8 billion US has outraged China.

Why has that caused such particular outrage?

Ever since Chiang Kai-shek and his forces fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War to the Communists, China has viewed Taiwan as a wayward province that's part of its territory. Mainland China operates a one-China principle, which means that there's only one China in the world, and Taiwan's part of that China, and other countries should give diplomatic recognition to China and not to Taiwan. That is, China thinks Taiwan has no right to behave like an independent sovereign state. The last time fighter jets were sold to Taiwan was 1992 under the first Bush administration. So the real power this sale embodies is more of a psychological shock for China than an actual change to the military balance in the Taiwan Strait. And the reason for that was that the US has held off selling jets to Taiwan for so long. And this is quite a major step forward in terms of US-Taiwan arms deals.

So why then is the American administration willing to do so? What's changed in the relationship?

President Trump has appointed many officials who are very sympathetic to Taiwan. The most prominent of these is John Bolton, President Trump's National Security Adviser, but there are many people friendly to Taiwan in the administration of defense and diplomacy in other areas. The first sign we got that Trump might take a new approach to Taiwan was when he accepted a telephone call from Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen just after he was elected US president, and China was outraged because of course they said it violated the One China principle. US-Taiwan relations are sort of very quietly but steadily warming since the phone call. Most recently, President Tsai Ing-wen stayed in New York for 2 days, which was a very long transit stopover for a Taiwanese president. So that was a sign that US-Taiwan ties were warming up. Another sign was recently the US sold about $2.2 billion worth of tanks and anti-aircraft missiles. So the F-16 jet sale is one of the biggest sales of all, and American congressmen and women tend to see Taiwan as a bulwark against Chinese assertiveness in the region. So the deal is likely to go through.

You say it's one of the biggest sales of its kind. Does that mean it's going to have a meaningful impact on Taiwan's overall military might?

Taiwan's air force is seriously aging. It has a fleet of Mirage jets bought from France in the 1990s, and since then several of them have been in crashes. They need to retire. Taiwan's air force also has F-5 jets bought from the US in the 1970s. So purchasing the F-16s is not really going to change the balance in the Taiwan Strait.

You mentioned that there's frowning from the mainland about certain diplomatic procedures, but that fighter jets and the like are a red line. I mean, how has China responded to the notion that this sale may go through?

Well, it's actually very unclear what China intends to do. The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said it severely violates the One China principle. China can take various actions such as sanctioning the arms companies involved or suspending American-Chinese military exchanges. It's still not clear at this point if they intend to do that. And recently there've been increasing military drills. The Chinese aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, has traversed the Taiwan Strait several times. In Taiwan, Taiwan. It no longer feels odd to have PLA jets fly very close to Taiwan or encircle Taiwan. It's sort of become almost routine.

Do you get the sense that China is serious about the potential for taking military action against Taiwan, or is this just sort of asserting its power?

I think definitely that China's preparing for a day when it will launch an invasion against Taiwan. That's kind of been the focus of its military buildup. Whether it's just last resort or whether it intends to do it one day, we don't know. But I would say for the moment it's just trying to harass the current government. And one reason why I say that is that China in the last years offered various economic incentives to Taiwanese professionals. In other words, it's trying to sort of add to a brain drain where people go over to the mainland to work. And China's idea is that through living in Chinese society, they'll start to identify the idea of one China. Or at least not complain about it very much. And I think if China was serious about a military invasion right now, it wouldn't be bothering. So I think that it will probably give some time for these economic incentives to work before it makes a decision.

But in the meantime, it seems Taiwan is interested in arming up. I mean, is this deal with the F-16s the doing of President Tsai and her DPP party?

The deal had been in the works for a long time. The first time the F-16s were requested was actually in 2006 under a former DPP president, Chen Shui-bian. Who, unlike President Tsai, was sort of an independence firebrand. He was blatantly in favor of Taiwanese independence, and the US at the time rejected the request. Then after President Chen, there was a Kuomintang president called Ma Ying-jeou, and he also requested F-16 jets and the US refused. So over more than a decade, we've seen China pressure two successive American administrations, the Bush administration, the Obama administration, to refuse the sale of the F-16 jets.

And how will this go down in Taiwan? What will it mean for domestic politics there?

President Tsai is gearing up for a reelection campaign, and I believe this arms sale will help her. She's casting herself as a counterpoint to an increasingly assertive and hegemonic China. She's also made a big deal out of the Hong Kong protests, as she should. The protests in Hong Kong are really playing into the DPP's hand. and I think that the arms deal is another thing which will enhance Tsai's image as someone who's sort of strong enough to stand up to Chinese influence. A sign that the arms deal has gone down well with the Taiwanese public and that it's helping Tsai Ing-wen is that the opposition Kuomintang's presidential candidate, Han Kuo-yu, very unexpectedly came out in full support of the F-16 sale. And he said that if he was elected, he would also work hard to strengthen military and security ties between Taiwan and America. And that came as quite a surprise. And I think the fact that Han Kuo-yu was effectively moving his platform more towards the Taiwanese center or over to Tsai is a sign that the F-16 jet sale is going down well in all quarters.

Jane, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

New Zealand's remoteness has led to the creation of lots of weird and wonderful wildlife. Among the strangest, though, is the kakapo, an impressively fat flightless parrot. It weighs up to 4 kilograms, 9 pounds, and waddles along the forest floor. Given that it evolved without predators, it doesn't have strong survival instincts. Whenever it sees a threat, it freezes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these days there aren't that many kakapo left.

The kakapo actually used to be incredibly common in New Zealand. It was, it was third most common bird until human settlers started arriving.

Eleanor Whitehead is The Economist's Australia and New Zealand correspondent.

To the point that there were no known kakapo at all in New Zealand by the early 1970s. They were thought to be extinct. And it wasn't until scientists stumbled upon a couple of unknown populations that they were returned to the land of the living. And they were eventually moved to islands off New Zealand's coast, which were cleared of predators. And scientists there are kind of finally having some luck trying to repopulate them. So they had 86 chicks hatch this year in what was the best breeding season that they've had on record. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it's grown the adult population by over a third to 200 birds. So they've really kind of been brought back from the brink of extinction.

So why has this year's breeding season been so successful?

So it is largely due to another evolutionary quirk, which is that the kakapo only mates when a native New Zealand tree called the rimu is fruiting. And that happens every 2 to 4 years. And this was one of those years. But there's also been a lot of scientific innovation which has helped those efforts. So, so one of the problems that the kakapo has is that there's a lack of genetic diversity from, from low numbers and years and years of inbreeding. And scientists think that may be why typically fewer than half of the eggs the kakapo lay are fertile. So to maximize the genetic diversity as far as possible, one thing they've done is, is recently finished sequencing the genome of every living bird, every living kakapo. And with that genetic information, they can identify closely related birds and separate them by moving them onto different islands. And they can also pair up ones that are better suited, which often involves artificial insemination, which they are increasingly having luck with.

How much does all this effort cost?

So something in the region over the course of this breeding season alone of, of $2 million New Zealand dollars, which is about $1.2 million US dollars, paid for partly out of public coffers, partly by private sponsorship and also just individuals donating as well to that conservational effort.

But why is there so much effort and indeed money being thrown at this? Why so much focus on this one bird?

It is a really good question. I think it would be foolish to pretend it's not partly to do with its charisma. So it's an extraordinary bird. It's a hugely charismatic bird. You know, it's fat, it's bumbling, it's kind of got whiskers instead of feathers. It sort of looks like an old man. And I think people are immensely obviously drawn to it. And scientists readily admit that they could save more species with the resources that go toward the kakapo. But there is this kind of sense, I think, a sort of national obligation, a scientific obligation, which is that this is a bird that's been on an evolutionary pathway for 30 million years, which wasn't interrupted until humans arrived. So there's a kind of sense of national duty, I suppose, to preserve it.

Eleanor, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you.

That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts, and you can subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/radiooffer. 12 issues for $12 or £12. Bounce. See you back here tomorrow.

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