In the Tories' darkest hour, they need a Churchill
Not long ago, hegemony was within their grasp but the party used its moment of strength to indulge its greatest weaknesses.
Monday 3 June 2019 11:19, UK
It's the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Perhaps that's why Winston Churchill is on my mind.
A quote of his, rattling around my brain for days, not, in this case about those famous Normandy beaches but about the British skies.
Eighty years after he said it, there's another battle of Britain going on, this time for the soul of Churchill's party and a bastardisation of that famous quote, seems apposite right now. For as I survey the state of the Tory leadership race and ergo, for our next prime minister, I can only conclude that never in the field of political conflict were so many candidates found so wanting, so many, with so much to say, to so little effect.
The sheer number of putative prime ministers in this battle only illustrates how poor the state of the Conservative Party is and by extension, how gloomy the prospects for this country's politics are.
Let us start with the number of candidates itself. Never have we seen so many wannabes for the leadership of a major party, normally there are half a dozen at the very most.
Some have said that this is a good thing - let a thousand flowers bloom, the cry goes. But far from this being a sign of health, of a plethora of talent on display, it is in fact the opposite, a nod to a party mired in ill-discipline and deep decay. It confirms the weakness of the front runners, those in the great offices of state.
Through political weight they should be able to command allegiance but they cannot.
So tainted or problematic are they that their power within the party to cajole, to force the smallest of minnows to get in line, is far more limited than it ought to be. A problem only compounded by their failure to offer little in the way of compelling vision around which to cohere.
Likewise, it speaks to the fact that the factions of the Tory party have become so inchoate, so divided unto themselves, that they can't each produce a single standard bearer around which to rally. Civil war within the factions producing yet greater civil war overall; it is a mess.
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All that is left then is the only thing which is in plentiful supply in this contest, the ambition of the individuals themselves.
In this context, even the lowliest junior minister appraises the field and thinks: "yes, why not me too?"
The surfeit of candidates and the weakness of the front runners would be more acceptable and even elevating if they all had something new to say, some new plans to proffer, some answer to the Brexit riddle.
And yet so far, answers of any credibility are few and far between. Instead, there are the same strategies reheated, the same dead-end solutions all at one time or other attempted by Mrs May and discarded; each metaphorical bodies which lined the road to the end of her premiership.
Save for Sam Gyimah, whose idea for a three-way referendum (including no deal) is the only thing which I've seen which might get a majority, much else is either Mayism with twists or the same old ideas which don't have a hope.
The cardinal problem is thus: every candidate who favours a deal has not explained how they get there without a referendum (save for Gyimah) or a renegotiation which won't work. Every no-dealer has failed to offer a solution which explains how you get to no deal without an election, given parliament will not accept it.
To go through all 13 of the plans (or by the time you read this, 14, 15, 16…?) would expend too much of your energies and mine but to take but a few: there was much excitement about Matt Hancock's plan in the Sunday Times, many hailed it as "honest" and "straightforward" - indeed, it was honest about his distaste for a no deal and how otiose it is to pretend it has utility as a negotiating strategy.
However, when it came to solutions to actually passing a deal, it clung to the same chimeras: a time limit on the backstop (the Irish will never accept), technological solutions on the border (equally unacceptable to the EU and unavailable til 2030) and a free-trade agreement (which May was asking for anyway).
Even more outlandish (bizarre?) was Andrea Leadsom's intervention.
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She is arguing for a "managed exit". She implied parliament could unilaterally solve many of the inevitable problems which would come with no deal by simply legislating for them.
We could legislate for customs, for British citizens abroad, for the Irish border - at no point apparently considering the fact that the EU would have to cooperate on all these matters, that that's precisely what a deal is supposed to achieve and the British parliament, as grand and as sovereign as it might be, is not an island, it has no power to legislate for the French parliament or the Spanish, or the German.
They might as well legislate for every day in December to be sunny - it just can't do it.
Suffering from ISP (Island Parliament Syndrome) too is Kit Malthouse, parroting his achievement of brokering a compromise which almost no-one supported; critically, most of all the EU, who are the side which would have to compromise to accept it.
Graham Brady too, trumpeting his eponymous amendment which he says is the only thing to have got a majority, despite the fact it was a majority for something completely unobtainable (more December sunshine).
And then there's Esther McVey who actively argues for no deal, despite the fact we would effectively be ripping up the Good Friday Agreement, with all the consequences therein, barely mentioned, barely thought about by no deal's advocates.
This thoughtlessness on Ireland is not confined to the no-dealers: Sajid Javid argued on Sunday that Ireland was "the tail wagging the dog", parading once more the cardinal sin against which this generation of Tories will be charged with regards to Brexit: their lack of understanding that their project is not fundamentally a question of our relations with the EU, so much as our relationship with Ireland.
Ireland is the dog, Europe is the tail. It is an Irish question, not a European one, the perennial question of British politics. Until that question can be solved satisfactorily - and Tories properly engage with it and devise an answer - there can be no Brexit.
The sole highlight seems to have been Rory Stewart, wandering around the UK, playing the role of eccentric merchant adventurer, the Marco Polo of Brexit. Charming, perhaps - but the substance of his policy remains May's deal, which without an election to swell Tory numbers (an election he's said he will not call) is yet another dead end.
And so, in this chaos, the front runners have chosen to… well say very little. Boris Johnson has clearly recognised he's the biggest potential liability to his own campaign and he's best off saying nothing.
Michael Gove has been relatively tight lipped too. Jeremy Hunt has apparently been in favour of all the solutions at one point or another, so decided to go to Edinburgh to launch his campaign video next to a statue of Adam Smith, claiming that Smith was the sort of thing the union could achieve, so long as we work together.
Though admirably esoteric, I'm not sure the idea of more Scottish enlightenment philosophers is much of a winning campaign strategy (nor can Smith fairly be described as a collaborative project) but, it was, at least, an original take.
Do not waste this time, Donald Tusk implored. He will be disappointed. What became of the Conservative Party? The party of Churchill, Macmillan, Thatcher and those under them, the great ministers, Carrington, Butler, Macleod to name a few. A party which combined pragmatism, deep attachment to our parliamentary institutions and engagement with the world as it is, not as they might like it to be.
It is a question over which historians will linger long. In 2015, total hegemony was within their grasp. They had won a majority against the odds, Labour's response was to elect Jeremy Corbyn. A new, enduring political project was possible.
Instead, they used their moment of strength to indulge their greatest weaknesses. In four short years, they have converted the potential for another decade or more of government, to the precipice of destruction, the worst election results in their long and venerable history.
In this, their darkest hour, they need a Churchill. From what we have seen so far, there are none available, not even close.