I am sure that you are just as sick of the whole #Brexit issue as I am. I could not let yesterdays events pass without comment. I'm 57 and the events were truly unprecedented. Whilst it seems that every day brings a new turn, each more unbelievable and illogical than the last, the events yesterday really took the biscuit. Whilst everyone has been concentrating on the issues around #Brexit, the really important events were to do with the way Boris yesterday reshaped the Conservative party. The Conservative party has never been a narrow, hard right, ideolically based single issue gathering. It has been a broad church of many views, bound together by pragmatism and a desire to promote good government and sound economic policies. I've never agreed with those policies, but I've always understood the logic of what they are trying to achieve. The Conservatives were at their most successful when they were not acting as a narrow, right wing rump. Under Churchill and Macmillan in the 1950's and 60's, Great Britain was rebuilt after the war. MacMillan announced 'You've never had it so good' and no one argued.
The concept of One Nation Conservatism served us well. It culminated in the swinging '60's with London seeming to become the centre of the world. The Beatles recorded Abbey Road and a simple British Zebra crossing became a global icon. Harold Wilson's Labour Government came to power in 1964, but there was a consensus as to what British values were. Social housing, universal healthcare and social security. The era of this consensus lasted through the Heath years, but his defeat to Wilson in 1974 spelled the end of this consensus. Margaret Thatcher, cut from a different Tory cloth came to power. She despised the old ways of the One Nation Tories. She was a monetarist and ideologically motivated. To many on the right, she became a messianic figure, but in truth she was a pragmatist. She sought a refund from the EU not a referendum on membership. She signed the single European act and it was her concept of a free trade area that became the customs union. She knew it was good for business. Whilst she was a union basher and no respecter of society or community, she valued Great Britain as a single entity. She ultimately became a victim of her own ideology. Her poll tax changes did for her. Major who succeeded her was a decent man, but not up to the job. Tony Blair sent the Tories into a near terminal state of shock that took them ten years to recover from. The answer was David Cameron, a sort of Blair light, one nation Tory, who was always more comfortable with his Lib Dem coalition partners than the hard right of his own party. This arrangement fixed the finances of the nation, but not the chasm in the Tory party. His botched referendum, which gave the people a vote but not a clear pathway to a Brexit was a disaster. The May years were perhaps the embodiment of poor government. The Tories realised that they needed something radical and elected Boris. The idea was that he'd unite the party, sort the Brexit mess out and then call a snap election.
What they didn't realise was that Boris would bring in Dominic Cummins, a political strategist who hates all of the structures of British government. His solution to anyone opposing his bonkers ideas was to sack them, be it Sajid Javid's adviser or senior Tory grandees. As a result of this strategy, the last of the old school Tory Grandees were booted out of the party. Boris has redrawn the Tory party as a hard right, single issue party. All of the service of Ken Clark and Phillip Hammond has counted for nothing. As a strategist he is a buffoon. There has been much talk of Ken Clark becoming a caretaker PM. The one objection that Corbyn had was that Clark was a Tory. As he's now been booted out, this removes Corbyn's objections and would also allow all to appear statesman like.
Boris has lit a fire under his own party. Many decent Tories are in despair. They know Boris is untrustworthy. By behaving in such an underhand manner, he's also shown to Nigel Farage that any proposed 'non aggression pact' is fraught with danger. Farage knows that if Boris gets a majority, he's just as likely to shaft him, as he shafted his former Tory Colleagues. It is a well known fact that Boris does not want a hard Brexit. He wants May's deal, without the backstop. The posturing is a clumsy way to persuade the EU he's serious. It has backfired spectacularly.
Like everyone else, I've no idea how Brexit will pan out. What I do know is that when the Brexit dust settles, Boris will find that a lot of competent, natural Conservatives have been alienated. Both Hammond and Clark were good chancellors, prudent and wise. By making enemies of such people, he has done something no sane general ever does. He has created dangerous enemies from former allies. Enemies who know how things work. That is a very stupid thing to do.
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