No. 50 – Mrs May: The End is Nigh

Dear James, 

It had to end in tears. The men in grey suits have finally visited Mrs May and told her she has to relinquish her position after the coming European vote this week. The Chief Executioner, Sir Graham Brady, did it all in a very Tory manner. Mrs May apparently welled up. Then pulled herself together, re-booted to full robotic mode and announced that she would make one last ‘bold’ move - a final offer to the Labour Party in an effort to get her withdrawal treaty across the line. The Labour Party yawned and got on with its own convoluted mystification of ‘constructive ambiguity’.   

So you are about to lose your leader James. But that is not all you may lose by the end of this week. On Thursday we vote in the European elections; the elections we should never be having according to your party who are behaving petulantly and not even putting up a manifesto. The polls tell us that both main parties will get a drubbing. Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party is predicted to get 34% of the vote most of it coming from you and Labour. The Lib Dems and Greens are the other gainers. What this means is that a tidal wave is coming and so it may not just be for Mrs May for whom the end is nigh. It may mean the end for our two party system. We may be on the cusp of a major tsunami in British politics. 

Your party is in turmoil James and where you stand – or rather spin – in this maelstrom is anyone’s guess. This morning we hear that, amidst the manoeuvring of Tory candidates, two groupings have emerged to help you make your choice.  The ‘One Nation Caucus’ of approximately 60 of your colleagues is against ‘no deal’ and will launch its ‘Declaration of Values’ later today. The other is Mrs McVeigh’s ‘Blue Collar Conservatives’ aimed at – you’ve guessed it – blue collar workers. And, of course, there are the rest of the Conservatives – the ERG and their like who are determined to take your party to the right and leave the EU without a deal. Quite a choice for you James! 

Whoever you choose however, it will not solve the problem. Assuming that the 120,000 Tory party members choose Boris Johnson as your new leader he will still face the same arithmetic in the House of Commons and the same ‘intransigence’ from the EU. He will probably invoke his pale imitation of the Dunkirk spirit and tell us that, with our back to the wall, we must stand firm against the awful Europeans and go for a ‘no deal’.  

Boris has charisma of the public schoolboy type – shallow with no depth other than that chimera of entitlement.  He has character - even though it is Billy Bunteresque! He has balls of the biological kind – though I am not sure they translate into their eponymous metaphor - we all remember when, as Foreign Secretary, he scooted off to the East to avoid the vote on the third Heathrow runway. Hardly courageous!  Other than that Boris is empty with few coherent ideas and erratic in the ideas that he does have. His contributions from the back benches have been embarrassing. Yet the elderly, grass roots Tory membership love him. He will quip, joke, invoke the occasional Latin phrase and radiate his patrician confidence to those admiring Brexiteers who will now see their chance. 

But no matter how you vote in the Tory Part contest James, it will not change the Brexit debate because our two main parties will still adhere to their party positions while the whole situation is crying out for a re-booting of the legitimacy that no longer prevails in parliament. You have been operating on the assumption that it is still 2016 even though there is so much evidence that the mood of the country has changed.  Now, to think that the country will have a Boris Johnson Prime Minister foisted upon it by a mere handful of the Old Tory faithful will be a crime in itself. Add to that the fact that you are a minority government dependent on 10 DUP votes and your legitimacy is even more undermined. Usually a government would call a general election but that may let in Corbyn. So you are snookered James. Are you really going to put us through this extension to our national nightmare? Surely, you have enough personal courage to make a stand? 

Because the obvious way to solve the current problem of parliamentary legitimacy has been clear for all to see for months. If we can’t have a general election, then let the people decide. Surely it is the only way? With so much confusion in parliament and the country, what on Earth is wrong with that? 

So please, find some true political courage and ask the people. You may even win! 

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent