No.56 - A Small Round of Applause.
Dear James,
A small round of applause. Your man – Jeremy Hunt - has managed to squeeze into the final two for a vote by your 140,000+ members at the end of July. The final result, of course, is a foregone conclusion. This small sideshow of a leadership election only reminds us of the direction of travel of your party. Your membership will choose Mr Johnson and this eventually will be the death knell of your party as we know it. So enjoy the buzz while you have it. It will not last long James.
Last week a You Gov poll showed that amongst the Tory party membership, 63% would prefer to lose Scotland than to fail to leave the EU. Shockingly, the poll also showed that 54% of Tories would be willing for the Conservative Party to be destroyed if the UK would leave the European Union. 61% said they would countenance significant economic damage to get the UK out of Europe and another 59% would prefer to abandon Northern Ireland instead of staying in the EU. But perhaps the most dangerous result was that 46% of your membership would be willing to see Mr Farage as a leader of your party. It is clear that the Tory Party membership is entering its Kamikaze phase where destruction of the party and the United Kingdom are preferable to staying in the EU. And it is this tiny minority of our population that will choose our next PM! What a gargantuan abrogation of responsibility! What a squandering of any scrap of legitimacy still remaining in your minority government.
In this last week we have seen your MPs dismiss one of the most promising minds in your party. Rory Stewart is wise, witty, intelligent, a natural communicator and a realist. And because of these fine characteristics, he didn’t stand a chance amongst your party’s current fevered fantasies. One of the things that Stewart wished to remind you all of was the totally unrealistic claim to be able to leave the EU by October 31st. Your party is furious that it failed to get us out of the EU on March 31st and April 14th but even Boris, sensing that he may have to make a difficult decision when he gets into power, failed to back up his earlier claims that he would get us out on that date ‘deal or no deal’. In the debate he merely said that to do that was ‘eminently feasible’. i.e. no guarantee. But he knows that his usual two-faced prevarications risks losing out to Farage. The logic is irrefutable. He must become a Tory Farage!
Your party is deeply split James. To fight off Farage you need to claim that you will leave the EU by October 31st no matter how unrealistic that is. To do that you must become the party of the angry right. Your alternative is to move to the centre to grab back the overwhelming support that is coming to the Lib-Dems. That is the conundrum facing you James. That is the split and as I have forecasted many times before you will soon have to choose.
We are one third of the way through the extra six months that the EU has granted us to sort ourselves out and yet last night we had to watch the Tory Party chasing its own tail. Well it has caught its tail now and will begin to devour itself. As Lord John Kerr, one of the architects of Article 50, said this week, “The unicorns are back, frolicking in the Tory forest.”
Our country will now have to endure Boris, eating his words, threatening everything and ending up conceding a second referendum. Half the country and most of the world will look on in horror.
Everyone has had enough. The young feel disenfranchised, the vast middle ground feel cut off from power, the civil service is demoralised and the people who really count, business people, are withholding investment and divesting assets abroad. The Tory party has become a faith-based cult devoid of any new ideas.
So forget the desultory applause James. You have attached your colours to Jeremy Hunt, a decent enough fellow but ultimately a failure in your party contest. Anyway your choice is irrelevant. Your members (0.25% of the population - average age over 50, 99% white and 71% male) will choose Boris. He says he will have us out by October 31st deal or no deal. Is that what you want?
Much better to face the inevitable James and call for the only solution to this nightmare cul-de-sac into which your party has dragged us.
A second referendum, please!
Kind regards,
BH - Your Concerned Constituent