No.10 - So this is what a broken political system looks like?
Dear James,
So this is what a broken political system looks like? It must be so much worse to be in the midst of it. Outside the Westminster Village, the great majority are at best confused and at worst, angry and disbelieving. How did you get us all here? Where do we go next?
Let me cut to the chase and dare to make some predictions - a crazy project, I am sure you will agree, but at least it will allow me to vent some of my own frustrations.
My first look into the crystal ball shows me the Tory right, the old guard of nostalgic Britons eager to return to a time when Britain ruled the waves and their fellow countrymen looked up to them because of their accents and the schools whence they came. It is they who have just won the 48 votes needed to start a Tory leadership contest. But who wins will only slightly alter the course of the bigger question: Europe. This is the poison at your heart.
Do I see the first cracks in the glaze of your Party’s ceramic, trade-mark, certainty? Those cracks will widen and become irreparable if the old guard succeed. Perhaps it is the shape of at least two new Tory Parties I see emerging? Firstly, the old, right wing – perhaps a maximum of 100MPs – rooted in the Tory shires and doomed, over time, to dying out as the older generation of their core supporters go to meet their maker. The remaining rump may, after several years, link up with other right wing groupings in a last, bitter stand somewhere in the English countryside. Secondly, at the opposite extreme, you have the Tory left, the 10 or 12 progressive Tories who believe in change while maintaining their key conservative values of continuity and the Tory version of social justice. Between these two camps are the rest of you. The 200 odd Tories caught in the middle – and today having to decide which way to jump. That will be a big decision and will decide how many Tory Parties there will be. Will it be just the one, with the old guard continuing to ‘bang on about Europe’ and continuing its thirty year old, debilitating guerrilla warfare at the heart of your party? Or will it be two? On one side, the right wing, Brexiteer group and, on the other, the one nation Conservatives, stripped of the rabid right, with the chance to throw off the ‘nasty party’ epithet? Today you will have to make up your mind and, how you decide, will determine the future of your party.
For the rest of us, however, todays’ vote is just a side show. Until this morning, Mrs May had been busy humiliating herself and our country by pleading for a few extra crumbs from the EU’s high table. On the steps of Downing Street today, we had the same old platitudes, the same old mantras dished up yet again. She tries to be Churchillian but with only a phantom enemy. Everyone knows her deal won’t work. Meanwhile, she has to fight for survival within her own party. What a mess! What terrible weakness. Unless your party comes back towards the centre, I fear the weakness could be terminal.
If she wins today, Mrs May will limp on, wounded towards an inevitable People’s Vote. If she loses and is replaced by a Brexiteer, then we will have the farce of the new leader’s trip to Brussels to bang the table for a better deal, followed by the inevitable rebuff, a return to the UK and a possible exit on WTO terms. A disaster for the National Interest.
So there we have it. Today’s internal Tory Party vote is a distraction with one important significance. It prolongs the country’s agony. This will be shorter if Mrs May wins. If she loses we are in for a more protracted and painful descent to the ignominy of our tiny island, isolated and vulnerable to all the big boys of world commerce yet glorious in our self-esteem.
James, the country has changed its mind. Surely, the only way to clear the air is a People’s Vote?
Kind regards,
BH - Your Concerned Constituent