No.70 - Boris Predicts his Own Demise - In a Ditch

Dear James, 

“I’d rather be dead in a ditch than to go back to Brussels to ask for a further Brexit extension.” So said our new Prime Minister yesterday during a hapless attempt to launch his election campaign. I am afraid that he has just predicted his own political death.

James, far be it from me to advise you on the affairs of the Tory Party but, at the risk of intruding upon private grief, I have decided to take the risk. I have often wondered how your Party split would reveal itself to the world and now we are beginning to see the process. The fault line is open. Boris has chosen to represent the narrow ERG faction of your party and that choice will be his demise. The sound of splintering timbers and groaning rivets is everywhere to be heard. The Tory party as we know it is already on the rocks.

Before I continue I should declare myself by saying that, although I am what you might call a left of centre sort of person, I have always seen the value of having a Conservative Party. Your party has until now been a broad church based upon some positive values. These values have included conserving what already exists – often too much to the advantage of the rich and landed – but nevertheless, a useful value in a turbulent world. It has believed in a gradual and thoughtful evolution of our nation and even when it has resisted new ideas as in the Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Corn Law rebellion of 1846, it has eventually acceded to inevitable change. So what has changed?

A week ago, Johnson suspended parliament for five weeks at a time of maximum political crisis in our country. Since then he has lost his first four major votes. On Monday he will lose another. Mr Johnson has abandonned the natural and generous instincts of the party he leads. In the process he sacked twenty one of his colleagues, many of them previously senior cabinet members.  But every political action leads to a reaction and yesterday Jo Johnson, his own brother, quit his job as a Minister. In his resignation tweet he said, “In recent weeks I’ve been torn between family loyalty and the national interest – it’s an unresolvable tension & time for others to take on my roles as MP & Minister. Over and out.” No wonder Boris fluffed his major speech in Yorkshire yesterday. No wonder that poor police cadet wilted under the pressure. When she fainted, the poor girl inadvertently provided the Boris equivalent of Mrs May’s captions falling off the backdrop in the 2017 election campaign.

Since Boris took over six weeks ago, your party has been taken over by ‘revolutionary ideologues’ who are intent on breaking the old system in order to impose the ideology of English Nationalism. Like all revolutionaries they are intolerant and determined to force their views on the British people. It all smacks of Mr Cumming’s Schlieffen Plan for Brexit. I am not surprised that journalists recently found him wandering around Portcullis House stinking of alcohol. He can see the coming rocks upon which he and his crazed strategy are going to founder. Better to drown in alcohol than in the cold waters of national derision.

However James, there is still a glimmer of hope for you. There is a caucus of about a hundred One Nation Tories which includes Cabinet ministers Amber Rudd and Nicky Morgan as well as former Chancellors Philip Hammond and Ken Clarke and Winston Churchill's grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames, all of whom were sacked on Tuesday night for voting to block a no-deal Brexit. So we can now see the shape of the Tory Split. Between the one hundred One Nation Tories and the hundred members of the rabid, ERG, there are about another hundred Tory MPs who will have to soon make up their minds which way to jump. I am hoping that you will make the right decision James? 

Yesterday afternoon we witnessed a deflated Boris speaking in front of a group of police cadets in Yorkshire. It was straight out of the Trump playbook. Except that Boris was erratic, stumbling, almost incoherently off-message. The wheels are coming off the wagon James. The boil is being lanced. Choose your metaphor, your party is split right open. Last night ex-PM John Major told the CBI that “we need Government of the highest quality, not Government by bluster and threat in a climate of aggressive bullying.”

There were also more resignations yesterday, Caroline Spelman and Nick Hurd followed Jo Johnson.  Who’ll be next? Amber Rudd surely. And you? Will you stick it out as a craven follower of the Ever Nastier Tory Party? Or will you take the route of the One Nation Tories? You’ve already cast your vote for Boris so you are clearly digging yourself into an ever deeper hole.

Or should that be ‘ditch’?

Kind Regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent