It is the end of the line for the Tories and I don't just mean its time in office is over, it looks terminal for the party which will struggle to survive the bloodletting to come.
David Campbell-Bannerman, a former UKIP deputy leader and former Tory MEP is a busy man. He has launched yet another internal Conservative pressure group to “strengthen party democracy by ensuring the Conservative Party is representative of the membership and fairly represents their views.” This is the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO).
It has its own website and is said to be spearheaded (and presumable funded) by Conservative donor Lord Cruddas, the party's former treasurer, along with former clueless Home Secretary Priti Patel. Another group of 40 Tory MPs have signed a letter to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt saying taxes are too high and offering suggestions of how to lower them by £7bn.
But it's the CDO which looks the most damaging. It’s hard to conceive of anything worse than the party representing the actual views of the swivel-eyed nutters at the local level.
Mr C-B has always existed at the outer fringes. He started as a Conservative and stood for parliament as a Tory twice, in 1997 and 2001, but parted company with them in 2004. He joined UKIP, was party chairman in 2005, and became an MEP for Eastern England in 2009. He also wrote their manifesto in 2010 before quitting to return to the Tory fold in 2011, sitting as an MEP for them after Nigel Farage described the 2010 manifesto as “nonsense” and “drivel.”
I assume he’s happier now that the Conservatives are more or less indistinguishable from the old UKIP. Of course, it’s never quite far enough right for some people is it? Unless we’re hanging and flogging people left and right, running a sweatshop economy, and making belligerent noises to our nearest neighbours, it probably doesn’t feel quite extreme enough.
He has been a long-term critic of the European Union and has had many roles in eurosceptic advocacy groups. In 2015, he became co-chairman of a new eurosceptic pressure group, Conservatives for Britain. In 2016, he joined the political advisory board of Leave Means Leave.
What with the ERG and now the CDO you begin to sense there is an end of days feel to the party, worse even than 1997.
The millionaire Richard Tice is busy organising The Reform Party (a limited company like UKIP) and will field a lot of candidates against the Tories at the next election.
Robert Shrimsley, in the FT, wrote a few days ago that the party risks 'being consumed by Faragism' and this is true. It is the test that every recent leader has failed. The Tories see themselves as the most successful political party in the world but they didn't get there by adopting the policies of a party that never won a single seat at an election, ever. And yet for the last twelve years, successive leaders have been pandering to the far right.
It makes no sense and will lead to the death of the party as we knew it.
Labour
Professor Chris Grey has an interesting idea for Labour and Kier Starmer. He thinks Starmer should announce that Labour believes there are advantages to moving closer to the EU, even joining the single market and the customs union, but that he would only do so with cross-party support, otherwise the Tories could reverse it in five or ten years.
The EU probably wouldn't accept a member unless there was overwhelming support anyway.
This is what Grey said:
"Instead, he could say that single market membership is indeed a solution to many of the economic problems caused by Brexit, but that it is not possible for him to propose it because it is not practically deliverable unless the Tory Party also commits to it. Were they to do so, it would make it viable for the EU to agree to and, whilst meaning a further change for businesses, would also remove the risk to them of that change only being temporary. That the Tories will not give such a commitment, Starmer would say, shows they are putting ideological dogma ahead of the national interest and economic competence."
Neat, eh? I think it could work.
Of course, it begs the question of what happens when it sinks in that we would indeed become a rule-taker. I'm not sure it would be popular or even workable. We might as well go the whole hog.
Fusion power
Finally, if you’re interested in that kind of thing, the Americans are apparently about to announce a breakthrough in producing power from nuclear fusion. An experiment at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California produced more energy than it consumed, meaning that if it could be replicated in a practical way, we could enjoy unlimited clean energy.
"The laboratory confirmed that a successful experiment had recently taken place at its National Ignition Facility but said analysis of the results was ongoing.
"Initial diagnostic data suggests another successful experiment at the National Ignition Facility. However, the exact yield is still being determined and we can’t confirm that it is over the threshold at this time," it said. "That analysis is in process, so publishing the information . . . before that process is complete would be inaccurate."
It's a long way off yet, but it could be the future we are glimpsing. Let us hope so, for our children's sake.
