Dominic Grieve writes in The Independent (It’s all over: the Conservatives are unpleasant, ineffective – and shot to pieces) that the Tories face a wipeout and Brexit is “now a policy that hangs around the neck of the party like a dead albatross – it was after all principally Conservative MPs and party members who promoted it.” He says the “worst-case prospect” is that the economy does not pick up, the Tories lose the next election and then take another lurch to the right “because the membership still doesn’t understand that, just like Labour under Corbyn, it is talking to itself in an echo chamber of ideological fantasies.”
I think he’s right the party is facing a wipeout. Many know they’re finished which is why around 50 or so have already announced they don’t intend to stand again. Being in opposition for a decade or more really doesn’t appeal to them and they’re realistic enough to recognise it’s over. Those intending to step down reportedly include Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, which for a man of 56 at the peak of his political career, says something.
And the quitters probably know that the party will indeed get into a bloody civil war because the ideological fantasists are not going to release their grip on the party and the membership isn't going to change overnight, let's face it.
But it was Grieve's comments about Brexit that struck me. It is like an albatross, one they cannot get rid of. The reference comes from Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner and symbolises the great mistake that he thinks Brexit represents. And he's right about that too.
They are absolutely stuck. Sunak can’t rip up all those thousands of EU laws that he promised as a report from the think tank UK in a Changing Europe makes clear. The latest Divergence Tracker is headed: Non Divergence is the New Consensus in British Politics.
"Joël Reland highlights that divergence from the EU has all but stopped due to its disruptive economic impact, meaning that there is now a general consensus between the Conservatives and Labour on non-divergence."
And later:
"In what is a recurring trend since Rishi Sunak took power, our latest Divergence Tracker finds very few cases of active divergence by the UK in recent months. On top of that, in another repeated theme, the most significant upcoming cases of divergence have been delayed or abandoned entirely."
The whole exercise has revealed the truth, diverging from the standards of your largest overseas export market and the source of much of your food, consumer goods and intermediate manufacturing parts was always going to cost dearly. This is why Sunak (or the next Tory PM) won't do it and why Starmer has actively set his face against it.
Steve Baker
Steve Baker, the one who liked to be portrayed as the ERG hard man, now says he regrets that the EU referendum had not required a supermajority of 60%. This came as he addressed a British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly and was really focused on any future referendum on a united Ireland.
United Ireland referendum should need ‘super majority’ in North, Republic to carry, says Steve Baker. https://t.co/ylCFqqe4fj
— Anthony Robinson (@AnthonyBylines) October 23, 2023
He wants to see a vote of 60% at least in Northern Ireland and Ireland before there would be any move toward unification. In other words, he now wants to make it more difficult to resolve the inevitable consequence of the 52% Brexit vote. This is how the Irish Times recorded it:
"Mr Baker, one of the leading figures behind the leave campaign in the run-up to the 2016 vote, said he regretted now it did not require the support of 60 percent of those who voted in the often-bitter referendum."
You can imagine how that suggestion would have gone down in 2015-16 when the details of how the vote was to be organised and what the question would be were being thrashed out. I remember people proposing a supermajority in the same way the US demands one for any constitutional changes but they were howled down as closet remainers.
The 52-48 result has been a recipe for all the rancour and divisions that have naturally followed.
For Baker to come out with the idea now shows that some at least of those at the very forefront of the campaign are starting to recognise what a disaster it has all been.
The referendum to rejoin must be on the same basis as the vote to leave. We can - and should - change the rules but afterwards not before. The Vote Leave mob can't be allowed to lock Brexit in by demanding a supermajority making it more difficult to overturn the result.
