The former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has told Telegraph readers (No £) that the election is over - before the first ballot has even been cast. Chief Treasury Secretary Mel Stride agreed that was the case when her article was put to him a few minutes ago on Radio 4. This is in my experience unprecedented in British political history. Senior and former ministers don't concede defeat the day before an election. They just don't do it. Tomorrow will be a seismic event which will be well off the Richter scale. Rishi Sunak should be congratulated for going before the nation and acting as if he has a chance of winning. The race is for second place and the Tories may even lose that.
But I want to go back to Braverman for an example of how the Tories are going to be torn apart and destroyed after the results are in. She says the party "needs to rediscover its “soul” and move back to the Right if it was to reconnect with voters."
Back to the right!! What does that mean? Does she equate the current Tory party with Jeremy Corbyn? If she thinks that is the answer, the Conservatives are finished as a party. The recriminations will start in earnest on Friday morning you can be sure. Hell hath no fury like a Tory party scorned,
Ms Braverman said the party would need to be a “searingly honest post-match analysis” in the event of the expected election defeat and she admitted that the rise of Reform, not far behind the Tories in the polls, was “entirely our own fault”. I doubt the party will see any 'searing honesty' until 2035 at least.
On Monday I posted about Robert Tombs blaming Tory remainers, Fraser Nelson in The Spectator blames Nigel Farage who he describes as the left's greatest weapon. He argues that if Starmer ends up with a large majority he could do all sorts of things.
I don’t recall him making the same point in 2019 when Johnson got what was regarded at the time as a handsome majority. You can do as much with an 80-seat majority as you can with a 250-seat majority- and Johnson, Truss and Sunak did exactly that which is why we are we we are.
It's obvious that Tories will blame Farage, which is why it's hard to see him ever becoming leader, but I admit I wouldn't rule it out.
Mr Nelson says this - with some words underlined for emphasis by me:
"If the polls are right and Starmer ends up with a majority out of all proportion to his support, he will be urged to use this freak moment of power to make the political landscape more favourable to the left, just as the Thatcher revolution promoted home ownership, share ownership and other causes more favourable to the right when the SDP split the left in the 1980s. ‘Why would Starmer sit there and wait for the right to recover?’ asks one Tory minister. ‘He’ll do what we did.’
"State regulation of the press could be forced through, stifling commentary that challenges the government. Labour will be able to renew the BBC Charter and appoint a more muscular head of Ofcom. GB News, the television channel where Farage and Rees-Mogg are both presenters, may end up being taken off air. Online-debate rules could be tightened to make it harder to publish against-the-grain views. And who in the Commons would be there to protest such a crackdown?
"A crushing majority will make it easier for Starmer to water down Brexit. He can sign Britain up to various regulatory schemes, taking it back into the EU’s orbit while stopping short of rejoining. Not a single member of Starmer’s front bench backed Brexit, so his team is unlikely to seek new trade deals to make Brexit work. All of this will be far more straightforward because Farage will have done so much to clear away the MPs who would have opposed it."
He seems to be opposed for FPTP if he thinks Starmer's majority is out of line with his support. That's what the Tories wanted when Johnson won an 80-seat majority in 2019.
Most of the other things are the reverse of what's been happening since 2019. Labour will of course do things differently, in short change things. He is reinforcing Labour's message but can't seem to see it.
As for Starmer pushing the UK "back into the EU's orbit" - this is exactly what many of us will be voting FOR and in any case, I don't see we have ever left the EU's orbit. This Brexiteer government hasn't used its boosted sovereignty to provide the necessary escape velocity because it knows the damage that would cause. If anything, the Tories have moved closer to the EU themselves. The UKCA mark has been a failure so CE standards will apply indefinitely, we have moved back into the Horizon research programme and hence are paying money into EU funds.
Northern Ireland never really left the EU and an overseas territory, Gibraltar, may soon be in the Schengen area. Back into the EU orbit? Come on.
The truth is the Tories have satisfied nobody because Brexit could never satisfy anybody. And although much of the talk now is on the last 14 years, we shouldn't forget the Tories won handsomely in 2019 under a 'Get Brexit Done' banner. Well, they certainly did that - and signed their own death warrant.
Brexit was the catalyst for the forthcoming disaster. You had to be a half-wit to advocate Brexit and since Johnson insisted everybody standing as a Conservative in 2019 had to advocate Brexit we had 370 or so Tory MPs all half-wits. It really is that simple.
The message the Tories seem to be sending now is yes, we know we’ve been awful - but Labour could be even worse so you should vote for us not them (to stop them getting 450 seats) or Reform UK (to avoid us getting below 50 seats and becoming the third party).
Hardly inspiring is it?
Finally, I thought a tweet by the FT's Peter Foster about a small piece in Tim Shipman's book about Brexit was telling:
🤯 when a Conservative cabinet decided the party was more important than the country’s well-being.Astonishing moment from @ShippersUnbound account of May’s Brexit travails in Spring 2019. (Fall Out, p.485) pic.twitter.com/ZxWtsaa2P3— Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) July 2, 2024
"If the choice is the Conservative Party staying together and no-deal [with the EU] or the Conservative Party fracture and an extension, the national interest is in the Conservative Party staying together."
They would have destroyed the country rather than split the party. That's how important they thought they were. Let that sink in on Friday when the destruction of the Tories begins. What irony.
Theresa May recognised how damaging that was but couldn't get the reference to it out of the minutes.
