The Conservative party is starting to look like an out-of-control nuclear reactor ready to blow at any moment. It is less like a coalition or a broad church and more like a group of rival parties with utterly different philosophies. The Sunday Times had a lead item this weekend about the cabinet being on the verge of collapse. Chief Whip Julian Smith is barely on speaking terms with the PM's spin doctor Robbie Gibb and now Smith has given an unprecedented interview to the BBC (HERE) attacking the cabinet's strategy following the 2017 election fiasco.
Smith described senior minister's behaviour as the "worst example of ill-discipline in cabinet in British political history" and said that the Parliamentary arithmetic would inevitably mean a softer type of Brexit. It was also perhaps an attack on the PM herself, either for pursuing the wrong strategy or allowing ministers to dictate terms.
The Sunday Times this week were also reporting a furious row between Bill Cash and the normally mild mannered schools minister Nick Gibb and another between Mark Francois and government whip Craig Whitaker, which almost came to blows.
Cracks in the Tory party may have started in the cabinet but the split will go right through the party sooner or later.
Incredibly, it appears 170 Conservative MPs, including some ministers, have a written a letter to Theresa May (HERE) demanding we leave on April 12th or shortly afterwards, deal or no deal. They want her to put the Withdrawal Agreement to parliament again with the threat of a general election if it's rejected for a fourth time. Labour held a five point lead in a poll this weekend and some strategists think the party will be decimated by an early election. It looks like a mass suicide bid.
Meanwhile David Gauke, perhaps speaking for the other half of the parliamentary party (HERE), says the PM must listen to parliament's call for a customs union. He and MPs like Amber Rudd see themselves as leading the One Nation group.
The Mail on Sunday breathlessly summarises the turmoil in the party (HERE) and has a poll showing how the nation is now marginally in favour of a customs union, another referendum and even revoking Article 50. Voters also oppose leaving without a deal by 45% to 38%. The Mail's pollsters say calling a general election now is the kamikaze option for the Tories.
We are indeed at the very epicentre of a crisis and an existential one for the Tories. There are no good or even merely bad options left. Only catastrophic ones.
We shall see what today's efforts at coalescing around a softer Brexit option brings but I don't expect parliament to reach any sustainable position on anything.
In the meantime, a lot of political non entities are parading themselves as future leaders. They are all laughable, some more than others, I mean Liz Truss? She looks and sounds like someone you might bump into in a village pharmacy. Can you imagine her addressing a plenary session of the UN on some grave matter facing the world? Or negotiating the handing back of Crimea with Putin? No, nor can I. In fact I wouldn't employ any of them to manage anything above a newsagents shop.
Dominic Raab had an article this weekend explaining his answer to knife crime. Gove would be far better on this issue since at least he has hands on experience of stabbing people in the back.
We might be in deep, deep trouble but not so bad that we need men like BoJo, Gove and Raab to become PM. They would only lead to an economic crisis to add to the political and constitutional ones we've already got.
Johnson has his own Monday effort in The Telegraph (HERE) with a piece so formulaic I think I could have written it for him. He must dash them off in about twenty minutes max and is paid £5K for the privilege. Faced with the fantastically complex problem of Brexit, he reduces it to this:
"We should really come out with no deal – now looking far the best option; but if we cannot achieve that, then we need to get out, now, with an interim solution that most closely resembles what the people voted for, in the knowledge that – following the PM’s decision to step down – we have at least the chance to fix it in the second phase of the negotiations.
"Yes, it will be tough, and yes, it will mean we will need a very different approach. But it is absolutely essential now that we in the UK recover our courage and self-belief".
And he goes on:
"This is by far the most innovative and exciting economy in this hemisphere: the intellectual, technical, artistic and cultural powerhouse of Europe".
I have worked at British companies led by men not unlike BoJo. It doesn't matter if the product you are selling works or not or even if the trail of dissatisfied customers stretches from Land End to John O'Groats all you need is belief. That alone will make Brexit successful and if it fails, the lack of it will be to blame.
Colm McCarthy (HERE) in an article for The Irish Independent calls Brexit a very British fiasco and might have had Johnson specifically in mind when, at the end, he quotes the words of George Orwell.
McCarthy writes:
"Any notion that the leading Brexiteers - almost all Etonians - are possessed of a cunning plan was prophetically addressed by George Orwell in a 1941 essay, when France had fallen, and England stood alone:
''One thing that has always shown that the English ruling class are morally fairly sound, is that in time of war they are ready enough to get themselves killed. Several dukes, earls and what nots were killed in the recent campaign in Flanders. That could not happen if these people were the cynical scoundrels that they are sometimes declared to be.
'It is important not to misunderstand their motives, or one cannot predict their actions. What is to be expected of them is not treachery, or physical cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing. They are not wicked, or not altogether wicked; they are merely unteachable.' ''
Johnson is not even 'morally sound', in fact a more amoral person you would be hard pressed to find. But stupid with an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing - that's certainly Bojo. If he ever gets into No 10 leading one of the parties arising from the wreckage of Conservatism, Lord help us all.
