Even as Johnson is riding high in the polls, we are surely watching the beginning of the end for the Conservative party. As it totters unsteadily off further and further to the extreme right it surely cannot survive as one of the major political forces in this country. Elections are won from the centre ground, territory which they (and Corbyn) are gradually vacating to a grateful Liberal Democrat party. Matthew Parris, the former MP, aide to Margaret Thatcher yesterday very publicly resigned from Tories, his political home for fifty years, and announced he is supporting Jo Swinson.
In his column in The Times, he lists just a few of the Tory MPs (Phillip Hammond, Ken Clarke, Dominic Grieve, etc), stalwarts of modern Conservatism who have either left or been kicked out of the Tory party. Others, like Nicky Morgan, have decided to stand down and not return to politics.
He talks of the "cautious, fiscally responsible, broad, internationalist movement I joined". It's now full of wild eyed if rather incongruous revolutionaries, wearing pin-striped suits and blue rosettes. Cameron once described Michael Gove as "a bit of a Maoist" with a belief in the process of creative destruction. This is Brexit writ large is it not? All total anathema to Conservative values, the ones Parris mentions, but now mainstream thinking inside the party from the grassroots to the cabinet. One can understand why moderates are quitting.
Parris again:
"Raucous voices within Downing Street will say they excluded themselves. And in a sense, they did. When it becomes clear which way the wind is blowing, “count me out” may be all that’s left to you. But if it’s all that’s left to Philip, Antoinette, Dominic, Anna Soubry, Guto Bebb, Ken Clarke, Sam Gyimah, Justine Greening, Oliver Letwin and Rory Stewart, proper Conservatives every one of them, then count me out too. Were I a voter where some of these will stand, they would have my vote. I am a conservative, not a Liberal Democrat, but will unhesitatingly vote Lib Dem this time to defeat Tory zealotry over Europe".
He ends by saying the party has crossed the Rubicon and now so must he. The Tory party I have grown up with - and supported at one time - will never return. The balance has shifted irrevocably.
I noticed this morning Richard North, in his EU Referendum blog, talks about something called group think. Groupthink (Wikipedia) is "a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences".
He writes about Nigel Farage and his Brexit party as rejecting evidence in exchange for the "self-evident" or faith based belief in the benefits of leaving the EU. But this also applies to the Tory party - and even Dr North himself - where any logical arguments against Brexit are simply shouted down and disregarded. There is no critical evaluation of anything. All cautious, fiscally responsible arguments against Brexit are drowned out.
Of course, the remain side may also be suffering under group think too. I don't discount the possibility. All I would say is that all the evidence points to the folly that Brexit represents and impartial international commentators are almost universal in thinking we've gone totally doolally. Trump is also in favour of it, which is the killer fact for me.
I genuinely think the Conservative party have set out on the road to oblivion. It might not happen at this election but Conservatism will never be the same again.
Yesterday a couple of significant, potentially election threatening, events occurred for Johnson.
Firstly, Farage launched The Brexit Party's campaign by offering the PM a Faustian pact where he would stand down most of his candidates in return for Johnson dropping the deal he negotiated with the EU and pursuing an even harder, albeit totally impossible, no-deal + WTO Brexit. Johnson quickly ruled it out, which means he may well do it eventually if there was some electoral advantage for him. Farage likes to think he will steal Labour voters in the north and Tory voters in the south as if he's a threat to both sides. In truth I think Johnson has far more to fear from The Brexit Party and he knows it. TBP candidates in most seats will play in our favour I'm sure.
Farage's offer also sets out clearly how it is impossible that people knew what they were voting for in 2016. The two men who spearheaded the two leave campaigns (Vote Leave and Leave.eu) cannot now agree on what leave means. How could 17 million voters have a single destination in mind?
Secondly, we learned that the Metropolitan Police handed a file to the CPS on 17th October about their investigation into Vote Leave's law breaking during the referendum. The police reportedly are now seeking further legal advice on how to proceed. Nothing is expected during the election campaign because of the 'sensitive nature' of the case.
We ca only hope the CPS do make an announcement or something leaks out. It would be a travesty if Johnson scrapes home in the election only for the electorate to find out afterwards he committed criminal acts during the 2016 referendum campaign.
How many PMs have gone into a election campaign with the threat of prosecution against them? If nothing else it will cast a pall over him as well as Gove and Cummings.
