In defence of Boris: the Tory rebels are an absolute shower

It is hard not to have viewed events at Westminster over the last few days without the vague feeling that, having searched for tractors, you found yourself watching something that left you feeling guilty, fascinated and faintly dirty. A soiling of the soul that no sweaty pledges not to sin again, nor scented-soap scrubbings, can quite expunge. Politics is rarely an edifying spectacle. It reaches occasional, dizzying heights of oratory or grand achievement which obscure its essential and quotidian amorality. A principle-free self-awareness vacuum in which everyone dances like nobody’s watching and the beat is provided by ambition. “Vanity”, as Margaret Thatcher lamented, “All is vanity”. One doesn’t have to be a Boris supporter to think that recent attempts to oust him have brought to centre stage the worst that politics have to offer.

Its main characters each cursed with a fatal flaw, rushing from lobby to College Green microphone delivering lines from Yes, Minister and blissfully unaware that they are doing so, nor that we see through them. We have seen Tory regicide so often that the plot is almost tired. A reverse Brunowski that sees the descent of man, or woman, from hero to zero before their eventual demise on the senate steps. The knifing is indiscriminate. Even its greatest are not spared.

Thatcher. “Treachery with a smile on its face” for the serial winner who transformed Britain.   Among lesser mortals we’ll leave Major, whose demise came crushingly at the ballot box. Cameron, from the man who gave the “natural party of government” back its power to a choking farewell outside Number 10, whistling away the pain as his wife looked on in anguish. May. From the “new Maggie” to the “Maybot”. Another in tears as nothing changed and then everything did. For Boris. “World King” and a majority that thumped. Thumped the Remain refuseniks, thumped the EU’s chief negotiator, went round the Labour Party’s own house, rang the bell and thumped it when it came out. No wonder the wall was red.

Ah, but that was yesterday. When Boris’s troubles did not include the worst kind of warm-white-wine-and-shop-bought-cake office parties during a lockdown he imposed. Eat or heat dilemmas seemed far away. Troubles with him at Number 11 weren’t here to stay and the infallible scientific sample of boos outside St Paul’s said no-one believed, any longer, in yesterday.

So now it’s Boris getting a thumping. The 148 rebels almost certainly mean he’s next in the Tory Party tumbril, the Mesdames Defarge of the media, swathes of whom have never quite forgiven him for Brexit, some for being a journalist who became Prime Minister, and others for forgetting that he’s a Tory, knit away cackling. Yes, even the Telegraph, for whom once he was the messiah, now see him as a very naughty boy. When the in-house mag turns on you…

Fed by his legion of enemies, they whipped themselves into an ecstasy of misinformation, calculation and speculation during the confidence vote. The munching maw of rolling news and Twitter demanding ever more whispers, innuendo, anonymous briefing and “mood music”, each qualified by that odd phrase “we understand that…”

Oh, how they wished for his demise! I mean, the blonde one is so uniquely dishonest. Well, dishonest perhaps. But uniquely? No. A certain elasticity with the truth is a prerequisite of political life. Political observers will remember Tony “Bliar”, a man condemned as “not straight with the nation” by the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War.

Then there were those who promised to honour the referendum result and then did almost everything possible to thwart it. There’s a lot of it about.

As veteran newsman Alastair Stewart tweeted: “Huge chunks of the media have lost any credibility as they have been pushing for this very moment for ages. They demean our trade and themselves.”

Meanwhile, rebel MPs themselves were furthering their reputations, whatever those may be, by disguising their true motives in turning on the boss like an underfed dog.

All lurking under the pretence of the greater good either of the country or the Conservative Party – by which they possibly mean keeping their own seats – they paraded varying degrees of outrage over Partygate. Some of that outrage may, of course, be well-founded. Some people suffered very badly because of lockdown but the feeling persists that the eye is on the majority, a feeling waspishly swatted by former John Major strategist, Charles Lewington when he said: “They always think that distancing themselves from an unpopular leader increases their chances of holding their seats. Instead they end up working as public affairs manager for the Cats Protection League.”

Jeremy Hunt channelled his inner Yes, Prime Minister, doing anything but burnishing his leadership credentials while, of course, burnishing his leadership credentials: “Anyone who believes our country is stronger, fairer & more prosperous when led by Conservatives should reflect that the consequence of not changing will be to hand the country to others who do not share those values.” He went on to urge MPs to vote for him, sorry, “change”.

Others with leadership ambition kept loquaciously silent. Tom Tugendhat’s Twitter feed remained remorselessly focused on his good work furthering relations with Turkey and his children’s love of Paddington. The chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee has claimed he has made his views on Johnson “clear to those who need to hear it”, a statement which will reassure his constituents without fogging their minds with detail.

Tugendhat’s Eurosceptic Tonbridge and Malling constituency doubtless softened his pro-Europe stance during the great Brexit farrago but his former comrade in arms and anti-Boris rebel Tobias Ellwood had rather revealed the continuing divide in Conservative Party politics when he suggested that the UK should negotiate to join the European single market.

Eurosceptic claims that much of the anti-Boris sentiment is driven by embittered Remainers is often dismissed as paranoia even by Brexiteers. What’s done cannot be undone, they claim. Which, of course, rather undermines their own 40-year march to reverse the result of the previous referendum on membership, and takes no heed of cunning plays by Emmanuel Macron to reinvent Europe and invite Britain to take part. 

Leavers left the field in 2016. Vote Leave literally shut the office and Boris himself went off to play cricket. The upshot was a Remain counter attack it took Boris’ election three years later finally to overcome. Johnson loyalists, Leavers and Red Wall beneficiaries will be cleaving to that memory in much the same way as the sullen defeated cling to theirs. Few noticed Keir Starmer announce that he would renegotiate Brexit on LBC in the dash to stamp on a prone BJ’s head. It was almost like he’d spotted an opportunity.    

None of which is a defence of the Prime Minister. Ultimately, his job was complete in the very fact of his election. It secured the long delayed Brexit and ended a national stasis only to see another one arrive in the form of the pandemic. Beyond that, a clear vision and strategy has proven beyond him and, to quote another embattled Tory, “the sky is now black with chickens coming home to roost”.

If philosophy he has, it seems largely to offend Conservatives who like to spend their own money rather than see it squandered by a profligate tax and spend government or inflated away. Immigration, the control of which was one of Brexit’s great promises, remains untrammelled and will soon come again to haunt him at the Red Wall. His own personal disregard for rules flies in the face both of those who believed in lockdown and those who thought it draconian, impractical and an unnecessary restraint of our freedoms. His capacity to feed the grievance of the full spectrum of his enemies seems never ending.

However, his own faults do not negate the motives of those waiting with daggers in their cloaks. “Brutus says he was ambitious. And Brutus is an honourable man.”

Some will doubtless regard the confidence vote and the circumstances that prompted it as a sign of a vibrant and querulous democracy. It isn’t. The Tory party is changing leaders with the same regularity Italy changes government. At the heart of these constant decapitations lies the very opposite of operating in the national interest. They are played out in front of people who daily have their view of politicians as self-interested, self-obsessed, scarcely competent and venal, confirmed. The ship of state is too often driven along by the overmighty wind of a media which increasingly overspills its purpose and which politicians lack the sense of purpose and conviction to defy. The lady turns constantly.

Harvard Business School once defined reputation as the sum of communication and behaviour. What reputation does that leave our political classes with what they say and the way they behave?

I searched up tractors and I need to wash my hands.