Sack May and put in Boris to save Brexit

So, another much-hyped Cabinet meeting fizzles out as a damp squib and the Brexit impasse, wholly unnecessarily, continues. There is a morbid fascination in watching a mediocrity such as Theresa May, sustained only by her impermeably thick skin and a small coterie of pseudo-Tory Remainers, holding to ransom not only her own party but the entire nation.

Future historians will puzzle over this seemingly inexplicable moment of paralysis in British public life. Why, they will ask, did Theresa May behave like this? More mysteriously, why did her party indulge her and remove itself from British political history as a consequence? The answer to the first question lies within the opaque psychological processes of Theresa May. Personal petulance, the dictatorial instincts of a weak person and the classic metropolitan Remainer inferiority complex towards Brussels – the notion that it is somehow sophisticated and chic to Remain – are the most likely explanations.

The suicidal toleration by the parliamentary Conservative Party of her bungling, which has made a laughing stock of this country (can anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher sitting meekly on the naughty step at Salzburg?), is the most monumental act of self-harm ever committed by a British political party. A doctrinaire Remainer element that should have been eliminated by constituency associations years ago is impudently blocking the will of the electorate. For that the Tories will pay a terminal price. That is not hyperbole: we live at a time when all legacy parties are on the critical list, even if they behave more responsibly than the Tories are doing.

The problem is the impassable gulf of understanding that has opened up between metropolitan “socially liberal” MPs and the people who have elected them, but will do so no more if Brexit is bungled. The unreality of the Tory parliamentary party’s outlook is epitomized by the absurd debate over the timing of Theresa May’s departure “before the next election”. Before the next election? If May does not depart well before Brexit, the next election will be a purely academic exercise for anybody wearing a blue rosette.

We know the reasoned calculations of well-intentioned ERG members and sympathizers: that if they hand in 48 letters and May survives the subsequent no-confidence vote they will have exhausted their ammunition. That is, in some degree, a persuasive argument; but it ignores the axiom that once a Conservative leader is challenged, vulnerability sets in (cf. Margaret Thatcher).

No previous Conservative leader has been as unpopular with the party as Theresa May. At the recent conference she was booed during her speech by members of the National Conservative Convention, the ultimate grassroots organization. At any time in the past that would have caused the men in grey suits to reach for their daggers and terminate her career. The peculiar problem is that the Conservative Party appears incapable of disembarrassing itself of a leader who is herding it to political extinction.

Looking back over the past two and a quarter years, there is no mistake Theresa May has failed to commit. The first mistake was accepting the Article 50 process, a trap set by uber-Remainer Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. The next was allowing the EU to dictate the agenda and timetable for Brexit negotiations. The propagandist pretext for the EU’s assuming the lead role was that it represented 27 nations, Britain only one. That was always nonsense. There are just two parties involved, Britain and the EU, and negotiations should have been conducted on an equal basis. The 27-nations argument was repudiated quickly enough by Brussels whenever Britain attempted to approach individual European leaders.

Then – and this can scarcely be characterized as sane behaviour – Britain threw away its ace early in the game by conceding a payment of £39bn that even the strongly pro-Remain House of Lords had admitted was not owed to Brussels. After such a supine surrender is it any wonder that the Brussels hoods saw Britain as a soft touch, a punch-bag for the likes of Barnier and Verhofstadt?

How was it possible for Britain, a nuclear power with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, the sixth largest economy in the world and the second strongest economy in Europe, with a £67bn trade deficit with the EU, to approach as a suppliant an imploding EU, strangled by its synthetic currency, saddled with basket cases like Greece and the Italian banks, defied by the semi-detached Visegrad states and with its supposed iron chancellor Angela Merkel scrabbling for survival?

In that confrontation how did the EU attain ascendancy? Through the complicity of the British Prime Minister and Chancellor is the self-evident answer. Why did May allow the deep state, in the person of civil servant Oliver Robbins, to dismantle the aspirations of the British electorate?

The chief ploy by Brussels, which should have been laughed out of court along with its fake bill for £39bn on the first day it appeared, was the bogus Irish border criterion. Suddenly the EU is consumed with concern for the wellbeing of Ireland – the nation it contemptuously compelled to hold a second referendum on the Treaty of Nice in 2002, after it came up with the “wrong” answer in 2001.

Brussels saw Leo Varadkar and his sidekick Simon Coveney coming. By exploiting the concerns of a country temperamentally predisposed, for historical reasons, to twist the British lion’s tail when opportunity affords, the EU elevated the Irish border to an almighty totem. An intelligent Irish government would have secured its economic interests by aligning itself with the UK, but this is Varadkar, never the brightest bulb on the chandelier. Dire threats of renewed Troubles and similar nonsense were facilely accepted and parroted by May and her ministers, sawing off the branch on which they were seated.

The Irish border is crucially important – in the one respect that has never been mentioned. Post-Brexit it will be the United Kingdom’s sole, 310-mile-long land frontier with the European Union. If it is not to become a route for unlimited immigration – and Varadkar is ratcheting up his Merkel-style open-doors policy – there has to be a hard border before half the population of Africa pours through the Dublin-Belfast-London gap.

If the Tories have the most elemental notion of self-preservation they need to chuck not just Chequers but Theresa May. The alternative leader is obvious. Even those of us who would never in normal times have desired Boris as prime minister can see his usefulness in extraordinary times. After sending so many craven tribute-bearers to Brussels, it is time its arrogant, superannuated nomenklatura was exposed to the insouciance of Pop and the Bullingdon. (“In vino veritas, eh, Juncker…? Angela, old thing, isn’t it time you were back in the granny flat…? Why don’t you go for a wee-wee, Macron Minimus…?”)

We need a buccaneer to sink our enemies in the EU. Whatever happens, the one thing we do not need and cannot afford is one more week of Theresa May’s betrayal of Brexit, of Britain, of her erstwhile supporters and of the entire system of parliamentary democracy.