The Tories should deselect MPs using language of political violence against May
At the end of Tim Shipman’s typically excellent long feature on how close Theresa May is to removal from Number 10, on the grounds of widespread, justified and deepening despair, is a disconcerting off the record quote of such dark and chilling power that it stopped me in my tracks reading the morning newspapers.
A former minister said of May: “The moment is coming when the knife gets heated, stuck in her front and twisted. She’ll be dead soon.”
As Robert Shrimsley of the FT tweeted: “What kind of person talks like this?”
In the Mail on Sunday, someone else (or perhaps the same person, I’m told not but I don’t know) said this of the Prime Minister: “She should bring her own noose to the ’22.”
This is a reference to a meeting of the 1922 Committee at which the Tory leader will try to explain her Brexit strategy.
I’m no fan of May. It was a mistake to leave the Tory leader in place after the botched general election of last year. But there is simply no excuse for the spate of violent, misogynistic remarks about the Prime Minister.
It is simply incredible that little more than two years since Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered during the Brexit referendum, with polarisation getting worse since, that any MP or adviser could think it sensible or acceptable to use the language of political violence, employing references to knives and nooses.
Politics is, of course, a tough old game and there is a lot at stake. Blood curdling metaphors and musings on death are hardly new. Here is Shakespeare in Julius Caesar writing about bravery:
“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”
But underpinning the development of Britain’s democratic system was an understanding that it should be possible to settle differences peacefully within established institutions, under the rule of law, removing the need for political violence or retribution. A system of manners and respect for differences of opinion developed. Without doubt there was hypocrisy involved; few human activities are entirely devoid of hypocrisy. Nonetheless it produced a precious inheritance – largely peaceful politics.
Those extremely violent quotes from politicians about the Prime Minister in the Sunday papers were given off the record. But as several appalled Tory MPs have pointed out on social media, it is an open secret at Westminster that a handful of exceptionally dim Tory MPs, who should never have been selected, driven mad since by the divisions of Brexit, use this violent and extreme language about the leader of their party.
The Tory whips should set about establishing who it is. The MPs involved should be confronted, this week. If the MPs in question are all that brave they’ll admit it. They should then have the whip withdrawn, they should be deselected, and kicked out of the Tory party. It has got to stop.