EU Referendum


UK politics: the tragedy of the Conservative Party


08/09/2014



000a Times-007 Parris.jpg

On the comments section of this blog, I see occasional posters make points which disagree with my many assertions. With what time I have, I usually answer such points as carefully as I can.

With some of these people, though, you see them elsewhere, on other comment threads on different websites, making exactly the same points as they have previously made on my site – completely unchanged, even though they may by then be disputed territory.

You also find people on Twitter who make assertions. If one is so inclined, one can answer. Some respond and a discussion ensues. But not with this breed. If their points are contradicted, we see them wait a few hours – or even days - and re-post their original comments, without the encumbrance of the dissenting voices.

These are people who, quite evidently, are not interested in debate. They have points to make, and they are going to make them, come what may – whether right or wrong, whether corrected or not. You can't argue with them because they don't play by the rules. The best thing to do is ignore them.

One can, therefore, have a great deal of sympathy with Matthew Parris in his Saturday column in The Times, when he addressed the question of the Clacton by-election, which now looks set to go to UKIP's latest Westminster defector.

Perhaps unwisely, but with a degree of candour that one can only admire, he actually has the temerity to ask whether the Conservative party should bother to win the seat, venturing that the price of shaping the Conservative Party, so that it would appeal to the voters of Clacton, is not worth the gain.

Is it, he asks, where the Tories need to be if they're to gather momentum in this century, rather than slowly lose it? Or, he adds:
… do we need to be with the Britain that has its career prospects ahead and not behind, that can admire immigrants and want them with us, that doesn't want to spend its days buying scratchcards and its evenings smoking in pubs, that's amazed at all the fuss about whether gays should marry, that travels in Europe and would hesitate to let those links go?
From this build-up, he then delivers two immortal sentences which have the dovecotes a-flutter and which, I gather, are to adorn UKIP leaflets in the constituency. "I am not arguing that we should be careless of the needs of struggling people and places such as Clacton", Parris says: "But I am arguing - if I am honest - that we should be careless of their opinions".

The point, as I see it, is that in politics, you are defined as much by your enemies as your friends. And there is little sense in cosying up to your enemies in the hope of converting some of them into allies, if the cost is losing most of your friends. This was the mistake Mr Cameron made, in courting the Lib-Dems and ignoring his core vote.

But Parris now makes the same point about UKIP. Perhaps he has realised how much the party has changed over the last few years – no longer a Conservative party in waiting, but a group dominated by malign, insolent, malcontents. They have no coherent political position and know only what they don't like, with not the first idea of what they would do for replacements.

"These people", Parris says, "we must have nothing to do with. No concessions to UKIP, no more rightward creep, no fluttering of eyelashes and no dogwhistled calls for anyone to come back. These people don't want a compromise - Mr Cameron has already thrown them too much meat - and the more you give them, the more they'll demand".

That is actually another good point: "the more you give them, the more they'll demand". There is no satisfying UKIP. This is no longer about leaving the EU. For a lot of members, leaving the EU doesn't even figure. Their politics has become a grudge match, where the objective is the destruction of the Conservative Party, no matter what the consequences.

Given the case he sets out, within his own framework of reference, what Parris says makes a lot of sense. But there is a flaw in his argument. If you are a political party, and you are intent on distancing yourselves from your enemies in order then to cement relations with your friends, it does help if you have actually some friends.

This is where Anne McElvoy, public policy editor of the Economist, comes in. In the Observer, she writes of that which we are all aware. Her headline reads: "The self-destructive discontent in a Tory party that has lost its way", with a sub-head that tells us: "With the election only months away, the Conservatives have lost their grip on the issues that matter to voters".

Not much more needs to be added to those bold statements. The party has nothing to offer its friends. Its policy on the EU is a mess, foreign policy over Ukraine and ISIS in Syria and Iraq is in tatters and the reshuffle that was supposed to energise domestic policy has crashed and burnt. Increasingly, those close to Cameron are observing that he is personally losing it – irritable with his own cabinet, his MPs and staff, he has become forgetful, and clumsy in his responses.

The week before last, Parris was also writing his column - that one telling us that a Tory schism was "now all but inevitable". That has always been Farage's main objective, and he would happily see the Conservatives lose the general election in order for him to achieve that aim.

It is that prospect which, according to the Mail on Sunday, has Tory backbenchers "panicking". Rees-Mogg, in particular, is emulating his late father, by getting things spectacularly wrong.

Rees-Mogg's nostrum – amongst others – is to suggest that Mr Cameron keeps a place open in his next cabinet for Mr Farage as deputy prime minister and, as "a sign of good faith" even giving the post of Minister for Europe to a UKIP MP.

This, it rather seems to me, is a council of defeat: a Conservative Party aligned with UKIP would no longer be the Conservative Party. But since, even in the very early days of the Cameron regime, we were branding his creation "not-the-Conservative-Party", we have already lost that which Rees-Mogg seeks to regain. As long as Mr Cameron is at the helm, there is nothing to salvage.

But this does no mean that UKIP provides an answer. In that, I think Parris is right. Concessions to its nihilistic creed would be a cal-de-sac. But with Cameron so obviously failing, the Party needs a new leader, a reinvigorated programme and coherence on "Europe".  Specifically, a new leader could offer an Article 50 withdrawal and a credible exit plan.

The tragedy is that it really is that simple and that far away. Instead of seeking this out as an option, and succeeding, we have instead small-minded MPs thrashing away, like UKIP, without the vision to suggest what it right and what is really needed. The nation, and the Conservative Party, deserves better.

FORUM THREAD