Politics

This Tory leadership contest is making a mockery of basic democratic norms

British politics is being warped by a tiny minority who will pick the next leader and a cast of candidates who refuse to face simple truths

June 19, 2019
Frontrunner Boris Johnson leaves his home in south London. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire/PA Images
Frontrunner Boris Johnson leaves his home in south London. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire/PA Images

The surprise of the week so far has not been sprung by the mostly turgid televised Tory party leadership debates. It is the YouGov poll finding that most Conservative members are ready to accept serious economic damage, the breakup of the United Kingdom and the destruction of their own party in order to achieve Brexit. Only if Brexit brought Jeremy Corbyn to power would most not want it to happen—thereby contradicting the aspirant leaders’ repeated insistence that failure to deliver Brexit would produce precisely that result.

These, it appears, are the considered views of the estimated 160,000 people who will shortly anoint Britain’s prime minister—a number that has mysteriously swollen by a third as their party’s popularity has steadily slumped in the polls.

That the leadership of a nation of almost 70m people should be decided by a group representing less than 0.4 per cent of the electorate is, to put it mildly, anomalous. That that group has apparently abandoned the Tory tradition of moderate pragmatism and turned into a fervent modern-day cargo cult is downright worrying. It does, however, help explain the dismally low quality of the leadership contest.

The candidates face an impossible dilemma: trying to appeal both to the clique of Tory true believers clamouring for Brexit at literally any cost and to the half, possibly more, of voters in the country for whom that prospect is anathema. Most have responded by obfuscating, dodging the substantive issues, dissimulating, blustering and embroidering the truth. The question of what Brexit actually means and its impact on the country has vanished into a big cloud of hot air.

Most of the candidates’ claims have boiled down to breast-beating, brandishing their purported credentials and pleading “trust me, I’ll get Brexit sorted.” Hardly a persuasive pitch when none boasts an impressive ministerial record or has much, if any, experience of handling the heavyweight negotiations with the EU that Brexit will entail, deal or no deal.

Jeremy Hunt has insisted that his record—which includes founding three failed start-ups, along with provoking the first all-out NHS strike in history—makes him the man for the job; Dominic Raab, before he was eliminated, that after his short and undistinguished stint as Brexit secretary he alone could get the better of Brussels; and Michael Gove that he has “a detailed plan” for every contingency that he has coyly declined to reveal. Boris Johnson, in his rare public appearances, has resorted to trademark waffle.

Only Rory Stewart has sought to lay out the hard truths: that the EU is dead set against renegotiating the withdrawal agreement; that there are no magical solutions to the Irish border waiting to be found; that no-deal would be an economic catastrophe; and that Theresa May’s deal is the only one on offer. However, he has signally failed to explain how he would get it through a House of Commons that has thrice rejected it.

The overall impression is not of clear-sighted politicians laying out a bold and compelling vision of the future but of caged rats chasing their own tails while racing around searching for a non-existent exit.

When a winner, most likely Johnson, emerges next month, the time for game-playing will be over (much as he may seek to prolong it). The bleak reality is that he will head a government without a working majority and a party that Brexit has split down the middle, while facing the same intractable political challenges that his predecessor wrestled with for three years and failed to overcome.

If he pushed ahead with no-deal, the resulting economic shock would finish off the Tories’ reputation for economic competence and could consign them and their leader to political oblivion. Calling a snap general election (or having one forced on him by a no-confidence vote) looks a high-risk option given the party’s low standing in the polls, notwithstanding Labour’s almost equally poor showing. Very possibly, ascendant Liberal Democrat and Brexit parties would gain at their expense, producing an even more hung parliament.

Johnson may believe his oratory and salesmanship skills would enable him to get parliament to swallow a tweaked version of the withdrawal agreement. But he risks being wrongfooted by extreme pro-Leave MPs, for whom only no-deal will do and who already complain that Johnson is not a true Brexiteer at all. Or maybe, just maybe, lack of alternatives might impel him to call another referendum.

All this is a far cry from the glorious visions held out by Johnson and other Leave campaigners. They sold Brexit on the promise that it would strengthen democracy, restore the sovereignty of parliament and place Britain firmly in control of its own affairs. So far, it has failed to deliver on every count.

The spectacle of the next prime minister being appointed by a tiny unelected minority, ready to dismember their own country and destroy their own party to get their way, makes a mockery of democratic principles; May’s repeated efforts to sideline parliament over Brexit and Tory politicians’ calls for its prorogation if it thwarts no deal have sought to undermine its sovereignty; and, as the country drifts inexorably towards the 31st October deadline for leaving the EU, while its would-be political leaders avoid coming to terms with reality, it looks anything but under control and in charge of its own destiny.

Yet, for many Brexiteers, the belief that all their hopes will come true is proving hard to shake. Indeed, for some, all that is needed to make Brexit a success is to believe in it hard enough. While that remains so, British—and above all Tory—politics is likely to remain detached from the real world. But when or if it eventually returns to earth, it risks doing so with a bump.