Well done, Boris – but now watch your back
Whenever the leading members of the Tory and Labour parties agree on a vital national issue in peacetime, history warns us to be very wary. For the fact is that they are usually wrong – and often catastrophically so.
Twenty-five years ago, the front benches of the Tory and Labour Parties applauded in unison at British entry to the exchange rate Mechanism (the system of fixed exchange rates which was the precursor to the european single currency).
Within two years, sterling was humiliatingly driven out of the system, but not before hundreds of thousands had lost their jobs or homes in our worst post-war recession. Indeed, this was an echo of the events in 1931 when there was cross- party consensus on the flawed policy of propping up the value of the pound with massive spending cuts.
Most recently, there was the shameful agreement between Tory and Labour front benches 13 years ago in favour of Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq. It turned out to be a global calamity, and we are still feeling the effects.
The verdict of history suggests that consensus opinion has been a disaster for Britain. And yet we are witnessing a repeat of this dangerous phenomenon.
In the house of Commons yesterday, there was a nauseating moment when Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn joined forces with David Cameron over the eU.
They were joined by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and Chancellor George Osborne also making common cause. It has to be said that a near majority of Tory MPs are believed to be ready to defy their leadership and vote for the UK’s withdrawal from the eU, but otherwise the country faces a political establishment singing in unison.
To make matters worse, the economic establishment is refusing to rock the eU boat.
In the face of this formidable lineup, it is immensely refreshing that two courageous men – Michael Gove and Boris Johnson – have declared themselves as supporters of the Leave eU camp.
Anyone who is a patriotic Briton – and everyone who believes in democracy – should welcome their decision. Of course, no one can predict the future, but if history is any guide, they are absolutely right to challenge the pro-eU consensus among the political elite and opinion-forming classes.
In my opinion, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, are the two most brilliant politicians of their generation and they have the personal charisma and the intellectual gifts to ensure that the case for Britain to leave the eU is seriously heard.
however, both men risk paying a heavy personal price. They have left the establishment club. They will no longer be protected by spindoctors and party machines.
Indeed, I wonder whether either man yet appreciates what he has let himself in for.
This particularly applies to Boris Johnson. The London Mayor has always been secretly hated by a large number of his Tory colleagues – embittered and resentful mediocrities who resent his effortless intellectual brilliance, his charm, his eton and Oxford education, his easy appeal to voters of all classes. now that Mr Johnson has left the club, they will turn on him.
Indeed, the process has started. even before he made his position known, Mr Johnson was under serial attack. not an unfamiliar allegation to be levelled at this intensely ambitious man.
David Cameron was at his most vicious as he led the way during his Commons statement yesterday.
Although he didn’t mention Boris Johnson by name, he accused him of being driven by personal ambition, and of having a secret agenda to rejoin the eU if Britain voted to leave.
TheSe claims are baseless, and easy to disprove. I would argue that on this occasion, while it would be naive to doubt Mr Johnson covets his job in the future, the charge of careerism is especially unfair.
Mr Johnson had a senior Cabinet job (most likely the Foreign Office) for the taking as a reward if he backed the remain campaign.
It took fortitude and strength of character to place his personal convictions ahead of short-term political advancement.
By adopting his bold course of action, Mr Johnson also set himself apart from many of his Cabinet colleagues.
Just compare him with home Secretary Theresa May, Foreign Secretary Philip hammond, Culture Secretary Sajid Javid and others who have long set out their personal stall as eurosceptics.
As such, they have gained easy applause at Conservative Party conferences and ensured early promotion to high office.
Yet when the time came for actions rather than gestures last week, they had weaselled their way into the europhile cause.
I think that Mrs May’s behaviour is especially contemptible.
In October, she made a strong and widely-welcomed speech to Tory conference highlighting the damage immigration has done to Britain’s social fabric. She pointed out that eU rules made it impossible to address the problem.
Yet her decision now to fall in line with Mr Cameron and support Britain’s continued membership of the eU suggests that her claim to want to get tough on immigration was pretty empty.
I am afraid, in the cynical world of modern politics, she will most likely be rewarded for her insincerity.
By contrast, Boris Johnson has stuck to the eurosceptic instincts he first showed when a young Brussels correspondent.
For this reason, the Prime Minister’s low-grade attack on him yesterday has set an unhappy tone. The Conservative Party looks set for several months of civil war. Divi- sions in the party will last for months, and are unlikely to end come June 23, the date of the referendum.
In the words of Mr Gove, ‘ our membership of the european Union prevents us being able to change huge swathes of law and stops us being able to choose who makes critical decisions which affect all our lives.
‘Laws which govern citizens in this country are decided by politicians from other nations who we never elected and can’t throw out.’
And as Mr Johnson put it, Britain has not left the european Union. The eU has left us.
It is insulting to voters’ intelligence for the pro-eU campaigners to claim it is underpinned by the same values as existed when we joined what was originally a trading bloc in 1972. Instead, it is patently clear that the Brussels machine has set a course to obliterate national boundaries, eradicate national sovereignty and create a single government.
voters are well aware that there are serious arguments on both sides.
But isn’t it wonderful that Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, after a great deal of personal mental turmoil, have thrown their considerable political weight behind the cause of national democracy?
The lessons of history tell us that in view of the tragic consequences of what has happened when the political establishment has concurred on major national issues of the day, I believe that neither man will ever regret his brave decision to defy the conventional wisdom, whatever the result of June’s referendum.