The makings of a very British tragedy

They say you get more right wing as you grow old. You’d have to be Methuselah before you were old enough to trust the Tory party. Britain’s right-of-centre party is like a pumpkin lantern long past Halloween: mouldy and collapsing in on itself.

Theresa May has only weeks left. An election is inevitable in these circumstances and the temptation will be to say it was all of her own doing.

That would be wrong. What we are witnessing is a crisis in our political class, who are unable to lead.

Mrs May has a narrow majority, an incompetent Cabinet and an angry back bench – it’s only a matter of when, not if, we vote again.

The PM’S foreign secretary is criminally inept. A core element of Britishness is the sense that we are world players, our Foreign Office a rock in the sea of events.

Boris Johnson, the current foreign secretary, has helped to erode both assumptions. His international bumbling was bad enough but now he has condemned a British citizen to five more years in an Iranian jail because he wrongly suggested she was training journalists.

There was one person in the world who could dismiss the idea this Brit was a spy, and that was Boris, yet he as good as hinted she was a spy. This walking exclamation mark should resign, and the rest of us rejoice his reputation is damaged forever.

Meanwhile his junior, Priti Patel, resigned last night after it was revealed she had been using her holidays to hold meetings with senior Israeli officials. When initially challenged about her furtive diplomacy by the PM, she chose not to share all the details.

Neither person is, or was, fit to hold office – they do so because others round the Cabinet table are being outed as sex creeps. She can’t afford to fire a single one. You can blame the PM for appointing these people but she can’t carry the can for such stupidity or self-interest.

These stories tell us that it’s possible to rise to the very top of British democracy while having no ethical rigour and no fundamental sense of public service.

These people act as if entitled to power and to limitless forgiveness.

The tragedy of Theresa May is partly the accidental path to the premiership, made possible by a leadership race that resembled the children’s cartoon Wacky Races.

Boris was betrayed by his own laziness and then by Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom literally marching on parliament for attention. Then Mrs May held off on triggering article 50 – it looked prudent, as if she was gathering a grand plan, until she called a snap election.

Her negotiation with Europe began by seeking an already-existing mandate at home – which she then lost. When the real negotiating began, it turned out there was no strategy, after all, but to beg. But it isn’t the hapless Mrs May who is entirely to blame. She governs a party who seem to have lost any sense of public service.

Malaise

The country’s biggest challenge is Brexit, and none of them have a clue how it will be achieved.

Meanwhile, services creak as the Government dithers over whether to cut the deficit or offer treats to the voters; and those most in need are played with, as a child might torture ants, by a welfare reform which has taken seven years to produce chaos.

Plenty of Scots like to think that any day when the Tories suffer is a good one. They are wrong. The profound malaise in our political parties and democracy is just as evident in Labour, currently led by a man who has had to contest the leadership and doesn’t command the support of his own parliamentary party.

Jeremy Corbyn has grown in the job of leader of the opposition but not to the point he reassures his own ranks or Britain.

People chant for him as an alternative, not as a leader – his strength is in the abstract.

We can expect an election soon because what was always fragile is now brittle – there are too many flaws and enemies in the current government for it to survive.

Turmoil

Nobody wants a winter election so perhaps the party will cling on until spring, but we will vote again before Brexit is done. The result will be no clearer, leadership no stronger. The truth is, we need more than an election – we need a new beginning. Mrs May has failed – spectacularly – but her demise is because the system is failing around her.

Those who think Scottish independence is the solution might want to think a wee bit harder – look around at the talent and rigour in our political class and tell me there is a better future waiting to happen.

The fact is that the turmoil of elections, the incompetence of ministers and the short-termism of political parties are not working. As it is, when Theresa May goes, little is likely to change – and that is a tragedy for us all.

Picture: PA. Priti Patel resigned as international development secretary last night as more details of her Israeli meetings emerged.