The best Tories are Whigs at heart

It’s not immigration. But the PM’S lack of ideology could pit globalists against protectionists

Only two of the last five Conservative prime ministers have been true Tories. Sir John Major and David Cameron fall into that category, in their own very different ways, even if Mr Cameron’s final, revolutionary act of direct democracy, the Brexit referendum, makes him more of a radical. Sir Edward Heath, by contrast, was the quintessential anti-tory, a Euro-fanatic who set a timebomb under Britain’s institutions, and in economic terms ended up embracing the destructive socialism of his time.

Margaret Thatcher wasn’t a Tory either: she was a Whig, and that is what made her so wonderful. Her party, when she was in charge, subsumed both the main 19th-century British political traditions, and was thus spectacularly successful. Lady Thatcher’s intellectual idol, FA Hayek, explained in The Constitution of Liberty, his masterpiece, that he wasn’t a conservative: he was desperate to reform the economy in a libertarian direction, not merely to conserve the status quo.

As to Theresa May, only she and her husband Philip truly understand what, if anything, she believes in, but it is certainly neither conservatism nor classical liberalism. She may well be a continental-style Christian Democrat, albeit devoid of much residual social conservatism; she is certainly an ultra-cautious creature of consensus, endlessly buffeted by events, a prisoner of political fashion. Her latest reshuffle was shockingly incommensurate to the magnitude of the challenge facing the country.

Ideas matter. Mrs May’s lack of an ideological mind is one of the reasons she is so badly mishandling Brexit. She only partially understands the cultural and social revolution she is dealing with, and the very different belief systems that made up the winning Vote Leave coalition. As a result, she continues to prioritise the wrong issues and could end up failing to take her party with her when it comes to making the compromises that all successful negotiations require.

She is most comfortable, at least on a cerebral level, with those – often working-class, Labour supporters – who voted Brexit principally because they want greater control over immigration. She also understands the Left-wing interventionists who dislike the single market not because it imposes too much red tape but because it prevents countries from bailing out dud industries; the Tory wets, of which she is one, were always fans of big government.

Ironically, her real blind spot lies with centre-right Eurosceptics in her own party. She has the measure of traditional Tory Euroscepticism, which is primarily about parliamentary sovereignty and legal independence. But she simply cannot relate to the most influential, though sadly not most numerous, part of the Eurosceptic coalition: the Whiginspired, Thatcherite free traders who see Brexit as a replay of the abolition of the Corn Laws.

To them, leaving the EU is an invigorating project of selfrenewal, a bold plan for a global Britain, a historic, self-confident moment for our country. They profoundly dislike much about the EU, including its obsession with harmonisation, its job-destroying social policies, its economically illiterate agricultural and fisheries policies, its democratic deficit and its unforgivable corruption. But above all else, the Whigs loathe the EU’S customs union and common commercial policy, and how membership prevents us from trading freely with the rest of the world. They see the increase in non-european trade as the greatest upside from Brexit, the reason why the gains of leaving the EU will in time be greater than its costs.

It is such people who created the modern Eurosceptic movement in the wake of Lady Thatcher’s 1988 Bruges speech, the 30th anniversary of which we shall celebrate this year. Without the Whigs, Britain would not have resisted European integration in the 1990s and 2000s; without them we would have joined the euro, leading to our national bankruptcy after the financial crisis; without them there would have been no referendum. Even Ukip was, in its original incarnation, a Whiggish, pro free-trade party.

This strand of Euroscepticism always accounted for a minority of the electorate – as Vote Leave correctly understood with its much broader Left-right message – but they are the real heroes of Brexit. To them, the idea – increasingly mooted in some circles – that we could yet stay in the customs union, or at least sign a customs agreement with the EU so comprehensive as to prevent us from joining any other free trade bloc or signing meaningful free trade deals with other countries, would be anathema.

In theory, of course, none of this is on the agenda: the Government still says that it wants to leave both the single market and the customs union. But the anti-brexit forces are scenting blood. Their hope is that the customs union will turn out to be Labour’s weak point: Jeremy Corbyn emphasised again this week that he wants to leave the single market, which the old Marxist Left always hated. But he is not as emphatic about the customs union because he doesn’t believe in free trade.

Mrs May must stand firm. I’ve been a Eurosceptic all my life and I have never met a pro-capitalist, Thatcherite critic of the EU who could live with staying in the customs union. The same wasn’t always true of the single market. Until recently, the best that Eurosceptics thought they could hope for was a Norway-style arrangement: in the single market but, crucially, well outside the customs union. The referendum has rightly made them more ambitious.

But the point is that while some concessions may be tolerable to most centre-right Brexiteers – Britain could perhaps stay subject to the pharmaceutical regulator – remaining in the customs union wouldn’t be. It’s not negotiable: it’s at the heart of what we believe in.

It is conceivable that Mrs May could, with Labour support, push such a halfbaked Brexit though Parliament. But her party would be finished. For most of its advocates on the government benches, Brexit is about global free trade or it is nothing. Leaving the single market is not enough; Britain must also regain the power to trade freely with the rest of the world. Anything less would not just be a monumental betrayal but would tear the Conservatives apart. The party split in 1846 after the Corn Laws were repealed; it would surely do so again if Mrs May sells out her Brexiteers.