Conservatives gamble with their future

This week, the Brexit war moves into a new, more dangerous stage. The Conservative Party is focused on who runs No 10, which is undeniably vital, but the battle for leadership in Parliament is at least equally important. Backbenchers may now seize control of the process or else the Government could hand it to them – either way, the plan is to hold a series of indicative votes to ask MPS what they prefer instead of Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement. This could result in an even softer Brexit than the one the Government was planning: Mrs May’s Agreement plus an eternity trapped in the customs union. It really says something about Britain’s political class that they would consider signing up to economic vassalage, but it also says something about the Government that things have reached this tragic point.

The Tories would argue that they are handling factors beyond their control, but they created their own misfortunes. David Cameron decided not to plan for a Leave result after the referendum; he chose to walk away when he lost. No 10 bungled the 2017 campaign, returning a minority government. Mrs May selected the red lines for negotiations and opted to give Brussels almost everything it wanted from the outset. The deal she got back from the EU was Remain-in-all-but-name. The Treasury took a no-deal alternative off the table; Tory Cabinet members abstained from a three-line whip in order to kill it in the House. Some Conservative MPS have voted repeatedly against the letter of the 2017 manifesto. Whatever one concludes of Mrs May’s culpability, if the thought of the party machine wresting control from her fills few voters with enthusiasm then it’s because responsibility for what has gone wrong extends so far and so wide. Philip Hammond put another nail into the coffin of public confidence yesterday by telling an interviewer that the argument for a second referendum “deserves to be considered”.

No, it does not. The fact that a Chancellor could at this late stage say such a strange thing gets to the heart of the problem, which is that many Tories still do not grasp what is going on. To spell it out for them: the country voted to leave the EU, which requires some degree of rupture from Brussels. This commitment was made in the Conservative manifesto. And the only hope the Conservatives have of winning a majority in the future is if they deliver on that promise. Failure will split their coalition and put Jeremy Corbyn in office. If Mr Hammond believes he is standing up for stability and common sense, he needs to realise that popular anger can trump economic logic – that many voters, if disillusioned, will turn to Labour and replace sound Tory housekeeping with radical socialism.

The danger posed by Labour has been illustrated in the past few weeks. If its MPS accepted Brexit and just wanted a very soft one, they always had the option of backing the Government’s deal. Instead Mr Corbyn has chosen to chalk up some cheap Commons victories against Mrs May, even as the results have led us further away from the Euroscepticism he probably harbours. He also appears blind to what’s approaching: Labour is becoming a militant Remain party. It is allying with Conservative Remainers to forge a Brexit so contrary to the spirit of the referendum that some voters will conclude sovereignty is better safeguarded by staying in the EU. If that were to happen – if Article 50 was revoked – the national humiliation suffered would be comparable to the Suez crisis. The hardcore Remainers have emerged as the true ideologues in all of this. They would plunge the country into diplomatic ruin and embarrassment for the sake of reconciliation with Jean-claude Juncker.

There is leadership in terms of who gets to lead the team and leadership in the sense of getting on with the job – and the Tories appear to be in a dither about both. This week the Commons is going to refight the referendum all over again and Plan A of No 10 appears to be “sit back and let them do it and if no one emerges as a clear winner, give the Withdrawal Agreement one more push”. This is not a strategy. This is not evidence of a country that has taken back control. And the Conservatives could do themselves terrible long-term damage if this farce continues.