The Conservatives face a final reckoning

Nigel Farage was asked an interesting question at yesterday’s launch of the Brexit Party: will this movement be only about Brexit? For the moment, yes, said Mr Farage, because it is fighting the European elections and there’s only one issue on the agenda. But thereafter, it will develop a fuller manifesto. The longer Britain’s withdrawal from the EU is delayed, and the better the Brexit Party does, the more likely we are to see the emergence of a new alternative to the Conservatives.

It has nearly happened before. Ukip came first in the European elections in 2014, and the EU wasn’t the only issue: the party benefited from anger at David Cameron’s drift to the Left and the selfentitled air of his government. Panicked by the polls, Mr Cameron promised an in-out referendum and, when Leave won, Mrs May promised to make the Tories the party of Brexit. Again, the agenda was bigger than the EU. People had been locked out of power, she argued; social mobility was stuck; immigration had sparked a backlash.

The Ukip vote collapsed in 2017. Some of it went back to Labour, which is partly why the Tories lost seats, but a lot of working-class support also defected to the Conservatives, which is why they won enough MPS to stay in power. Trapped in a minority Government, Mrs May decided to reach across the aisle. But not to Brexiteers. She reached out to the EU, civil servants, trades unions, big business, Remainers, even to the Labour Party – to the people who want Brexit to go away and politics to return to normal. When the Prime Minister took a no-deal outcome off the table, and ended the emergency planning for it, one could almost hear the sigh of relief in Westminster: “Even if Brexit does happen, at least it will be so compromised as to be unnoticeable.”

But this is a bad calculation. The longer Britain’s withdrawal from the EU takes and the softer its form, the more likely Brexit is to blow up our politics. The Tories will be split in two and Labour will advance. But so, too, will an anti-tory Right that only went quiet between 2016 and 2019 because it gave Mrs May a chance at getting us out of the EU and at helping the left-behinds. Now she has failed on both counts, they are back with a vengeance.

In short, Britain will never move on from Brexit unless the Conservatives deliver it. The good news is that if they do, they can also shoot Mr Farage’s fox by addressing the social and economic questions that help motivate the Brexit Party. If Britain leaves the EU properly, it can regain control of its borders. It can sign trade deals with non-eu countries, opening up new markets, particularly for the towns hit by deindustrialisation. Britain can revive its fishing industry. It can take back control of its finances and finally, properly reform public services. It could deregulate, which, if combined with intelligent and sweeping tax cuts, could turn us into the hyper-competitive neighbour that the EU is absolutely terrified of.

Britain can also restore its democracy. Politicians need to rebuild trust. Our political class said the economy would be the thing most damaged by voting for Brexit; in fact, the greatest casualty has been the reputation of the political class, thanks to its hysterical predictions, broken promises and incompetence. Mr Farage wants to put the “fear of God” into MPS and he might succeed, unless MPS come to terms with the damage that procrastination is doing to faith in politics. This means not just moving on from the Withdrawal Agreement but from Mrs May, too.

The Prime Minister’s tragedy is that she cannot see her time is up and that she must go; the Conservative Party’s tragedy is that it lacks the courage to tell her. The party is almost willing itself to defeat, as if it needs a reckoning at the ballot box before it can change. If so, it is getting closer and closer to its darkest desire.

The greatest casualty of Brexit has been the reputation of the political class, thanks to broken promises