Tories need to recognise that their real friends are in the Brexit Party

Rather than reaching out to the SNP, Conservatives should win back Farage’s disgruntled democrats

Any list of the greatest novels of the past 100 years would have to include Catch-22. A television adaptation directed by and starring George Clooney is about to hit our screens; and listening to Jeremy Hunt on the radio yesterday, I wondered if there might be a part for him.

The Foreign Secretary set out the dilemma facing the Conservatives much in the way Yossarian, the tortured Second World War US airman, does in Joseph Heller’s book when he tries to get out of flying any more missions.

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to, but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of

this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.”

I let out a similarly respectful whistle while reading Mr Hunt in this newspaper yesterday. To paraphrase: “The Conservatives need to deliver Brexit because our voters have made that as clear as they can. However, the current Parliament won’t agree to the deal on the table, but if we go for no deal, the Government will fall and we will end up with a general election in which we will be annihilated. So we need to keep negotiating changes to the deal that nobody wants and which has been rejected by both Parliament and the electorate.”

To this end, Mr Hunt said he would gather together a team from across the political spectrum, to “include our friends in the DUP”, and ask Brussels to change the Withdrawal Agreement, in particular to drop or amend the Irish backstop. But since the EU has implacably refused to reopen the agreement, unless Mr Hunt is prepared to leave without a deal and to say so in clear terms, what possible incentive would there be for them to change that position?

I also have some news for Mr Hunt: the DUP are not friends of the Conservatives. They are temporary allies propping up a Tory government with no Commons majority and would bring it down at the drop of a hat if they thought they were being betrayed, again. They do not particularly want an election because they would lose the bargaining power they currently have. But if it was in their interests to do so, they would abandon the Tories like a shot. They do not trust the Tories to play straight with them with good reason, because they haven’t in the past, notably in 1985 when Margaret Thatcher signed the Anglo-irish deal with Dublin. Mr Hunt also appeared to include the SNP in his pan-westminster negotiating team, and they are certainly no friends of the Tories or the Union.

The real friends of the Tories are actually in the Brexit Party. Roughly 70 per cent of its vote last Thursday came from those who supported the Tories in 2017. Many candidates were once Tory supporters or, in the case of Ann Widdecombe, even members of a Conservative government. I know personally several of the successful candidates, and they are not the “fruitcakes and loonies” that David Cameron once called Ukip’s members, but Tories who have given up on the party’s ability to fulfil the mandate of the 2016 referendum.

Indeed, they are fundamentally a different group from Ukip, one largely exercised by the failure of democracy, rather than by some misty-eyed sentimental attachment to a long-gone Britain. While wannabe Tory leaders argue fruitlessly over their ability to reopen talks with Brussels and get tweaks to the Withdrawal Agreement that they hope might win support in the Commons (they won’t), Farage has moved the argument on to different territory entirely.

Like Donald Trump in America, he is targeting the entire political establishment as hopelessly out of touch with the people and ready to be swept away. Unlike in America, where Trump has used the existing political structure for his populist putsch, Farage has had to set up his own party. He is consistently underestimated by the Tories, who still see him as the enemy, rather than a potential ally.

He was shrewd enough to realise last December that Theresa May’s deal would not fly and that the European elections might actually take place; so he applied to the Electoral Commission to register the Brexit Party name. “I never imagined they would give me the most Googled word in the English language,” he said. “But they did.” In his Telegraph article, Mr Hunt committed himself to “fighting off the forces of Farage”, seemingly oblivious to the fact that many of them are also the forces of Conservatism. It is, frankly, odd to reach out to the DUP, the SNP or Labour while wanting a fist fight with those who share your views on most things.

The danger of this approach for the Conservatives was apparent in the party getting just 9 per cent of the vote in the European elections. Many MPS have been tempted to dismiss this meltdown as purely a one-off Brexit protest. But if Farage’s candidate wins the Peterborough by-election next week then all bets are off. The panic in the Tory (and Labour) ranks at Westminster will be something to behold. The Conservatives need a leader able to transcend the minutiae of the Brexit argument and to speak the language the voters want to hear, something that echoes their concerns, but gives them hope and optimism.

Mr Hunt is right to say that if it is a “no dealer” like Boris Johnson, the probable outcome is a general election, because some Tories would refuse to accept him, and a no-confidence motion would succeed in toppling the Government. But at least the Tories would then be equipped with someone able to embrace Brexiteers who have deserted the party, but who also knows how to fight and win an election against a far-left opponent.

For good or ill, in the new politics, a middle-way compromiser will be crushed. As Heller wrote of one of his characters in Catch-22: “He was goodnatured, generous and likeable. In three days no one could stand him.”