Mark Wallace:
The Mayites said replacing the leader would make little difference – those claims look foolish today
Almost unbelievably, it’s only a little over a month since Theresa May left Downing Street. It feels like a lot longer. The legacy of her time in office lingers on, throbbing like an unjust hangover afflicting a sufferer who didn’t get to enjoy the party beforehand. But, none the less, it’s remarkable how much has changed since her departure.
Remember those dreary months earlier this year, in which the Parliamentary Conservative Party muttered about getting rid of her but kept failing to do so. Her last dogged defenders argued to anyone who would listen that changing leader wouldn’t change a thing. The Parliamentary arithmetic, they said, would remain the same, as though the Commons numbers would somehow compel any prime minister to adopt May’s woeful approach.
The arithmetic matters, of course, but it’s now obvious for all to see that it is not the only force in politics.
Changing leader has already changed a great deal. This is partially because in the British system a government can do a lot of things without needing to navigate Parliament, but also because Boris Johnson is so utterly different from his predecessor.
Conservative activists and voters are buoyed up by his optimism and energy. They are encouraged by the brutal effectiveness of his team, forged as it is from the pick of the people who won and held the London mayoralty, and who drove Vote Leave to victory.
At the start of the summer, I heard from numerous dedicated Tories who had given up knocking on doors. They were ashamed that their party had broken its promise of a prompt Brexit, and sick of taking abuse on the doorstep from normally like-minded voters. They felt not just unwilling but unable to defend May from criticisms that they often felt were justified, or which they even shared themselves. Of those who persisted in trying to fight their local corner, a fair few had attempted to defuse the anger of their electors by simply agreeing that the national situation was intolerable.
My, how that’s changed. Conservative members are buoyed up – first because the leadership contest gave them the rare chance to actually have a say about their own party, and second because the winner of that race has restored a sense of purpose to the whole enterprise.
The May experience, with its attendant sense that the best we could hope for was a flaccid, depressive decline, through endless delay to inevitable failure, was the politics of washed-out sepia. Suddenly, Tories’ dulled and neglected senses are subjected to an explosion of sound and colour from a leader who believes in the mission, is visibly striving to succeed and is taking the fight to the opposition.
Just as it was a myth that changing leader would change nothing, so the Mayites touted another fallacy: that belief, in itself, is worthless. Rory Stewart mocked the very idea of belief as a force on national television, arguing that it was mere “machismo”, akin to suggesting he could force an excess of rubbish into his small bin through belief alone. “Believe in the bin, believe in Britain… it’s nonsense,” he mocked, enjoying his pomp.
The analogy failed because politics is not a science, it is an art. We knew even then that belief could make some sort of difference. After all, Theresa May, Philip Hammond and co had demonstrated all too visibly that lacking it could help to deliver failure.
Even Boris Johnson wouldn’t pretend that belief alone decides everything. If it did, John Bercow would be a famed wit, and socialism would work. But it’s a good earthly friend for any politician, and a dire thing to lack. Acting on the basis of one’s confidence is the next step, and the Government has further rallied its supporters by massively increasing its work rate, not just on Brexit, but on domestic policy, too.
Voters can sense that, and Downing Street’s strategists believe that there is a large, neglected constituency of people who are first and foremost fed up with the feeling that the nation is adrift. They might not have voted Leave. They might never have thought themselves Tories. They might even be positively nervous about the outcome, but they are impatient for Westminster to stop wringing its hands and start doing something.
This is an unintended consequence of the pro-eu campaigners’ strategy of delay. They hoped that holding up the process and dragging out the battle would make their opponents abandon the dream of escaping the EU. They hoped that voters would respond to the resulting fatigue by demanding that it all be called off.
The Prime Minister gambles that the opposite is the case: that action is not just right, necessary and overdue, but it will be welcomed by millions of people who want their politicians to stop complaining that it is simply too difficult to keep their promises.
Ironically, it is the most ardent Remain campaigners who now have a central role in communicating Johnson’s message to his target audience. The more they wail, and the more hyperbolic they become, the more they convince voters that he is getting on with the job.