Weak and repellent Labour could save the Tories ...for now
BUY Boris. No, sell Boris and buy Jacob ReesMogg. No, sell ReesMogg and buy Sajid Javid. The market in Tory leadership contenders is a tad volatile. The long-term investment is supposed to be in Ruth Davidson.
Her every utterance varies her price and the latest rumour is that there is a plot for Michael Gove to be a caretaker prime minister until she can get a seat at Westminster.
Stories like that miss the point – the point of what Ruth Davidson represents.
Now I have known Michael Gove since student days and while we disagree on many things, he is the most agreeable of company. He is also good at dressing up as something he is not.
The stories are legend of how he used to dress up as an Anglican priest, back in the day, and gatecrash Church of England events, waiting to see how outrageous they would let him be before he was rumbled and was thrown out.
He is impeccably polite but also rapaciously ambitious. The idea that he would keep a seat warm for a lady fits with the former – but the latter does not suggest he would give it up for her.
This is a Conservative Party that does not seem to understand what a dire position it is in, nor what remarkable opportunities are in front of it.
David Cameron’s idea that the Brexit referendum would solve the Tories divisions on Europe once and for all proved to be false. The divisions are deeper and more smarting than ever.
IT is often said that the Tories have an instinct to do anything to win. Perhaps so, but they also hold on to internal grudges like no one else. It took them a century to get over divisions on Robert Peel’s repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846.
Brexiteers such as Mr Rees-Mogg and remainers such as Anna Soubry will only ever bury the hatchet in each other.
Whatever deal Theresa May does on Brexit will be divisive and whatever long-term benefits there may or may not be, the Tories will carry the can for the immediate shock. Electoral oblivion ought to be their fate but they are saved by one man. Not Boris, not Rees-Mogg but Jeremy Corbyn.
His 1970s polytechnic bedsit Marxism is repellent, not just to the broad electorate but to mainstream Labour supporters.
And that is where the Tories have an opportunity if they decide that changing the jockey is not the point but changing the horse is.
The centre ground is there for the taking. Jeremy Corbyn eschews it as a sign of a land of concession. The Lib Dems limply squat in it, not realising they were evicted years ago. A practical rather than an idealogical appeal to people on how to improve their lives would be refreshing.
That is what Ruth Davidson has been arguing for, but rather than listen to the ideas – the policy – Tories prefer to look to the process; her personal ambition rather than vision for the party.
Making Ms Davidson leader of the Tory Party will change little until the party is prepared to change its mindset.
William Hague tried to reform it and then gave up in the face of entrenched opposition. David Cameron made more progress but did not emerge victorious. Unless the party that seeks to reform the country reforms itself, it has no future.
Mrs May gave stirring speeches about the kind of Britain she wanted to create – and the joke in the Tory Party was what a pity it was that her speech writers never met her policy advisers.
The divisions in the Tory Party are not just about Europe – they are about mindset.
There are those who could watch the film Zulu and grieve for the loss of life and wonder whether imperial adventures like that were worth it.
Then there are others who watch it and want a replay of Rorke’s Drift.
The latter need to be set adrift. Rather than look at bookies’ odds about the next Tory leader, Tories who care about their party should just look at Ruth Davidson.
She has revived the party’s fortunes in the most hostile of territory, Scotland – although the Labour Party has helped her.
But she is a working class lesbian mother-to-be leading the Scottish Tory Party.
How did that happen? It is a long way from Michael Forsyth and Lord Mansfield.
I don’t believe that Ms Davidson will ever lead the UK Conservative Party.
THE self-interest that grips their Westminster MPs will, I believe, ensure she is politically assassinated if she ever puts her head above the parapet. But the point is less about who leads it than how it is led.
The Conservative Party may survive the current political crisis because of a weak and repellent Labour Party but that does not secure its future.
Instead of just embracing personalities – as the Tories did with William Hague and David Cameron – it would be better to embrace their ideas.
That is Ruth Davidson’s best offer to her party, whether or not she ever leads it.