Boris must deliver Brexit – and then turn all the guns on Jeremy Corbyn
IAIN DUNCAN SMITH has ripped his shirt for the second day running due to a loose nail at home.
It gives the impression that the former Tory leader is spoiling for a fight. And he is.
The new chairman of Boris Johnson’s campaign wants to send a message that his party will be at “war” with the forces of “Corbynism” after Britain leaves the European Union.
And Mr Johnson must be leading the Conservative troops into battle.
He said: “My real concern is killing Corbynism. Boris is the only one who can do this ... You ask Conservative voters ‘What do they fear most?’ and it’s an arrival of Corbyn ... They think Corbyn will destroy them.
“It’s important that Boris delivers Brexit... and then all the guns are turned on Jeremy Corbyn. Then it becomes a real fight.”
It will be like the ideological fight won by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives against Michael Foot’s Left-wing Labour party, he said.
“It is something we haven’t seen probably seriously since the Eighties. What will then take place is a fight for the heart and soul of the United Kingdom.
“The question party members had to ask themselves is, ‘Will we allow Corbynism to destroy the United Kingdom, or will we rescue it like Thatcher did in the past?’
“The real battle is not just Brexit, but the war against Corbynism and the destruction of the United Kingdom.”
Ballot papers are being sent out to the party’s 160,000 members next weekend, with the result announced on July 23. Mr Duncan Smith said the Tory leadership favourite will pursue a twin-track Brexit strategy in the 100 days after being elected Prime Minister, with a “clean managed exit” or leaving without a deal by Oct 31.
Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph in his House of Commons office late on Friday afternoon, Mr Duncan Smith insisted Mr Johnson had told him that Mrs May’s hated Withdrawal Agreement would not be resuscitated: “He said the deal is dead.”
Mr Duncan Smith said: “The position of Boris, as prime minister. will be that we have two tracks. The one track is that we’re ready to talk to the EU, because we will want an arrangement that benefits both of us that doesn’t add cost or burdens.
“The second track is preparing like mad, and – I would do it publicly – for being ready to leave without that Withdrawal Agreement.”
The gains made by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party at the European Parliament elections and the Peterborough by-election last month, together with losses at the local elections, had focused minds among Tory and Labour MPs to support a swift exit.
He said: “I’ve had conversations with Labour MPs, who are good friends of mine ... and they all said to me, ‘For God’s sake, get us out.’ They’re all saying that now. ‘Get us out, whatever else you do.’
“I think the mood has shifted here in Parliament ... There was a tremor – and that was in the local elections. Then there was an earthquake in the Euros and – what follows an earthquake? – a tsunami hit us at Peterborough.”
Mr Duncan Smith was against an electoral pact with Mr Farage which would see the Brexit Party decline to stand candidates in safe Tory seats in return for the Conservatives pulling candidates out of Labour heartlands in the north of England.
He said: “I don’t even think it’s worth contemplating it ... The Conservative Party is the only one with the reach to be able to reach to all
parts of the UK.” Mr Duncan Smith backed a proposal being discussed among Mr Johnson’s supporters that as prime minister Mr Johnson should also use the title Minister for the Union. This would sit alongside his official position of First Lord of the Treasury to make clear that he will put the interests of England’s 300-year-old link with Scotland at the heart of a Johnson government.
Last week Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, accused Mr Johnson of putting Brexit ahead of preserving the Union as she expressed support for Jeremy Hunt in the race to No10.
She said: “I want to see him make assurances that it’s not Brexit do or die, it’s the Union do or die.”
Describing it as “a brilliant idea”, he said: “Boris is passionate about the Union” and the Tories had to stress that “the Union is a priceless asset in a world of turmoil”.
Mr Duncan Smith, who led the party from 2001 to 2003 and was work and pensions secretary from 2010 to 2016, denied that he had been promised a job in return for taking a leading role in Mr Johnson’s campaign team.
He said: “I promise you I have only one ambition – I genuinely mean this – that Boris gets elected and Brexit is delivered and we destroy Corbynism. I have no ambition, I swear to God.”
The Tories could not afford to miss the deadline to leave the EU by Oct 31, after earlier dates of March 29 and April 12 came and went.
“If we fail one more time – as Boris has said – then the tsunami that hits us of anger from the British public will this time be irreparable,” he said.
Above all Mr Johnson would inject optimism into the country’s national conversation about Brexit.
“Boris is a great communicator. We need a great communicator. I promise you, I’ve gone out in the streets and people are dying for optimism, they’re dying for a sense of their country that isn’t negative, full of fear.
“It has been a terrible two and a half years – the worst two and a half to three years I can remember in British politics in 27 years – this idea that we fear the future.
“Roosevelt said, all those years ago, the only thing you fear is fear itself and we have been trapped by institutions who have inculcated this sense of fear.”
There were signs that the Civil Service – blamed by some Tory MPs for wanting to frustrate Brexit – is coming round to the idea.
He said: “They cry out for leadership ... I think the Civil Service will step up to that mark. No question, you will see it straight away.”
Mr Johnson had found his mojo on the campaign trail: “Boris on fire. Boris is in his element. This is Boris that the public wants to see. Optimistic, upbeat, direct, clear ... with purple prose.”
‘I have only one ambition: that Boris gets elected and Brexit is delivered and we destroy Corbynism’