Lightning-speed exits and lies over Brexit
ILIKE the way the British do their politics. Obviously there’s the obligatory backstabbing, plotting and pillow talk in private, but it almost always has a clear and rapid public consequence. Prime Minister David Cameron lost the referendum he called last week to affirm Britain’s membership of the EU and resigned the very next morning. That’s how you do it. Cameron had calculated poorly. He would win the referendum, unify the Tory party and bury the Conservative spinoff, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which had been eating away at Tory support with a far-right position on immigration.
He reckoned without close colleagues dumping him and campaigning to leave the EU, the so-called Brexit. One of those was a former journalist, Boris Johnson. Educated in the classics, friendly and cheerful, Johnson is always good company, able to reference anything from Ottoman Constantinople to a senate debate in ancient Rome to make a point.
But Tory politics is ruthless. Back in 2001, when Labour held power and the Conservatives tried a string of leaders, Johnson himself wrote that “the Tory party is a vast organism animated by a few vague common principles such as tradition and love of country, and above all by the pursuit and retention of power.” He was reminded of this yesterday.
Johnson’s own calculation was cynical enough. Once Cameron had called the EU referendum, Johnson, who had never really held strong views about leaving, decided he would lead the Leave (Brexit) campaign and, if he succeeded, Cameron would go and he would become prime minister.
Things didn’t turn out quite that way. At breakfast yesterday the plan was intact. By lunchtime he was gone, shafted spectacularly by his partner in the Brexit campaign, Justice Secretary and former education secretary Michael Gove.
Gove’s, and not Johnson’s, name appeared along with four others on a party leadership election list from which Tory MPs will select two for the membership to vote on. The winner also becomes prime minister.
This looks like tickets for Johnson. Gove said he felt he had no option but to put his hat in the ring because Johnson couldn’t be trusted to cope with the complexities of the top job. Cruel stuff. There’s little doubt Gove, a shifty operator, knew what he was going to do all along.
Worse though was the judgment handed down yesterday on Johnson by Michael Heseltine, arguably the grandest Tory still breathing: “I have never seen anything like it,” said Heseltine. “He’s ripped the Tory party apart, he has created the greatest constitutional crisis in peacetime in my life. He has knocked billions off the value of the savings of the British people. He’s like a general who marches his army to the sound of the guns, and the moment he sees the battleground he abandons it.”
Gove now wears the Johnson mantle and will carry blame for the crisis Brexit has unleashed. He was the guy who dismissed expert warnings of this, saying “people in this country have had enough of experts”.
The country will in a few short weeks feel the tangible effects of a collapsing currency and job cuts as employers head for locations more safely inside the single market. Recession seems inevitable.
So Cameron’s calculation that if he resigned quickly he would put Johnson under pressure worked.
The Brexit camp admits it had no plan for what would happen if it won, which transfers the Johnson pressure to Gove. He is more experienced but will still have to own the mess.
Brexit has left the leading parties in Britain tearing themselves apart. Labour is in a terrible state, so it is the Tory battle that matters. Remember, millions of Britons didn’t bother to vote last Thursday, but now that the result has hit them in their pockets they are suddenly all paying attention.
Enter Theresa May, the home secretary, immigration and security hawk, as the candidate to beat. Early polls suggested this week that she would upend even Johnson. She’s played a smart game. She formally declared herself against Brexit and then all but vanished from the campaign. In other words, she said nothing foolish or compromising.
May is just as tough and nasty as Margaret Thatcher. And among Tory, Labour and Liberal voters, she’s more popular than Johnson or Gove. Key to the Tory party election is which of Gove or May would win an early general election should one be needed for a mandate to plan and negotiate the withdrawal from the EU.
Gove must surely be damaged by the damage Brexit has unleashed. Few people treasure the value of their currency more than the shire Tories who voted for a Brexit.
May might not have backed the Leave campaign, but she is reassuringly cold and distant, and she isn’t damaged at all. And she told no lies.
Politics is the same everywhere. You play your hand and you take the consequence. I hope our high commission in London has May’s phone number. She will be Britain’s next prime minister.