Suez? This Conservative Party crisis is worse

Harold Macmillan was just the man to pick the Tories up after Eden. Who do they have now to replace May?

Within weeks of Harold Macmillan succeeding Anthony Eden as prime minister in January 1957 after the Suez debacle, Cabinet ministers were chortling to themselves over cocktails in their clubs that the party was back in business. What had all the fuss been about? It was as if Suez, which threatened at the time to blow the party out of the water, had been a mirage in the Arabian Desert.

Macmillan had in no time soothed frazzled nerves across the country and restored relations with international partners, including the United States, which had been at an all-time nadir when President Eisenhower, who had warned Britain sternly not to invade Egypt, then threatened serious damage to the British financial system by selling sterling bonds. The Conservatives went on to win a stonking landslide in the 1959 general election. Job done.

Optimists compare the current predicament in the Conservative Party to that time 60 years ago when it quickly recovered under its new leader. Surely David Davis or Boris Johnson will be able to perform the same miracle? Under fresh leadership, their argument goes, the party would quickly recover its vitality at home and abroad.

Dream on. The current state the Conservative Party is in is far, far worse than in 1956. On that occasion the prime minister, barely a year in office, made a remarkably poor error of judgment in invading Egypt, akin to that of Theresa May in calling the general election last month. But Eden’s errors, though more heinous, were far more quickly exorcised, because the party was united in its determination to put the Suez affair behind it. All key figures were in lock step under Eden’s experienced successor, who had proved himself as minister of defence, foreign secretary and chancellor of the exchequer.

Conservatives have indeed sipped too much prosecco if they think there is a leader-in-waiting of Macmillan’s stature, or if they think the party can unite as easily now as it did under him. We have to go back 100 years to see a time when the Conservative Party was in such disarray. Then the Conservative leader Austen Chamberlain favoured remaining in the Coalition Government led by the Liberal Lloyd George. But the party split in October 1922 after a fractious meeting at the Carlton Club.

The present position for the Conservative Party leadership is much worse. In the early 1920s the principal opposition party, the Liberals, were split down the middle, while Labour had yet to form a government. Now Labour is leading in the polls, it has the initiative and a charismatic leader in Jeremy Corbyn.

The problems dividing the Conservative Party, above all how to deal with Brexit and with austerity, will not magically go away under any new leader if Theresa May is replaced. They will only magnify. Any prospective new leader – Davis, Johnson or Hammond – is far more polarising on the cross-cutting issues than May herself. Unite the party they will not. As a result the Conservative Party has a serious risk of becoming a laughing stock, with three prime ministers within two years.

The inevitable conclusion is that May is the best bet, despite her shattering miscalculation over the general election and her widely criticised performance during the campaign. There is some sense in this. Some seven in 10 Conservatives, according to the latest polling from academic Tim Bale, think she should remain as leader. She is still respected for her integrity and values. Her new team at Number 10, including Robbie Gibb, director of communications; Gavin Barwell, chief of staff; and James Marshall, head of policy, are carving out an activist domestic agenda for the autumn and beyond.

Their determination is to let her own authentic voice ring out. They plan to put flesh on her words outside Downing Street on July 13 last year, when she spoke about her social mission and moral purpose as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

But will it work? The full horror for the Tory Party is that it will be deeply damaged if it turns over May and risks letting in Corbyn to No 10. Yet it is hardly certain that she can continue. She lacks the support of her would-be assassins, and she is still reeling from the election result, the worst trauma in her life apart from the loss of her parents. The party seems damned if it ditches her, and damned if it doesn’t. That is an excruciating dilemma for it – and particularly for a shy leader – to work out in an unrelenting spotlight on the national stage. Indeed it is unparalleled in modern times.

If the party is to flourish, it must recall the secret weapon that explained its dominance in the 20th century: loyalty to the leader, pragmatism in policy, and appeal across all social classes. Sadly, it is far from clear that senior Tories, whose understanding of history has rarely been so thin, comprehend what is at stake.

Macmillan, as his biographer DR Thorpe reminds us, thought Suez was a mere cul de sac without long-term consequences for the Conservative Party. The present predicament, by comparison, is a wide open motorway, leading nowhere fast.