Tories must commit to Leave to survive

In one way, nothing has changed. Brexit is no nearer to being delivered, the Conservative Government is holed below the waterline, Labour is in a mess, and the country remains split down the middle on the central issue of our times. Yet in reality, everything has changed. The elections to the European Parliament that were never supposed to happen delivered an outcome many had expected and, indeed, predicted; but it was no less a traumatic moment for all that.

For the party of government to secure less than 10 per cent of the popular vote in a national election is more than extraordinary; it is epochal. Conceivably, there might be no way back for the Conservatives. After nearly 200 years as the most successful political movement in the world, the next two months will determine whether they have a future or sink into oblivion.

The elections were almost as existential an event for Labour. The party fared marginally better than the Tories, coming third overall, behind the Brexit Party and the Lib Dems, with just 14 per cent of the vote. But in areas where its writ once ran unchallenged, like Scotland, Wales and the North, Labour is becoming an irrelevance. In this new political world, where the question is whether you are a Leaver or a Remainer, “constructive ambiguity” has no takers; and why should it?

Nigel Farage had a straightforward, democratic message. There was a referendum, Brexit won and yet our two established main parties are failing to deliver it. The Lib Dems were similarly forthright: the country may have voted to leave, but they think the voters were wrong to do so and want to overturn the decision. This is an undemocratic approach, but it does have traction among millions of people who voted to stay in the EU. The Lib Dems came top in London, which was the only English region to vote Remain in 2016.

A good deal of that Lib Dem support came from disgruntled Labour voters who favour staying in the EU, as does the bulk of the party’s membership. So where does Labour go? It cannot possibly stand toe-to-toe with the Brexit Party in the North and North West arguing that it has a better claim to the support of Leavers. Equally, it is going to lose its southern, Islington-socialist voters to the Lib Dems.

Sensing this, senior shadow cabinet members like Tom Watson, Emily Thornberry and Sir Keir Starmer will use these elections to force a Remain policy on to the leadership. If Jeremy Corbyn blocks this change, he may soon go the same way as Theresa May, though he may be able to count on the trade unions for protection.

But what of the Conservatives? They are now engaged in a leadership battle whose outcome is about more than the personality who will take over; it will determine the very existence of the party. In an overcrowded field of candidates, with Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, the latest to declare, there are no more than two or three, if that, who could even begin to take on the challenge.

There is only one clear route to survival and that is for the Conservatives to be unequivocally the party of Leave. They will inevitably lose support from Remain-supporting Tories, but both main parties have now discovered, to their great cost, that trying to find a middle path through this quagmire has proved pointless.

The dilemma the Conservatives face, however, is that if they do pick an out-and-out Leaver, one ready to quit on October 31 without a deal, then they will trigger a general election that they are ill-equipped to fight at present.

Mr Farage and his Brexit Party have performed the remarkable feat of springing from nowhere to winners in the space of six weeks. They are preparing to contest a general election that may well happen by the autumn. The Tories need to find a way to embrace both him and the phenomenon he has unleashed or they are doomed. Promising to tweak the Withdrawal Agreement here or there is not going to work; nor is further equivocation over leaving without a deal.

You do not have to look far to see what can happen to mainstream, established parties that lose touch with the people. In France, the old Left/ Right dispensation has been utterly smashed by Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche and Marine Le Pen’s Front National. In Italy, the League and the Five Star Movement have eclipsed the old parties. The same could happen here.