Charles Moore:
It has at last dawned on the party’s MPS that a Leaver is best placed to do the job and keep Corbyn out
Ican remember learning to read. I found the process slow and painful. It took so long to work out simple sentences, saying words syllable by syllable – “Farmer Dan has a trac-tor” etc – before I could piece them together. And then, after a seeming eternity, it suddenly became easy. The words’ meaning leapt from the page, and I was away.
For three years this coming Sunday, the majority of our political and media classes have been agonisingly slow in learning how to read referendum democracy. They could not or would not see that if you invite people to decide something important and they do so, in the largest vote on anything ever in this country, you must sincerely enact their decision. Even though Parliament passed Article 50 and the Withdrawal Act, both of which make leaving without a deal the law of the land if all else fails, many MPS still refused to admit the consequences. They chose, assisted by the Speaker John Bercow, to destroy their own constitutional procedures in order to make their previous decisions invalid.
Perhaps I am being over-optimistic, but I sense that at least some of those involved are now graduating from the reception class and beginning to read democracy more fluently. On Wednesday, despite strong BBC predictions to the contrary, the House of Commons voted against the latest Bercow-sponsored parliamentary wheeze to frustrate no deal. Commenting afterwards, its biggest brainbox, Sir Oliver Letwin, had the good grace to admit that he couldn’t think what to do next.
Slowly, slowly, the logic of the referendum is coming through. Once Theresa May dropped her fourth attempt to shove her deal through the Commons and was forced to depart, the era of delusion drew to its close.
Now that it has called a leadership election, the Conservative Party is rediscovering its famous survival instinct. After the Brexit Party’s result in the European elections, it has become obvious to all but the most refined and highly educated minds that the Tories will make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister by Christmas if they do not deliver Brexit. So they seem to be deciding to follow democratic logic. That logic, like it or not, is Boris Johnson.
It goes like this. Along with Michael Gove (and some brave lesser figures), Boris risked a conventional political career to campaign for Leave. Even more than Mr Gove’s, his participation ensured victory. Logic dictated that he stand for the vacancy created by David Cameron’s resignation; but then, in a decision which was a quarter comprehensible and three-quarters mad, Mr Gove denounced him at the last minute. Boris withdrew.
Thwarted, Boris took the Foreign Office, a job for which Mrs May set him up to fail, cutting him out of the Brexit negotiations. Fail he duly did. And when at last the trap of the “Chequers plan” which Mrs May had set for herself and her country became apparent, Boris resigned. Although he wobbled a bit, he was essentially consistent and clear. By contrast, Mr Gove, who did not resign, became inconsistent and ever harder to understand.
Now the logic tightens. If referendum democracy dictates we must leave, it also suggests that we can leave best when led by people who actually want to do so. You sometimes hear it said that the Leave campaign’s referendum “pledges” have been broken. This cannot be true, because the Leave campaign has never had the power to implement what it called for. Even to this day, we are run by a Remain-dominated Government, and so it does not know how to frame Leave measures. When Mrs May became prime minister many, myself reluctantly included, thought that a prime minister who could accomplish Leave having previously supported Remain would be a unifying figure. Mrs May proved this wrong: Brexit is so tough to fight for against relentless elite and civil service resistance that only a believer can achieve it.
Boris does believe in Brexit. In this, he is not alone among the candidates, of course. But being pro-leave is a necessary, not a sufficient condition for entering No 10. Dominic Raab is a man of high intelligence and commitment to the Brexit cause, but it does not follow that he is also the right leader. One sees him as the man to master the detail rather than to sweep the country. None of the other would-be leaders left in the race seems truly to want Brexit. So none can do the job.
The result of Thursday’s first ballot in the leadership election was actually pretty remarkable. Six months ago, Boris was written off in virulent terms. It was said that “Anyone But Boris” was by far the strongest candidate in the parliamentary party. Now 114 MPS – more than two and a half times as many as support his nearest rival, Jeremy Hunt – have backed Mr Johnson after all. Perhaps they were just having a blond moment, but it looks more like a real change of heart.
Better still – since we are in the wicked world of politics – backing Boris now feels like a careerist calculation. With slightly menacing encouragement from Gavin Williamson, Johnson’s de facto chief whip, scores of MPS are starting to work out which side their bread is buttered. Boris is literally the only candidate who has personally won millions of votes (twice, when Mayor of London) and he has led by far the greatest anti-establishment vote in any British referendum ever. Mightn’t it be just possible that if he led the Tory party, it might win a general election – something it has only once unambiguously achieved since 1992?
After the utter misery of being led to near-defeat by Mrs May in 2017 and then, if you were unlucky enough to serve under her, finding yourself sacked (Mr Williamson’s fate, for example), it must feel lovely to have Boris’s recent friends flattering you. The hunt is on for the political equivalent of “rice Christians”, the converts of convenience. There are plenty of them lurking in the Conservative parliamentary party, and Boris is scooping them up in large numbers. It is his campaign’s one and only mark of hubris so far that he has decided to risk the BBC television debate on Tuesday. Why on earth should he enter an arena in which every man is against him when his time is more profitably spent in one-on-one discussions with MPS about the bright future he can offer each of them?
Almost everything could still go wrong. That risk is inherent in the volatility of current politics and the character of the lead candidate. But politics have been so volatile for so long, not solely because of the tight parliamentary numbers but also because of the dispiriting lack of direction. This has driven MPS almost literally mad. Now it is changing.
As for the character of Boris Johnson, he has often proved his capacity for error. But his capacity for recovery is considerably more remarkable. Having worked with him – and sometimes tried, and failed, to exercise authority over him – on and off for 30 years, I can attest that there is nothing more unstoppable than the Boris bounce.
After the MPS have finished with him, he is expected to go to the arbitrament of the grass roots. Most party members learnt to read referendum democracy much earlier than their elected representatives. For them, what is happening could soon become the most stirring change in their favour since the general election of 1979.
READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion