A Tory party civil war would please no one more than Corbyn and his clique
To be in or out of Europe is only half the story. The Conservatives’ prime objective must be to keep Labour out of government
This is all beginning to come together, isn’t it? Chris Grayling, one of the most fervent and principled Eurosceptics on the Tory front bench, makes an ever-so-civilised declaration of his faith. While he could not, and will not, support our continued membership of the EU
under the present conditions, he is open to the possibility that reforms of those conditions might persuade him to change his position. And George Osborne, not to be outdone, says that he is a Eurosceptic too – but he will have to look at the reform package and make up his mind judiciously about whether to endorse it. (At which point, I have no doubt, he certainly will.)
What they both absolutely won’t do, and are adamant that no one else should either, is create irreparable damage to their party with the sort of thunderous threats and bloodcurdling acrimony which have been such a colourful feature of its recent past. Whatever the great renegotiation brings, Mr Grayling says, Tories with differing opinions must “treat each other’s views with respect and good grace”. That such a statement should be newsworthy might be a testament to just how much of a killer issue this has been for the Conservatives. But it is also about the politics of our time.
Why is it necessary for a senior minister of state to plead publicly with his colleagues for “grown-up politics”? You might think he was just helpfully repeating his leader’s warnings about the need for civility in the referendum campaign, so that the Tories will not tear themselves asunder. But his (and David Cameron’s) choice of words are cleverer and more important than that. All these pleas for maturity, tolerance and mutual respect make a pointed contrast to – what? Why, the frantic bloodletting in which Her Majesty’s Official Opposition is engaged, of course. For the Tories there is not just a self-serving political advantage (although there is that, too) in looking like the Sane Party, who can disagree with each other without mayhem, but there is a wider case they can make about the uses of political debate.
Arguably, what Labour is currently doing to itself, to Left-liberal politics generally, and to the basic principles of the parliamentary system, is as serious a threat to our democratic arrangements as is membership of the EU. It is effectively dismantling the concept of the opposition party in Parliament as an alternative government, and it is doing this quite consciously. It sees its function not as a potential governing party which must present a feasible set of policies for running the country, but as a vehicle for ideological purification. Its mission is to direct the forces of organised resistance to capitalism and Western imperialism, in any of their forms, through industrial action, protest in the street and the infiltration of national institutions.
Its leadership is dedicated to the cleansing of the party ranks in readiness for the great transformation of society – which, when it finally arrives, will owe almost nothing to parliamentary processes or to democratic mandates as we know them. This is what the CameronGrayling-Osborne pitch hints at when it calls so pointedly for statesmanlike decency in the Conservatives’ behaviour. It would not just be catastrophic to its own interests for the party to implode over Europe: it would be utterly irresponsible in terms of the country’s interests.
Mr Grayling put it bluntly enough in his Telegraph article last week: “Britain today has the most Left-wing and extreme opposition… We cannot and must not let them anywhere near power.” That warning is reiterated in almost identical words on our pages today by Nick Herbert, who will be heading the new Conservatives for Reform in Europe group: “We need to prevent the most Left-wing Labour leader most of us have seen… from ever gaining office.”
And that, I must say, is very close to my own view on this. I personally will be outraged if the Tory sceptics, however sincere and substantive I believe their opinions to be, create such chaos in their own ranks that a Corbynista Labour government (or, God help us, a Labour-SNP coalition) becomes a real possibility. This situation is simply too dangerous to be contemplated. If this is the proposed Downing Street plan, then it is the opposite of what Cameron’s people are usually accused of: rather than being made complacent by the uselessness of the Labour opposition, they are talking up the authentic risk which its apparent irrelevance conceals.
Labour may be no threat in electoral terms, but it is not in the electionwinning business. It is engaged in the much more fundamental task of making elections irrelevant.
Shocking as it may be to have to admit this, I am almost beyond the point of weighing up the arguments for and against membership of the EU. The issue has now been overtaken in my mind (for whatever that’s worth) by the terrifying prospect of a purblind, vindictive, retrogressive political clique gaining national power by default. To some extent, this insouciance is rooted in my belief that the EU, as it is presently constructed, is doomed anyway. Its structure and self-imposed mission are simply unsustainable both in economic and political terms. The world has changed so much around it – and its own constituent parts have undergone such unexpected shifts – as to make the original “project”, to which it adheres with dogmatic obtuseness, obviously hopeless.
So the choice is between staying aboard an alarmingly listing ship – where you might at least be a voice on the bridge – or being in a small lifeboat caught in the whirlpool as the great liner goes down. Not a happy choice, I agree. But the unity and coherence of the Conservative Party is now essential to our having any sensible choices at all about the future. Strangely, this may turn out to be Jeremy Corbyn’s greatest contribution to British public life: he saved the Tories from another disastrous internal war.
Under most circumstances it should not be necessary for modern parties, when they are addressing educated electorates, to speak with one voice in eerie concord – not even to support an embattled leader with a small majority. Führerprinzip doesn’t have much to recommend it in an open society. But these are not ordinary times. The opposition is not playing by democratic rules: all the evidence is that they hold such rules in contempt. If the Tories sink into internecine factional dispute, too, then the voters will be cut right out of the arguments which monopolise political discourse. They are already becoming spectators in what seems to be a game for and about introspective obsessions. If this goes on, they will be disenfranchised in the true sense.
All the important, contentious debates will be taking place within parties instead of between them, which means the electorate has no power at all, their only hold over the governing class being through their votes for one party over another. Those of us who are inclined to attack the EU criticise it for being a conspiracy of Big Government and Big Corporate Business against the people. The cosy compact that looks to be coalescing around the Cameron renegotiation now includes Jean-Claude Juncker – who has declared himself “quite sure” that a “permanent solution” to the UK problem can be found by February. Yes, it all sounds too good to be true but so are all the EU’s solutions which are never permanent and never solve anything.
The actual choice is between domestic political chaos which will provide an open door to the most openly anti-democratic mob in our own recent history, or playing some role in the managed decline of a failing European arrangement. Somehow in the making of this decision, we have to ensure that the people do not come to believe that it has nothing to do with them.