Cameron’s dirty tricks could be his downfall
Let us remember that Friday morning, after the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, when the Prime Minister addressed the nation from Downing Street. Despite a clear margin of victory – 55 to 45 per cent – he still felt the need to appease, bribe, and propitiate the Scots, lest the 45 per cent who had voted “leave”, turned restive. Despite being offered more powers – including fiscal ones – the Scots did indeed rebel. At the general election seven months later they returned 56 SNP MPs out of 59; opinion polls showed a majority wanting to leave the UK; and the SNP is predicted to continue its advance and demolish Labour in the Scottish elections next week.
Recalling this, some Tory MPs wonder what Mr Cameron will do if, after June 23, he has deceived the public sufficiently to have them vote to stay in the EU, but by less than the 10 point margin that provoked concessions to the Scots. His management of his party so far has been abominable. Given the vast majority of Tory activists want to leave, and most of his MPs feel that way either overtly or covertly, how would he hold the party together after, say, a 51-49 victory? The country would be angry and divided enough, but his party might prove unmanageable.
If we vote to Leave, we’re out: a change is a change. But if a slim majority endorses the status quo matters will be fractious. What could Mr Cameron offer a massive minority of disaffected people in those circumstances – a group for whose views and intelligence he shows nothing but contempt? I have heard suggestions that Michael Gove should be made deputy prime minister: I’ll second that, but it would buy the silence only of Mr Gove and those of his friends who would benefit from his deserved promotion. Millions of others, Tory supporters or not, would not give a stuff.
The impotence of Mr Cameron to do anything else brings us back to the reality of why we must leave the EU. In September 2014 he could offer things to the Scots to make them feel better about the Union. But because the EU controls Mr Cameron and the United Kingdom, rather than the other way round, there is nothing he can offer the 49 per cent – or whatever the high number for the minority would be – to make them feel better about deciding to remain a client of Brussels.
He can’t promise to restrict immigration from the EU, which is what people most want. He can’t realistically promise to cut our £350 million a week membership fee (£276 million after the rebate). He can’t even promise that the “deal” he got in February will be implemented, because our partners may still decide to chuck it out once we have voted. And he certainly can’t promise that other intrusions into UK sovereignty won’t happen – once we have voted to stay in we would have to take the EU on its terms, and not the reverse.
Managing a country with such high levels of disillusion will be made worse by having to hold together his party. A very senior and thoughtful Tory MP told me last week of his annoyance that the BBC was gleefully reporting a “civil war” in his party because of the penetrating critique Mr Gove unleashed against the worthless Treasury document predicting economic ruin if we left the EU. He was right: the party is, for the most part, rubbing along together, and maintaining the civilities normal between colleagues.
How long that will continue if the Prime Minister carries on using public funds to sanction a torrent of lies, exaggeration, distortions and “forecasts” based on apocalyptic assumptions I do not know: patience is wearing thin. The whips’ office is not what it used to be and younger backbenchers are increasingly freelance and immune to threats. After a narrow defeat for the Leave campaign things could easily turn ugly, and scores will be settled. From his win-at-all-costs behaviour, Mr Cameron seems to be taking none of this into account. Perhaps he prides himself on being ruthless; he is in fact being rather stupid.
Some Tories feel they have the unique luxury of vigorous internecine argument because Labour is in such a mess. As things stand, it has no chance of winning a general election. It contrasts with what a pro-EU Labour MP told me last week, that the silver lining in the cloud of a Leave vote would be that Mr Corbyn would be removed for his failure of leadership: which would be more bad news for the Tories, even if Mr Cameron is no longer leading them.
There is a way of conducting this campaign without leaving a legacy of mutual loathing in the Tory party, but the student union politicians in charge seem not to have grasped what it is. This could prove exceptionally unfortunate given the realities of life in the EU. Greece is on the verge of sparking another euro crisis; the Italian economy is in a mess; Mrs Merkel is haemorrhaging support in Germany; a new wave of the immigration crisis is under way in the Mediterranean. More chaos in the EU could leave an increasingly isolated Mr Cameron looking foolish, given what he has said about the glories of the union.
I hope it won’t come to that; I hope our people, who do not take kindly to being bullied, or deceived, or manipulated, or told what to do by foreigners such as the third-rate president of the United States and a crowd of Goldman Sachs alumni from the US Treasury, will follow what are clearly their instincts and vote to leave the EU. The disgusting cynicism of Mr Obama’s intervention was proven by his language: in fatuously threatening to send us to the “back of the queue” he uttered a word unknown in the American vernacular. Clearly he was reading from a script prepared by Downing Street, and should be ignored accordingly. But Mr Cameron should be in no doubt that such tactics could make even victory a curse.