SIMON HEFFER
Cabinet ministers fighting from within for a better deal have shredded their credibility
They are not just torpedoing their reputations, but degrading the integrity of Cabinet government
Thirty years ago, I interviewed Lord Home on his 85th birthday. Despite his having been prime minister and foreign secretary, and coming from one of the grandest families in the kingdom, he had no trace of ego or grandeur. It was, therefore, with great reluctance that I asked this profoundly decent man whether he regretted serving, half a century earlier, as Neville Chamberlain’s parliamentary private secretary, because of his part in appeasement.
Firmly, he said Chamberlain appeased Hitler because Britain could not have fought Germany in 1938; the 11 months’ breathing space the Munich agreement bought allowed the development of the Spitfire, the beefing up of the Royal Navy and preparation of the Territorial Army.
In decades to come, should anyone interview the self-proclaimed Brexiteers in today’s Cabinet about their recent conduct, swallowing a contemptible “deal” that utterly betrays the result of the 2016 referendum, how would they explain themselves? To what end have they bought time? The spin is that five – Messrs Gove, Fox and Grayling, Ms Mordaunt and Mrs Leadsom – plan to fight from within to secure a deal better than the present abomination. What planet are they on?
The Prime Minister has asserted that it is this deal, or no deal, or no Brexit (the last option bizarre, given the binding vote of June 2016). According to Mr Gove, the non-resigners’ high priest, they seek “the best future for Britain… It’s absolutely vital that we focus on getting the right deal in the future.” But since he was told, when refusing the job of Brexit secretary after Dominic Raab left, that he could not renegotiate the “deal” Mrs May’s officials have ordered her to take, one wonders what, or when, that future is where Mr Gove gets “the right deal”.
The Fatuous Five have become complicit in the Prime Minister’s baffling bouquet of delusions.
If sincere in their aims – if this is not simply about their mostly unimpressive careers – they should watch her lips more closely. The loss of face contingent on Mrs May changing her mind would destroy her. It would alienate the European Commission, which remains in discussions only on account of our complete obedience to its proposals. More to the point, she has been entirely captured by civil servants, who run the process and have been determined since the referendum that, if we really have to leave, it will be in name only.
Politics is about perception, and the five should be aware how those on whose votes they rely perceive their complicity in Mrs May’s capitulation. There is an unattractive mentality in politics – and it has led to politicians generally being held in the lowest regard since the sloth and bribery days before the 1832 Reform Act – where blind loyalty to the party line, however dishonest or obtuse, is believed to trump all other considerations. The notion of a higher ideal – the true national interest, which in our polity must embrace respect for the democratic process – is dismissed as self-indulgent. Thus a gulf opens between politicians and those they claim to represent, which drags politicians into ever greater contempt.
People such as Esther McVey and Dominic Raab, who understand their true responsibility towards the voters, and their own consciences, redeem their profession. However, they are outnumbered by those for whom ministerial career is everything: people for whom the concept of having a mind of their own, let alone genuine principles, could never be even an aspiration. They are not leaders; they are managers, managing above all their own self-regard. Their status dominates their idea of themselves
– the chauffeur-driven car, the entourage, the extra salary.
They lack what Don Regan, who before becoming Ronald Reagan’s treasury secretary and chief of staff had been CEO of Merrill Lynch, so aptly called “f--- off money”. Without their Cabinet jobs they are nothing, and could expect to be nothing in perpetuity.
Mr Gove, a genuinely able minister, could have killed the deal stone dead by resigning, for Mrs May could not have survived his departure. Dr Fox should recognise he is a Trade Secretary unlikely ever to conclude a trade deal, given the customs union straitjacket to which Mrs May wishes to condemn us after next March. Ms Mordaunt cannot continue to imagine she will secure a free vote on the “deal” by staying in the cabinet: Brandon Lewis, the chairman of her party, has ruled it out on national television. That Mrs Leadsom and Mr Grayling support a plan contrary to every principle they claim to hold should surprise no one who has followed what passes for their careers.
Whether these people are foolish, hypocritical or craven is for them to decide. Principled Brexiteers do not regard them as having put their country before their egos. They seem to have shredded their long-term credibility simply to avoid a confrontation. They are not just torpedoing their reputations, but degrading the integrity of Cabinet government; and deepening a division in their party which, as after all civil wars, will take generations to heal.