The Conservative Party’s pro-Brexit libertarians have, once again, indulged in their favourite pastime of opposition cosplay. In this clown shoe shuffle, symptomatic of the obduracy of Steve Baker’s ERG/CRG, their actions are defined, as always, only by the things they do not want.
Libertarian influence within the Conservative Party
This is politics as wrecking ball: a vague yet angry demand for something different. It is the same unmoored approach that has led the UK to the brink of catastrophe in all manner of important policy areas over recent years, including Brexit, peace in Northern Ireland and the management of the pandemic. This grouping which, despite a variety of different names, always features the same usual suspects – Steve Baker, Andrew Bridgen, Mark Francois and Jacob Rees-Mogg – has already seen off two prime ministers and is about to do for a third.
Although Boris Johnson became one of them, in what was, admittedly, a rather late, self-serving conversion to their cause, he is now targeted for failing to use a big enough hammer to deal with the difficult problems our country faces. Ironic, perhaps, given Johnson’s own legendary lack of concern for detail. Whether it is reshaping longstanding alliances, trade agreements and even the bonds that hold our nation together, Baker and Co. only have two instructions: hit it harder; break it more.
This merry band of marauders have seen to it that Johnson is in government but not in power. He is a prime minister with an 80-seat majority, the leader of the supposed ‘natural party of government’, who is forced to beg for deals with a backbench generalissimo and his army of ill-informed goons.
Johnson is prime minister in name only
Johnson made a bargain with this faction to become party leader and, because of this, was fatally weakened from the moment he took office. Also, he foolishly (and somewhat petulantly) purged his party of experienced, moderate MPs. At his behest, people like Dominic Grieve made way for entryist drones in the mould of Baker and Bridgen. Setting aside Clegg’s decision to go into coalition with the Tories, or Cameron’s decision to call the EU referendum, this could count as one of the biggest political own goals in modern times.
As this group’s power has grown, its demands have become more extreme. They fear neither the whip’s office nor Number 10. They dance only to Baker’s tune – a party within a party, with its own divisive, off-book agenda. An ideological outpost from Trump’s America, they wrap themselves in the flag of the culture war and offer nothing but the siren call of bogus freedoms and a greatly diminished state.
And what a heady and terrifying offer it is: freedom from the protections afforded to the individual by the state, freedom from human rights, freedom from health care and welfare, and freedom from the very social institutions that underpin our society. Their agenda does not serve the ordinary voter, only those rich enough to be insulated from the chaos and misery it would unleash.
The parasitic elite who rule the country
In terms of UK national politics they are, as things stand, a small minority. However, within the Conservative Party, if we take the members of the Clean Global Brexit WhatsApp group as a guide, their numbers now represent just under a third of Tory MPs. A disproportionately large slice.
Like a parasite, this body within the body is eating the Conservative Party alive, hollowing it out and removing any impetus to govern positively. The party of Disraeli, Churchill, Macmillan and Thatcher is now almost nothing more than a twitching corpse, animated by the escaping gases of its own decomposing form. Any paternalistic impulses of the old One Nation party are all but gone, as is the business friendly, entrepreneurial spirit of Thatcherism.
Which is why Johnson, that mixed metaphor of a man, who is both populist and interventionist by instinct, but whose political destiny was tied to these libertarians by his decision to back Brexit, is doomed to be wrecked on the reef of his own ambition.
Winning an election on the most un-Conservative of platforms – of spending, investment and levelling up – Johnson simultaneously swelled his party’s benches with these venal, anti-progressive ideologues. People for whom, bizarrely, this entire agenda is an anathema.
Because of this Johnson straddles a political gulf of his own making, one that widens with each spending commitment, tax increase and covid measure. He now stands at the head of a makeshift organisation that is cobbled together and fatally flawed.
What does this mean for the future of the Tory party?
It remains to be seen what damage this will do to his party in the longer term, but the damage it is doing to the country is plain to see. It appears there is neither the will nor the means within the Tory party to pull themselves back from the brink. However, as long as they remain in power things will continue to get worse for us all.
Governing with all the poise of a test match streaker, Johnson is now on borrowed time: a prime minister serving at the pleasure of Baker and his gang. What comes next is anybody’s guess, but it is unlikely to be pretty or fun. Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, and anyone else currently manoeuvring to become the fourth Conservative leader in ten years, will have to get to grips with this problem sooner or later.
Perhaps a long spell on the real opposition benches would help to focus their minds?
