The Tories are transforming into a party of populist nationalism

Theresa May’s decision to work with Labour will hasten the transition

BritainApr 4th 2019 edition



The hard-core Brexiteers have nobody to blame but themselves. Mrs May did everything in her power to give them what they wanted, from “red lines” on Brexit to seats at the cabinet table. But they behaved like ravening crocodiles who, having consumed an arm, immediately demanded a leg for dessert. Reasonable people would moderate their demands when they are confronted with intractable problems such as a hung parliament and a sensitive border. The Brexiteers flew into a rage. Steve Baker told fellow members of the European Research Group that “I could tear this place down and bulldoze it into the river”—referring to the House of Commons. Mark Francois announced on the radio that his message to his own chancellor, Philip Hammond, was “up yours”. The result of this foaming intransigence was that Mrs May had no choice but to look elsewhere for compromise. A woman who has devoted her life to the Conservative Party—who stuffed envelopes as a teenager and who met her husband at a meeting of the Oxford University Conservative Association—found it easier to deal with a crypto-communist than with the fanatics in her own party.

Does this mean that the headbangers have finally had their day? They are undoubtedly at risk of losing the Brexit war. The chances of a no-deal Brexit fell on Tuesday while the chances of a softer one rose. But that does not mean that they have lost the battle for the future of the Conservative Party. The prime minister, who has said that she plans to resign once Britain has formally left the EU, may have given them just the stab-in-the-back myth that they need to complete their long coup.

The Brexiteers have numbers on their side. The Tory left’s recent attempts to revive “compassionate conservatism” merely advertise its weakness. The group only has 40 members and its figurehead, Amber Rudd, sits on a majority of fewer than 400 in her constituency of Hastings and Rye. By contrast more than 170 Tory MPs wrote to Mrs May demanding that Britain should leave the EU on April 12th, deal or no-deal, as is the current legal default. The numbers are even more lopsided in the constituencies: more than 70% of Tory party members support a no-deal Brexit. MPs who have peddled a softer line on Brexit, such as Sir Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve, have faced deselection threats from their local parties. Nick Boles, who dramatically resigned from his party on the floor of the House of Commons on Monday, had already resigned from his local association.

The Brexiteers also have passion on their side. It is easy to mock MPs such as Mr Baker, who told a TV interviewer that “everyone knows I’m Brexit hard man Steve Baker”, or Mr Francois, who barrels around the House of Commons like a character out of “Dad’s Army”, but the country is full of people like this. The Brexiteers after all have a powerful argument on their side: the British people voted to leave the EU in what they were told was a definitive referendum and yet Mrs May continues to delay the date for leaving as well as softening the terms. They also have a powerful ideology, one that is contemptuous of metropolitan elites, suspicious of hoity-toity institutions and proud of British national identity.

He found himself changed into a monstrous pest

All of which means that competing theories about what is happening to Britain’s ruling party—that it is undergoing a process of collective nervous breakdown; that it is splitting asunder; or that it is being misled by UKIP infiltrators—are wrong. The truth is more dramatic than this. The party that was once the instrument of the British establishment is in the process of metamorphosing into a full-scale nationalist-populist party. That may involve a certain amount of splintering as the likes of Mr Boles decide that they cannot stand it any longer, but that is rather different from a split down the middle.

The 2016 referendum provided the trigger for this metamorphosis by allowing the Brexiteers to claim that they represented “the will of the people”. The post-referendum traumas hastened the transformation by confronting the will of the people with innumerable practical difficulties, from the opposition of Remainers to the cunning of the Eurocrats. Mrs May’s offer to work with Mr Corbyn has now provided the creature with the perfect growth hormone: the idea that Brexit has been betrayed by a Remainer prime minister who preferred to work with a Marxist leader of the opposition than with true-blue Tories.

Mrs May’s decision to sit down with Mr Corbyn is undoubtedly a welcome move in the short term because it is the only way to break the Brexit logjam. But in the longer term it will make it more likely that Britain’s political system will continue down the road to disaster—and that in the next election the country will be faced with a choice between a populist left championing the “many” against the “few” and a nationalist right championing ordinary people against cosmopolitan elites.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "The Tories are transforming into a party of populist nationalism"

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