A country on the rack of Tory Brexitism

It has become increasingly difficult to separate out Brexit as a topic from British politics generally, and the politics of the Conservative Party in particular. That has been true for a while, but brought home with force this week with yet another outbreak of the Tories’ long-running civil war. It is a war in which Brexit features as both cause and consequence and, whilst it may have begun with a relatively genteel skirmish between ‘Eurosceptics’ and ‘Europhiles’ in the Tory Party, it has now become a full-blown culture war which has spread way beyond the party, or even Westminster politics.

This has not happened suddenly. It began to emerge early in the Brexit process, and by October 2017 I was writing that Brexit was “becoming a battle for Britain’s political soul”. At that time, that may have seemed like hyperbole, or at least pessimism. Seven years later, it seems almost a truism.

Enter Cameron

It’s a cliché that a week is a long time in politics, but Monday’s announcement of the bizarre resurrection to political office of David Cameron already seems like a distant memory. But it’s still worth dwelling on for a moment. Just from a Brexit point of view, his is a name to conjure with in that, almost uniquely, he is likely to be despised by those holding almost any position on Brexit. Even those not much interested or exercised about it may well resent him for creating this enormous and de-stabilizing storm and then washing his hands of it, with a seemingly insouciant song on his lips as he resigned. For remainers, he is the man who with total irresponsibility gambled and lost the country’s well-being in a miscalculated act of party management. Meanwhile, for leavers, any lingering gratitude they may have to him for having gifted them the referendum is superseded by the fact that he campaigned for remain.

But for hard core Tory Brexiters, the loathing of Cameron goes far deeper than that. Even before the referendum, many of them regarded him as ‘not being a real Conservative’, meaning too socially liberal, too green, too metropolitan, too globalist. Before Brexit, that was still perhaps a relatively marginal view, but the Conservative Party now is very different even to that of 2015 or even 2017. Brexit saw most of the more centrist and socially liberal Tory MPs expunged or marginalized, and Brexit itself has now morphed from just being about leaving the EU into Brexitism or Brexitist populism.*

That is not simply about moving from Brexit to a wider right-wing agenda. As their pet political scientist Matt Goodwin illustrated this week, the Brexitists want to claim that the referendum was not just a vote to leave the EU but a vote to permanently end what he calls ‘Liberal Centrist Dad politics’. Absurd as this claim is – that wasn’t the question asked, so it can’t be claimed to be what the answer meant – it is important to understand how widespread it is. Thus similar claims this week were made by populist commentator Isabel Oakeshott and by Miriam Cates, co-Chair of the ‘New Conservatives’ group of Tory MPs. It enables Brexitists to dishonestly pretend that the referendum gave them a democratic licence for far more than leaving the EU. So they use it as if it were a permanent majority for their entire ideology, even though, as the last seven years have made clear, it was not even a permanent majority for Brexit, and was never a majority for any particular form of Brexit.

Exit Braverman

Precisely the same ‘logic’ was on display in Suella Braverman’s letter to Rishi Sunak, following her sacking. Amidst her wider diatribe, she too claimed that a whole swathe of policies she has advocated “are what people voted for in the 2016 Brexit Referendum”. In this, as in much else, Braverman, former ERG Chair and a leading light amongst the National Conservative (NatCon) group, epitomizes Brexitism. She does so with such crudity, venom and extremism that, eventually and belatedly, Sunak could no longer ignore it.

There’s a danger of becoming inured to the shocking growth of extremism in mainstream Conservative politics since 2016, an extremism ranging from the denunciation of judges as ‘enemies of the people’, through the unlawful prorogation of parliament, to a British cabinet minister openly stating in the House of Commons that he proposed to break international law, something which, as Attorney General, Braverman endorsed. So it is worth recording just how extreme her conduct became last week.

In brief, what we saw was a Home Secretary smearing Pro-Palestine demonstrations in their entirety as ‘hate marches’; attempting, against constitutional convention, to pressurize the police into banning their demonstration; suggesting that the police were unfairly biased against far-right demonstrators; and giving rise to at least the suspicion she might want the march to be violent in order to show that she had been right about it and right about her more general thesis that ‘multi-culturalism has failed. At the same time, she at least dog-whistled to far-right demonstrators to take to the streets.

It was a dog-whistle which was heard, with the consequence that far-right thugs despoiled the Armistice Day events that Braverman had falsely claimed the Pro-Palestine march threatened, unleashing what the Metropolitan Police called “extreme violence” against them. As the former Tory MP Dominic Grieve said, “it's impossible to escape the conclusion that some of that [violence] was fuelled by the rhetoric and the incitement of the Home Secretary Suella Braverman.” Grieve, also a lawyer and a former Attorney General, albeit of a very different stamp to Braverman, is hardly a man given to injudicious remarks. So for him to have used the word ‘incitement’ in this context is little short of remarkable.

It is true that, although most of the violence came from the far-right, some of the Pro-Palestine marchers were also violent. It should also be said that some of the marchers used antisemitic slogans and chants that are utterly indefensible. It simply isn’t enough to say that these are being ‘misinterpreted’ when everyone must now know that (to take the main, specific, case) ‘from the river, to the sea’ is open to multiple interpretations. It is a fact that to many Jewish people, including some who are our fellow-citizens, it inspires genuine fear. So to continue to use that chant is to choose to stoke that fear.

Yet neither of these things remotely justifies Braverman’s words and conduct, and in an atmosphere already so highly charged they were all the more disgraceful. It was certainly, so far as I know, unprecedented for a Home Secretary but, and this is a key point, what Braverman said was not a rogue or maverick opinion amongst NatCons. On the contrary, for many of them and their sympathisers what she said was no more than common sense and, at worst, her only fault was, in the words of David Frost (£), to “occasionally express herself imperfectly”.

Thuggish populists and populist thugs

Most crucially, and most dangerously of all, there is now effectively no difference between the kind of things the Brexitist populists say and those that the far-right ‘counter-protestors’ at the Cenotaph say. Indeed, there is even some evidence that that they share sources of funding. They are on the same side at very least to the extent that the English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson saying [offensive content warning] this week that Braverman had been “fired for telling the TRUTH”. Compare and, if possible, contrast with “Suella Braverman was sacked for being right”, the headline of a Telegraph article (£) by GB News presenter and one-time Brexit Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg.

It’s not just the same sentiment, but there is even a certain similarity between Rees-Mogg’s accusation that Sunak is too “effete” to care enough about immigration and Robinson’s cruder description of the Conservatives as “spineless cucks”. It’s not a coincidence. That same theme of affronted masculinity can be seen in former ERG Vice-Chair Andrea Jenkyns’ semi-literate letter of no confidence in Sunak, sent in response to Braverman’s sacking. In it, the MP who sits very much on the Brexitist or populist wing of the party, declared that Braverman had been “the only person in the cabinet with the balls to speak the truth”.

The populist politicians and the thugs certainly share the all too familiar anti-immigration and anti-liberal tropes, and at least versions of the ‘race replacement’ conspiracy theory. At this particular moment, they also share the opportunism of those who, in Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland’s words, “look at the war between Israel and Hamas, and the grief and fear it prompts in the hearts of Jews and Muslims, especially, and see not tragedy but opportunity – a chance to advance their own interests”. At least part of what, I assume, Freedland means is that we should hardly take it at face value when far-right bully boys and their allies claim to be shocked and appalled by antisemitic language and violence. Nor, for that matter, should we even begin to take seriously the idea that they were defending the ‘sacred monuments’ [offensive content warning] of the war dead, whose memory they in fact befoul.

Perhaps we should be relieved that, even gifted this moment of opportunity, the capacity of the far right to put much of a presence on the street proved quite limited. It seems they could only muster a few hundred yobs, and many of those were, apparently, addled by drink and drugs. They are frightening and intimidating, without question, but we are not – not yet, anyway – at the point of having uncontainable political street-violence.

What is more frightening is the possibility that they no longer need to exert such violence when their views, even if perhaps expressed more smoothly, and by men and women in smart clothes, are becoming so widely prevalent in the mainstream of politics and the media. Indeed sometimes, as with Tory Party Deputy Chairman and GB News presenter Lee Anderson’s “f*** off back to France” remark, even the expression is not notably different.

Reading Rishi Sunak

Given how high the stakes have now become, it is more important than ever to know where, exactly, Rishi Sunak stands. I’ve written at great length in the past about how Brexitism is eating Conservatism, including a post last February about the schism between Brexitists and Traditionalists and, more recently, after the Party’s October conference, about how Brexit has driven the Tories mad. Most of that analysis still stands, and is the context for these latest developments. In that context, a widely-expressed interpretation of Sunak appointing Cameron and sacking Braverman was that he was throwing his weight behind traditionalism, or ‘centrism,’ and against Brexitist populism. That is how many commentators saw it (£) and, perhaps more significantly, how the Brexitists in the Tory Party and in the Reform Party continue to understand it.

Even before the week’s later events, I felt that this was a questionable reading. Sunak came to power on the basis of being competent and offering stability after the Truss meltdown, and he has sometimes kept to that script. That’s especially so as regards Brexit, where agreeing the Windsor Framework and effectively dropping the scrapping of Retained EU Law were pragmatic, sensible steps which, of course, infuriated the Brexiters. The same goes for re-joining Horizon, effectively scrapping UKCA marking, and other decisions. However, he has consistently been inconsistent, if that is not a contradiction in terms, in that in other ways, especially in his prioritization of ‘stopping the boats’ and his de-prioritization of net-zero policies, he has embraced Brexitist populism.

He seems especially prone to doing so when under pressure, most obviously when, during his original, failed leadership campaign, he promised an even speedier shredding of Retained EU Law than Truss was proposing. And it shouldn’t be forgotten that, when Braverman was fulminating against the police last week, Sunak was, if more squeakily, singing a similar tune in his veiled threat to hold the Metropolitan Police Commissioner ‘accountable’ for any trouble if the Palestine march was allowed to go ahead. Not should it be forgotten that ‘Downing Street’ backed Anderson over his “f*** off back to France” comment.

So I never felt persuaded when, for a few hours this week, it seemed that Sunak had now made a definitive choice: to stop playing with populism and to make his pitch to the electorate as a competent centrist. Supposedly, the real Rishi Sunak had now stood up and was ready to be counted. One obvious problem with this reading is that there are surely only so many times that self-definition can be attempted. So it is hard to see how appointing Cameron is consistent with his Conference pitch – only a month ago – to present himself as someone offering a ‘new politics’ which would break with the ‘failed model of the last 30 years’. It’s not even clear that Cameron fits the ‘competent Sunak’ model given that his track record, including his role in Brexit, is hardly evidence of sagacious statesmanship or even of tactical nous.

Moreover, if it is meant to be an electoral gambit, to signal to Southern Blue Wall Tory voters that Sunak rejects Brexitist madness, it’s not obvious that it will be a clear enough signal for that purpose, whilst it is very obvious that it will be a negative signal in the newly acquired Northern Red Wall seats. And if that was the gambit, then why did he immediately undermine it by appointing Esther McVey, yet another GB News presenter and populist Tory MP, to attend Cabinet as ‘anti-Woke Tsar’, responsible for “leading the charge on the government’s anti-woke agenda”? That certainly won’t placate the populists, anyway, so whatever the motivation it just leaves a muddle.

All this is part of a wider mystery about Sunak and what motivates him. That is especially obvious in relation to Brexit. He has, apparently, always been in favour of it, although I don’t recall him taking any part in the referendum campaign, and he has never given any real explanation of what it is about Brexit that he supports. For that matter, as the Brexiters have observed, the impression he gives – his whole ‘vibe’ – is far more ‘remainerish’, if there is such a thing. And it’s the same with other things that he is supposedly motivated by, such as the possibilities of technology on which, for all that he is endlessly described as a ‘tech bro’, he never says anything except bland platitudes, such as that AI presents opportunities and dangers. This is not exactly evidence of a deep interest, still less of deep thinking.

I don’t think that it is possible any more, if it ever was, to regard Sunak as an enigma, or even as a very inexperienced politician still feeling his way. Instead, I think it is now beyond reasonable doubt that his plasticity is not the shiny cover for some deeper core of belief or purpose, it is just all there is to him. It’s not even a matter of the familiar attempt of many politicians to be all things to all people and who end up pleasing no one. It’s just that there is less to him than meets the eye. There are no hidden depths, just a well-concealed depthlessness. He is impossible to read not because of any inscrutability of purpose but because, quite simply, there is nothing to read.

My suspicion about the shallowness of any conversion to centrism Sunak may have had on Monday was amply justified within two days, following Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling that the government’s ‘Rwanda’ policy is unlawful. That created immediate political pressure for Sunak because, whilst it seems unlikely that Braverman, herself, has a great personal following amongst the Brexitists, her views do, and Rwanda is a policy issue for them to rally around.

The fact that the ruling made it clear (£) that violation of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) was only a minor factor in the court’s judgment did not stop the more bone-headed of them from immediately proposing their pet 'Brexit 2.0' project of leaving it. Moreover some of them, like Anderson, have already called for the government to simply ignore the judgment, some, like ‘New Conservative’ Jonathan Gullis, have called for the government to just dump asylum seekers back in France, and another ‘New Conservative’, Brendan Clarke-Smith, has resurrected the odious “enemies of the people” line.

Without endorsing the most egregiously nonsensical of these suggestions (though, yet again, refusing to condemn Anderson’s remarks), Sunak immediately buckled to the populist pressure by proposing ‘emergency legislation’ which in effect is a new version of the idea that international law can be set aside by domestic legislation, mentioned above. At the same time, despite its marginal role in the judgment, he again raised at least by implication the possibility of, if not leaving the ECHR, then at least ignoring potential rulings from its associated Court in the future. So, once again, competent technocratic Sunak – who could, after all, simply drop all this Rwanda nonsense and focus on creating a quick and fair domestic system for processing asylum claims – disappeared from view. Whether or not this is enough to contain the Brexitists, who, as ever, will want more, remains to be seen.

Tortured on the Tory rack

So it still an open question whether the Tory Party will blow up now, or not until after its expected loss of the next election. Meanwhile the country is in a kind of tortured hiatus with the electorate having apparently decided they want rid of this government, but have no choice other than to live through its last, decaying months.

That isn’t just maddening, it is also hugely damaging. We are beset by deep, structural social and economic problems, and also face massive international instability and environmental danger. And hovering over all that is the miasma of Brexit with its daily drag on the economy and the still unanswered questions it has created for what post-Brexit Britain is to be. None of this is being addressed. Instead, we have a zombie government with no policy agenda, which is bad enough, but it is also so riven by internal factionalism that there is the ever-present danger that it will do something utterly mad.

This is not just about the immediate situation. It is now more obvious than ever – and Cameron’s return serves as a reminder of it – just how profoundly the entire country has suffered on the rack created by the competing factions in the Tory Party’s civil war. That civil war has now lasted for over thirty years. Cameron papered over it, at least during the Coalition years, and despite, or even because of, the manifesto promise of a referendum, voters in 2015 might have thought that it had been consigned to the margins of politics. But, since then, it has engulfed us all.

It gave us the bitter referendum that was supposed to resolve matters. It gave us Brexit which, apart from everything else that could be said about it, manifestly intensified divisions within the Tory Party and smeared them to every corner of the polity. Yet, at the same time, which makes the whole thing an even bigger tragedy, it failed to satisfy the Brexiters. It has degraded our international reputation, permanently crippled our economy, toxified our entire political discourse – and, still, they want more. Still, they want the ever-elusive ‘true Brexit’. Still, they want the ever-elusive ‘true Conservatism’.

It is tempting to think that because we seem to be witnessing the death throes of this government, we are also seeing the death throes of this entire period of chaotic mis-rule and vicious division. It is certainly of some comfort that the Supreme Court showed this week, as it did over the original Miller case about Article 50 notification and the unlawful Prorogation, that some of the institutional guide-rails are still intact. That’s hugely important. And perhaps, post-election, the Brexitist populists will destroy each other and become so splintered between different parties as to keep them from power. But so much poison has been unleashed during recent years, and it has spread so far, even, now, extending to violence on the streets. Much will depend on whether the expected next Labour government, amidst all the other challenges it will face, will be able to reverse that spread. I am not hopeful, but it is the only hope there is.

 

 

*It’s difficult to find a precise name for people who fall under this label. They include those within the Tory Party, Reform Party and elsewhere who are identified with the National Conservatism (NatCon) institute, such as many of those who spoke at its 2023 London Conference, and, within the Tory Party specifically, members of various small groups including the New Conservatives, the Conservative Democratic Organization and the Common Sense Conservatives.