TRUSTING Boris Johnson – as his last two wives and a substantial pack of ex-girlfriends might ruefully agree – is not without its risks. As a former squeeze told The Sun last year, “any sensible girl should stay away from him. You’ll get the cheery persistence, then the conquest, but when he’s bored he won’t care about you in the slightest.”
For the last few weeks, Boris has beamed his cheery persistence in the direction of swooning Brexit Party voters, and some sort of conquest appears close at hand. But Brexiters would be wise not to take any more permanent steps like moving in with Boris or rescuing a puppy together. Boris can only be trusted to do what’s best for Boris, and hard-line Brexit fans are only useful to him for a brief period when his interests and theirs are aligned.
The Prime Minister’s strategy is as simple as it is utterly disingenuous. The right is split between the Brexity Conservatives and very Brexity BXP supporters. Since his election as leader, Boris’s every move has been designed to persuade BXP voters that Boris means Brexit. While Labour languishes at 24% in the polls, their middle-class support devoured by the unambiguously pro-EU Liberal Democrats, the PM calculates that he can win a substantial, possibly an overwhelming majority in an election if BXP support is driven down to around 10%.
The BXP voters Boris is wooing didn’t all start out as Tories. Brexit appeals to many socially conservative working class Labour voters, and Boris’s Sturm-und-Drang, do-or-die message on the EU has been underpinned by strong campaign lines on the purported end of austerity, the NHS, and crime (see this column, 16th August). In winning Brexiters over, Boris doesn’t mind alienating liberal Conservatives. The prize of simultaneously destroying Labour and the BXP is worth losing some (but probably far from all) of the Tory voters who might confuse guacamole with mushy peas. Liberals can go and be liberals elsewhere.
This bold strategy was showing results. Look, by way of example, at the result in the Brecon & Radnorshire by-election. Throughout that campaign, BXP were polling around 23%. By 1st August, their share had fallen to 10%. And that with a Tory candidate convicted of fiddling his expenses.
Whatever he says publicly, Boris Johnson is well aware that economic chaos would be as bad for Boris as it would be for everyone else. He has no intention of crashing Britain out of the EU without a deal. Instead, the plan was to force Parliament into a ‘betrayal of Brexit’, call a ‘People v. Parliament’ election to take place on or before the European Council summit on 17th October, and win it with a convincing majority. Then, unbeholden to zealots on his backbenches and rid of the spectre of Farage, he will both keep his promise of leaving on 31st October and utterly shaft the hard Brexiters by agreeing on a deal very like Chequers, but with a customs border in the Irish Sea.
Stage 1 of Boris’s strategy went largely according to plan. His disruptive, Trumpian gambit of announcing a largely meaningless (it removed four days of sitting time) prorogation of Parliament had its desired effect of bringing the crisis to ahead. Boris goaded the opposition into passing a law to prevent (or such is its intention) a no deal Brexit. As a final offering on the altar of Brexit purity, he sacrificed his majority in a hecatomb of distinguished rebels.
Stage 2 –clearing the decks in Parliament with an election– is proving less straightforward. Tony Blair shrewdly warned Jeremy Corbyn that Boris’s poll is a massive elephant trap for Labour, which could see the party destroyed. For once, the Lenin-capped loon listened to good advice. After howling for an election for two years, Corbyn changed his mind immediately upon being presented with the opportunity to have one. Boris was reduced, in response, to yelling “you big girl’s blouse” from the despatch box.
Boris’s anger was unsurprising. His strategy is a political blitzkrieg. It has to be done quickly, and before BXP voters have the time or acuteness of wit to realise that they are being played for suckers. Corbyn, conversely, needs to drag Boris into a Stalingrad stalemate, sucking his energy and persuasive power away from campaigning. He will try to force Boris to go cap in hand to the 27, asking for a further adjournment of Brexit.
That, Boris will never do. He will tough it out, knowing an opposition can’t remain credible for long while ducking an election. The PM has weapons left in his procedural arsenal, which include amending the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011 with a one-line bill; contriving a self-inflicted vote of no confidence; even taking the nuclear option of resigning and inviting Corbyn to try to form a Government commanding the confidence of the House (which he can’t). We will go to the polls before 31st October.
Of course, as 2017 proved, any election campaign is unpredictable and dangerous. Some of Boris’ aura of invincibility has, amongst the commentariat at least, slipped away. Sacking the 21 Tory rebels –stalwarts like Ken Clarke and Nicholas Soames amongst them– made him look dictatorial and extreme. His Cabinet will scare off some intended converts from BXP and Labour by looking ideological and entitled; the nation will not soon forget the image of Jacob Rees-Mogg lounging across the Government front bench with the demeanour of someone who has been left waiting slightly too long for a club servant to bring him crumpets.
That said, if an election took place today, with the vote shares indicated in the most recent polls, the Tories could expect to win a 90-seat majority. The cheery persistence Boris Johnson has shown as PM will lead to conquest. He will then nip over to Brussels, agree on an Andrex-soft Brexit and do to the hard Brexiters exactly what he did to the last two Mrs Johnsons. He doesn’t care about the Brexit Party or the ERG in the slightest.
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