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| "À espera de Boris" |
Boris Johnson’s no-deal Brexit plan ‘will trigger early
election’
Top Tories say attempt to appease hardliners means coalition
of support for his leadership bid will not survive the autumn
Michael Savage and Toby Helm
Sat 15 Jun 2019 22.25 BST First published on Sat 15 Jun 2019
22.01 BST
Boris Johnson’s attempts to appease hardline Tory Brexiters
will tilt the party into a “disastrous general election” that could be just
months away, senior Conservatives are warning.
The runaway favourite to replace Theresa May is being told
that the coalition of support set to deliver him Downing Street “won’t survive
the autumn”, when he will have to decide whether to accept a deal with the EU
or try to force a no-deal Brexit – a move likely to precipitate an election.
Senior party figures are already warning of a “wipeout” in
some parts of the country, such as Scotland and London, should it go into an
election pledging to deliver a no-deal Brexit. They believe that once in
office, Johnson will either be toppled by hardline Eurosceptic MPs should he
back away from no deal, or provoke an election by pursuing such a policy.
With leadership contenders ruling out a coronation on Saturday,
Tory critics are demanding increased scrutiny of Johnson’s Brexit plans. David
Gauke, the justice secretary, said: “Boris is saying that he will definitely
leave the EU by 31 October, but he is refusing to say how he will do this if
parliament takes steps to stop a no-deal Brexit. Will he respond by suspending
parliament? Will he seek a general election? This lack of clarity is helping
him maintain a broad base of support for now but it won’t survive the autumn.
This is why his position on Brexit needs to be tested thoroughly now.”
Alistair Burt, the former foreign office minister, said:
“The risk of a serious confrontation in the party seems to be growing – the
only way to avoid this is to get a deal. Jeremy Hunt is the best bet to open up
the impasse, otherwise … we seem to be heading for a disastrous general
election, with all the risks.”
It comes as former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke reveals he
would be prepared to vote down a Conservative government led by a new prime
minister who tried to push through a no-deal Brexit, which a majority of MPs in
parliament oppose. In an interview with the Observer, Clarke said that in those
circumstances “then you have to bring that government down”.
“If some idiot was sailing into a no-deal Brexit I’d decide politics
had finally gone mad and vote against it.” Clarke also said that if it came
down to a choice between no deal and a second referendum, he would abandon his
lifelong opposition to referendums and back a second public vote.
“If the choice
eventually became no deal or a second referendum, then they’d try to win my
support – I’d stop abstaining and I’d vote for it.”
Writing in Sunday’s Observer, Johnson’s closest challenger
for the leadership, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, takes a swipe at Johnson
over his lack of credibility on the world stage.
Hunt says that with the UK facing not only Brexit but a
series of threats, including Russian aggression, Chinese resurgence and
instability in the Middle East, the UK needs a leader with an internationalist
outlook. “We cannot become the party that pulls up the drawbridge or sticks two
fingers up to the rest of world,” he writes. “It has never been more important
to re-engage.”
Tory moderates are already convinced Johnson has adopted a
Brexit strategy that is impossible to deliver. Former universities minister Sam
Gyimah said: “There is no sweet spot between what the [European Research Group]
sees as the ideal resolution and what is right for the party and country. You either
please them and imperil the government, country and party, or you pivot away
from them and your own position is at risk. This is going to come to a head
pretty quickly.
“For all the differences, this is Theresa May’s script. He
will try to say he believes in the project and wants to deliver Brexit, but it
is parliament that is standing in the way. This is what Theresa May attempted.”
Alan Duncan, a senior foreign office minister, said: “Those
more moderate colleagues who are tempted by Johnson need to think if the
arithmetic or issues have in any way changed. If they haven’t, then changing
leader is not going to change our fortunes.”
On Sunday, Lord (John) Kerr, former UK ambassador to
Brussels and the author of article 50, attacks the leadership candidates for
making promises on Brexit that they will never be able to meet.
“What alarms me most about the current Conservative party
leadership race is that fiction and fantasy are back, and harsh facts again
forgotten, as new promises, no less unrealistic, are made. The unicorns are
back, frolicking in the Tory forest. Claims that the withdrawal agreement can
be renegotiated ignore the solemn undertakings given by the UK government in
March that it will not seek to do so, as well as the EU’s repeated statements
saying it will not do so.”
Meanwhile, former Tory leadership contender Esther McVey has
come out in support of Boris Johnson. Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, McVey –
who was eliminated in the first ballot of MPs – said Johnson had agreed to back
her agenda for “blue collar Conservatism”.
Kenneth Clarke: ‘If there’s no other way you’ve got to bring
the government down’
The Tory veteran talks of his dismay at the ‘fantasies’ of
the leadership race and his fears if Boris Johnson becomes PM
Toby Helm
Sat 15 Jun 2019 21.04 BST Last modified on Sun 16 Jun 2019
07.00 BST
Since he entered parliament in 1970, Kenneth Clarke has
served under eight Conservative leaders, from Edward Heath to Theresa May. He
has also stood three times, in 1997, 2001 and 2005, to be Tory leader himself
during difficult periods for his party. But throughout it all he has never
known a political crisis remotely like the present.
Now aged 78, he still describes himself as “a natural
optimist”. But a combination of Brexit and the Tory leadership contest are
testing his positive thinking to its limits.
“As someone who has seen a few leadership elections in my
time, this one’s quite different,” Clarke said in an interview with the
Observer last week, within hours of the announcement that Boris Johnson had
stormed into the lead in the first round. “This is a tragic farce of a crisis
in which anger and protest are wide sentiments across the public scene. The
Conservative party is in turmoil internally and deeply unpopular with the
general public.”
As a lifelong europhile its hurts Clarke, who as father of the
House of Commons is its most senior MP, to think that he will be retiring at
the next election with what he calls this “extreme crisis” caused by Brexit
overshadowing everything. He describes leaving the EU as a “crazy decision” –
one which will leave in ruins much of what he has tried to do over the past
five decades.
“My entire political career has been based on building up
Britain’s political standing and economic prosperity through our membership of
the EU and the European project,” he says. “Now it’s all come to an end and the
political system and parliament is in such mayhem and incapable of dealing with
the crisis that this referendum has provoked.”
He is also dismayed by the way the Tory party is going about
choosing its new leader and the country’s next prime minister. “There’s an air
of fantasy about just about every candidate’s campaign,” he says, with promises
being made on Brexit that cannot be met. And the way the eventual decision will
be handed over to the Tory membership, he finds simply “extraordinary”. “Most
dictatorships have a better way of choosing their leader than this one.”
On Boris Johnson, Clarke is withering in a way that borders
on contempt. He says he was a “disaster” as foreign secretary, and when asked
if he could be equally terrible as prime minister, he answers in an instant.
“Yes, he certainly has the potential to be. Unless he suddenly starts taking it
seriously. I am not sure he knows what he would do to get us through the
crisis.
“With the exception of Rory Stewart [the most pro-EU
candidate, who Clarke is backing] they seem to be implying that they have some
magic key to changing reality and getting the withdrawal agreement re-opened,
or getting some marvellous technology that can check every lorry crossing the
Irish border without having to have any customs officers there. The idea that
we just leave on 31 October with no deal is utterly farcical.”
That the Tory party’s most senior MP and highly respected
elder statesman, who has been chancellor of the exchequer, home secretary,
health secretary, education secretary and lord chancellor, can describe the
probable next Conservative prime minister in such a way, and the entire
political system as in the grip of a self-inflicted crisis, is remarkable. And
it is not just an isolated view from one veteran politician.
Many at Westminster share Clarke’s analysis that politics is
utterly broken, and that what is currently happening, particularly with the
Tory party leadership, could well make things worse. Most MPs, though, are far
more discreet about saying so, as their careers lie ahead of them. Clarke, by
contrast, no longer has ambitions to fulfil nor does he feel he has to answer
to his local party. He says precisely what he thinks. And much of what he says
resonates very widely with the public, as shown by the striking polling and
focus group work conducted by Britain Thinks that we publish today.
The Britain Thinks examination of the nation’s confidence
levels and views of its leaders uncovered a deep pessimism and extraordinary
distrust of politicians.
Some 74% of voters say the British political system is not
fit for purpose, with only 6% saying that UK politicians understand them, and
72% saying they don’t. Some 52% think that Johnson will be the next prime
minister, but only 21% have faith that the next prime minister, whoever it may
be, will be up to the job.
The polling found people felt more engaged with politics
post-Brexit, but that extra engagement seems to have left them more frustrated
than ever at their politicians’ failings.
“I feel pessimistic about the future simply because of the
uncertainty, not knowing what’s to come and the lack of trust I have in all
politicians and all parties,” said one focus group participant in Leicester.
Increasingly, also, Britain’s inability to cope with its political crisis is
being noticed abroad.
The latest cover of Time magazine is headlined “How Britain
went Bonkers. The Brexit fiasco” with a picture of Theresa May and Tory
leadership contenders, including Johnson, on top of a London bus grinning, as
the bus sinks.
Scott Wightman, Britain’s outgoing senior diplomat in
Singapore said in a valedictory note last week that the UK was now seen
overseas as a country beset by division and oblivious to truth. The nation that
Singaporeans “admired for stability, common sense, tolerance and realism
grounded in fact, they see beset by division, obsessed with ideology, careless
of the truth …” He added: “I fear many around the world share their view.”
Today John Kerr, a former UK ambassador to the EU and the
author of article 50, says he is dismayed by the false promises being pushed
out by the Tory leadership candidates, which will be treated with disdain by
the EU if and when they have to try to deliver on them.
“What alarms me most about the current Conservative party
leadership race is that fiction and fantasy are back, and harsh facts again
forgotten,” Kerr says. “The unicorns are back, frolicking in the Tory forest.”
He says the claims by Johnson and others that the withdrawal
agreement can be renegotiated “ignore the solemn undertakings given by the UK
government in March that it will not seek to do so, as well as the EU’s
repeated statements saying it will not do so”.
All this feeds the impression abroad that UK politicians are
not operating in the real world any more. “Margaret Thatcher and John Major knew
that bluff and bravado doesn’t work in Brussels. Not paying what we owe, and
have promised to pay, wouldn’t change the game in our favour: it would end it.
And, as the CBI and TUC rightly warn, leaving with no deal, and hence no
transition period, would be catastrophic. “No deal isn’t backed by the country,
or the Commons. So it really matters that an auction of promises to ultras
doesn’t become determinant of our nation’s future. Facts matter.
The central promise of Johnson’s campaign is that he will take
the UK out of the EU on 31 October “deal or no deal”, saying that not to do so
would be a betrayal. The implication is that parliament will not be allowed to
stand in the way of Brexit.
His supporters hope that if he wins among Tory members in
the country, he could instantly revive morale and win back the many
Brexit-supporting voters who have deserted to Nigel Farage’s Brexit party. Some
believe he could then call a general election in early autumn, to gain his own
mandate from the country to take the UK out of the EU on time.
But while Johnson looks on course to win the leadership of
the Tory party, that is as much as it would be wise to predict. Honouring his
promise to deliver Brexit will be no easy task. “If we get lured into thinking
that Boris solves everything, we could be in for a very nasty surprise indeed,”
said one former minister last week. “He could actually make this whole crisis
much, much worse.”
If and when he enters No 10, Labour will almost certainly
table a vote of no confidence in a Johnson government that tries to take the
country out of the EU without a deal, against the majority will of MPs in
parliament. Last Wednesday the Tory MP and former attorney general Dominic
Grieve said he would be prepared to vote down any government if it tried to act
in defiance of parliament’s will.
In an emotional statement in the Commons he told MPs that
“the only way of stopping that prime minister [implementing a no-deal Brexit]
would be to bring down that prime minister’s government... I will not hesitate
to do that ... Even if it means my resigning the whip and leaving the party.”
Clarke told the Observer he, too, would feel bound to do the
same and thinks other Conservatives could follow suit, though he does not know
how many. Tory MPs bringing down a Tory government? Would that not elevate the
political crisis to new levels?
“Well, I mean, if there’s no other way ... then you’ve got
to bring that government down,” Clarke said. “You can’t have somebody saying
‘I’m going to be a dictatorial president for a month or two and fix everything
despite parliamentary disapproval. If ... some idiot was sailing onto a no-deal
Brexit, I’d decide politics had finally gone mad and I was not going to support
this.”
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