Was Brexit the moment it started to go wrong for the Tories?
Right, so this is really the sort of text trailer for the podcast below (see link at the end), but since everyone is getting on me for not writing enough articles and simply posting podcasts, I will write a little bit about the subject up above.
Yes, of course Brexit was the moment it started to go wrong for the Tories. That’s so obvious to me, I don’t even really understand the counterargument. Had Remain won, Cameron would have stayed for another couple of years and it would have either been Osborne or Johnson after that. Even as ramshackle as a Boris Johnson premiership would have been at that time, at least he wouldn’t have been in charge of negotiating our passage out of the European Union, which as we know, was a really terrible idea. You couldn’t have put anyone worse in charge of the whole thing, frankly.
More than just that, the Tories have not known who they are or what they are for since June 2016. For a few years, they at least had “Get Brexit Done” to pull them forward, but since the deal between the EU and the UK was signed at the very end of 2020, the Conservative party has drifted aimlessly, not knowing what to do, where to go or who their electorate truly is. Johnson didn’t even make it to the end of one full year of Brexit being “done” until things began to go horribly wrong for him. Then we lurched to Truss, which was an instant car crash, then with Rishi Sunak coming in to try and appease all ends of his party, ultimately satisfying none of them.
Now we have reached what may or not be the nadir of the party, at least from an ideological standpoint: Kemi Badenoch doing a really, really bad Nigel Farage impression and getting nowhere with it.
I have long said that I think the Tories need to renounce Brexit, in a full-throated, no nonsense manner, in order to redeem themselves with the electorate, and more than ever I believe that to be the case.
Anyhow, here’s the podcast - a half hour discussion with former Conservative MP Bim Afolami on the subject of whether Brexit was where it went wrong for the Tories as well as where we are now - will Reform overtake the Tories and what is the Labour government getting wrong (and right). It’s a candid chat that I think you will all enjoy. Just a quick note - it’s audio only. That’s because I completely screwed up the shot of Bim speaking. It looks like he’s trying to hide behind his microphone - this is what you get when you’re trying to be the podcast host and its video producer at one and the same time:
The Referendum was in the uniquely dreadful situation that it was setup legally as an advisory Referendum, but that Cameron had told the public that they would definitely carry it out.
By making it advisory, the Leave side could be as lying, confusing and misleading as they liked, campaigning from several positions at once, with none of them producing the final outcome and not to have any of this challenged in the courts. By contrast in Switz, the maximum 4 campaigns p.a., need to write a clear manifesto and if campaigning strays out of that area and they win, the result is thrown out by courts, as happened quite recently. Rep. Of Ireland also have far better methods and safeguards. I heard a complaint from there that nobody asked them for their input.
Nor did Cameron have the power to force Parliament to carry out any particular deal, so he couldn't even make them carry it out. Nor did he stay and supervise the process as he had pledged to voters.
If a particular version of Brexit had been written down, maybe 1/3-2/3 of Brexit campaigners would have rejected it and it is highly unlikely that voters would have got it over the line. But Cameron was more concerned with appeasement, giving every bit of red meat to his ERG right that they asked for. Now we are living with the terrible consequences.
Will the Tory Party offer to take us back in? It's a well strange idea and not one I have any insight into, but they were ruthless enough to make people want out against all the expert views and with public opinion changing fast or the Leave vote dying off, it might give them some sort of a boost. But the Tory Party is not going to spring back on the back of any one measure. If they have a future it would be a long process.
If the Tories did support rejoining or some similar position, it would give the green light to Labour and the LibDems to push harder. It would remove an EU presumed red line against giving the UK full membership in case the Tories came back to want to Leave a 2nd time. If it did revive the Tories a bit it might also be at the expense of ReUK. So it can only be good thing long term and stranger things have happened. One of them is walking around, having been beaten by a lettuce.