By their friends shall you know them and Donald Trump has made no secret of where his loyalties lie. Ahead of his state visit to Britain this week, the US President praised Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage as the “good guys”. Tearing up diplomatic protocol, he declared that the former foreign secretary would make an “excellent” prime minister and insisted that the Brexit Party leader should be put in charge of the EU negotiations. It was as if he was setting out to form a new special relationship with the populists.
On the day that the Tory frontrunner launched his leadership bid with a video promising to “unite our society and our country” it was not exactly on message to have the endorsement of such a deeply divisive figure. But the president singled out Mr Johnson and Mr Farage for praise because there is much that the three men have in common. It is not only that all of them have big personalities, and distinctive hair, they are also generals in the culture war that has replaced the Cold War as the defining political battle. In each case, their brand is authenticity but they are fakes. These “men of the people”, who promote an anti-establishment mood, are themselves part of a wealthy elite. They are consummate politicians, who are expertly riding the anti-politics wave.
Most importantly, they are the Lords of Misrule. As The New York Times reported yesterday: “President Trump prides himself on being the great disrupter, but when he arrives in London on Monday for a state visit, it’s not clear how much more he can shake up a country that is already convulsed, divided and utterly exhausted by the long debate over its departure from the European Union.”
Mr Farage and Mr Johnson also thrive on chaos. The Brexit Party leader is no longer simply interested in Europe. His aim now is to “smash the two-party system” and bring about a “political revolution”. The former foreign secretary relishes turmoil because he hopes to benefit from it just as the short-sellers win during an economic crash.
What is strange is that, with Mr Johnson in the lead, the Conservative party contest is turning into a race to be the least conservative. Edmund Burke described the characteristics of a statesman as having “a disposition to preserve and ability to improve” but the Tory candidates are falling over each other to overthrow the established order.
It is in fact hard to think of a less conservative policy than a “no deal” Brexit, which would represent an economically risky, politically reckless and constitutionally chaotic rupture with the past. Yet the willingness to contemplate this outcome has become the purity test for candidates to succeed Theresa May.
As a result, the party of businesses is now seriously considering a plan that was yesterday denounced by the country’s major manufacturers as “economic lunacy”. The Conservative and Unionist Party is preparing to embrace a policy that would almost certainly accelerate the break up of the Union. The Tories, who have represented continuity and stability down the generations, are considering an idea that has virtually no support among the young.
And, since the House of Commons would never endorse a no-deal Brexit, the party that has always championed parliamentary sovereignty is debating how best to bypass MPs to inflict its ideological choice on the country. “This is not just about Brexit it’s about what the Conservative Party is and should be,” one former minister says. “For 200 years the reason we have been a successful political party is because we have been pragmatic and adaptable. We are in danger of sweeping it all away. In the desire to get on and be seen as disrupters, all the conventional principles of Conservatism are being thrown out.”
The Tory party has always been divided between small-c conservatives who value stability, tradition and co-operation, and radicals who favour free-market individualism and disruption as the only way to liberate the country from stultifying bureacracies. Now, Brexit has empowered the second group and neutered the first. As Dominic Cummings, the Vote Leave director, put it after the 2016 referendum, “we hacked the system” and the virus has spread through the Tory machine. An infiltration of local associations by former Ukip activists has hastened the transformation of the party, with moderates — most recently Dr Philip Lee — facing no-confidence votes.
The Conservative splits over Europe are so vicious and enduring because they are about party definition as well as national identity. Mr Johnson’s “f*** business” jibe was symbolic of a wider willingness to throw caution, and with it economic credibility, to the wind. Dominic Raab is promising income tax cuts, and Sajid Javid has announced a £100 billion investment fund, as fiscal conservatism is sidelined by rival candidates. Michael Gove has always been a revolutionary rather than a reactionary. David Cameron once said he was “a bit of a Maoist [who] believes that the world makes progress through a process of creative destruction”.
Rory Stewart is a more traditional Tory whose politics are rooted in Burke’s “Little Platoons” of local connections rather than grand ideological projects such as Brexit. As he puts it: “For me being Conservative is about being passionately moderate, working with the grain of things, facing reality, a courage which is compromise.”
Philip Hammond, another deeply conservative figure, says he could not vote for a no-deal Brexit. One MP says there are as many 45 Conservatives who could support a second referendum to prevent Britain crashing out on October 31.
There are so many candidates standing for the leadership because the Tories are suffering a monumental identity crisis. With no guiding philosophy to unify the party, each faction needs its own figurehead. “The parliamentary party has lost its moral and political compass,” one MP says.
“There has been a complete breakdown in discipline but also of values. Nobody knows what the Tories stand for any more.”
Mr Cameron was a moderniser in the sense that Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa defined in his novel The Leopard: “Everything must change so that everything can stay the same.” That is very different to the disrupters now hustling to shake things up through a Brexit revolution. There is a problem for a party that abandons its core identity.
It’s as if Burger King stopped selling burgers, or Ronseal wood stain, with its famous advertising slogan “It does exactly what it says on the tin” suddenly started filling the cans with paint instead. The Tories are heading for a historic split because they are turning their backs on Conservatism.
