Foxes and Henhouses

Adam Boulton wrote an interesting piece for The Sunday Times last week in which he argued that UKIP is effectively taking over the Conservative Party from within and that the big prize for many of its right wing MPs is not winning the next general election, but getting out of the European Union (EU) at any cost. 

And presumably a few years with Ed Miliband running the country is a small price to pay for getting their revenge on Europe.

Spineless Cameron is letting Farage’s foxes into the Tory henhouse

By Adam Boulton - The Sunday Times

YOU CAN’T walk far at Westminster these days without bumping into a grinning Conservative Eurosceptic. Within a couple of minutes I got the same wolfish answer from a couple of them to my inquiry about the state of play. “Things are all going splendidly,” they purred. On the surface such words were a loyal nod towards the leadership, but they were also edged with sarcasm since both MPs readily admitted that they hadn’t a clue who was going to win the general election.

However, to the Eurosceptic right it doesn’t really matter who occupies Downing Street after May 7 next year. It thinks it’s on course for a win — whatever the outcome.

If David Cameron is returned to No 10, the party he leads will have shifted dramatically in the Eurosceptic direction. Far from his intention of not “banging on about Europe”, he will have committed in the first half of his term to holding a referendum on membership of the European Union.

And the leader who first wanted to avoid a referendum and then vowed to renegotiate and campaign for a “yes” vote, will instead be giving his EU partners “one last chance” to agree to his demands on migration, otherwise Brexit beckons.

If the Conservatives lose, or are not part of any ruling coalition, it seems certain that the party will be delivered in practice into Ukip’s hands. A pound to a penny — no euros please, we’re British — the Tories in opposition would adopt an outright “out” position with which to club Ed Miliband’s struggling government set, as it would have to be, against a referendum.

At this point Nigel Farage would have achieved his ambition of taking over the Tory party from within. Call it insurgency or fifth column, “the great Conservative family”, as Boris Johnson likes to call it, would be reunited, quite possibly with Johnson as leader.

In the Eurosceptic world the hated coalition with the Liberal Democrats has given licence for promiscuity. How else could the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, when he’s not dining in the Commons with Ukip’s chief bagman, Stuart Wheeler, be proposing that Nick Clegg should be replaced as deputy prime minister by Farage? Why else would the Tory MPs Sir Peter Tapsell and Zac Goldsmith act as sponsors to Douglas Carswell when he was sworn in as first elected Ukip MP?

How could the Tory MEP Daniel Hannan heap praise on his two friends, the defectors Carswell and Mark Reckless? There is no need for their fellow travellers to defect because the reaction to their betrayal has dismantled any semblance of discipline in their old party.

The foxes may already be in the henhouse, but if the Tories lose the election the lunatics will take over the asylum. This is not the outcome Cameron promised when he was chosen as leader, but he has hardly resisted the drift in his party’s philosophy. Onlookers wonder whether Cameron stands for anything; cynics speculate that an apparent absence of spine or principle may be the best way to get re-elected. For Cameron, the semblance of unity is enough. The entire parliamentary party was welcomed into No 10 for bacon butties on Friday morning. This put fire in their bellies ahead of a backbench debate, sponsored by the Conservative Bob Neill, on — you guessed it — that EU referendum.

Cameron is confident that most of his MPs, but not all, will obey his instruction to campaign in Rochester and Strood ahead of the by-election. One thorn-in-the-prime-ministerial-side argued that his energies would be better spent campaigning in his part of the country, the Midlands. As the Heywood by-election confirmed, the surge to Ukip is turning many traditional battleground constituencies, often located in the Midlands, into three-way contests between Labour, Conservatives and Ukip.

In a seat such as Corby, Labour has lost a third of its support to Ukip. If the Tories can hold their vote there, they can reclaim the constituency and with it Louise Mensch’s honour. In resigning her seat mid-parliament, Mensch pleased herself, a tendency shared, it seems, by many of her former peers. Research by Professor Philip Cowley has established that this is the most rebellious parliament since 1945. Some coalition MPs have broken ranks in almost a third (31%) of Commons divisions and they are more often Tories than Lib Dems. Nine out of the top 10 rebels are Conservatives, headed by Philip Hollobone, David Nuttall and Philip Davies. Far from being cold-shouldered, Davies is now widely touted for promotion as a voice of the ordinary bloke to offset the “Tory toff” image.

Last week Cameron would have liked to celebrate the record drop in unemployment and note the fall in inflation. Instead his MPs let themselves go in a vote in support of Palestinian statehood — a chance for centrist Tories such as Sir Alan Duncan and Sir Richard Ottaway to share in the spirit of revolt. Whatever the merits of the case, it further eroded the government’s crumbling authority in diplomacy. For good measure, the former cabinet minister Owen Paterson burnished his credentials as the right wing’s fantasy PM by attacking the climate change convention. Backbenchers demanded cuts in foreign aid even as their government made battling ebola a priority.

There’ll be no let-up if the Conservatives scrape through in the Rochester and Strood vote next month, having adopted Ukip’s EU and immigration priorities. Already Tories are lining up for a rebellion in the vote due on Theresa May’s plan to sign up to the European arrest warrant.

Once again Cameron has bent in the wind. To appease potential Ukip voters he has committed himself to a tough speech on immigration. Miliband is planning his own hardline speech on the subject.

As his sharp-elbowed exploitation of well-intentioned but clumsy remarks by the bumbling technocrat Lord Freud showed, Miliband values point-scoring above principle. He’ll even compromise his party’s long-held positions, as last year on Syria and this year on Palestine, if it sets the stage for Conservative splits.

A YouGov poll this month found most voters considered Ukip untrustworthy, extremist, oddball and without realistic policies. But that majority is not going to vote Ukip. The Tories are chasing the minority of voters who might. Labour is in their slipstream, but that won’t stop Miliband tarring his rivals with the Ukip brush. His priority is to paint the Tories as the same old nasty party.

Revolting Tories may feel they are about to get their party back one way or another. They are certainly doing much of Miliband’s work for him.