Irreconcilable differences and unreasonable behaviour

I committed one of those Twitter no-nos last week when the news about Douglas Carswell quitting the Tories to join Ukip broke. Digging up a piece I’d written here on the day of the Cameron EU speech at Bloomberg in January 2013 , I reminded a grateful universe that, far from seeing that speech as a bold stroke of political genius – quite a widely held view at the time – I thought it had been a disaster that was bound to fail. “Farage’s fox has been shot” was the line to take that day, apparently. Dave had closed down the Europe issue and set himself on the path to re-election in 2015.

Looking at The Independent’s front page story today – that dozens and dozens (not sure about “up to 100”..?) Conservative MPs plan to declare themselves as “better off out” candidates at the next election, regardless of any plans Cameron may have to try and renegotiate the terms of Britain’s EU membership, confirms that the much hyped and much praised Bloomberg speech has indeed failed. It all recalls that sense of meltdown at the time of the 1997 general election, with individual Conservative candidates setting out their own position on the EU while John Major begged his colleagues not to bind his hands on negotiating with other member states.

Two lessons should be learned from this, I think. First: conventional Westminster wisdom is really not as reliable as it might be – to say the least – and second, the Conservative party’s problems go much deeper than many have been prepared to recognise. To a considerable extent the Tories now appear to be an “out” party – that is, in favour of leaving the EU. And yet its leadership is reluctant to admit this point, fearing marginalisation on an issue which, polling suggests, is not really a priority for most voters. The “same old Tories” feel the need to agonise publicly and endlessly about the wickedness of Brussels. It makes them look self-obsessed and irrelevant. “Banging on about Europe” was one of the things David Cameron was determined not to do. But many of his MPs want him to bang on about little else. And even if he won’t, they will.

Divorces sometimes take place when there are irreconcilable differences between the two parties concerned, or where there has been persistent unreasonable behaviour. British politics on the centre right is now so volatile that divorces and realignments cannot be ruled out. The Clacton by-election, whenever it comes, will be a humdinger. Some of the unpleasantness already being aimed at Douglas Carswell suggests it may be a pretty rough affair, too.

Schadenfreude, never one of the nobler emotional responses, should be limited on the Labour side. The volatility of the political scene, embodied in the remarkable (and sustained) rise of Ukip, risks threatening Labour’s chances as well. The purple-tinged support of those who feel left behind and ignored removes potential Labour votes from ballot boxes too. In some seats, far from harming the Conservatives most, it is Labour that could suffer from a Ukip surge  .

Ken Clarke has now left the cabinet, but Ken Clarke was right. Appeasing the Eurosceptic ultras never works. They always ask for more. And in fairness to those ultras, they are right (in their terms) to call Cameron’s bluff. The prime minister has never been very specific about the nature and content of the grand renegotiation he proposes to carry out. What he may have had in mind was an attempt to repeat the trick performed by Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan in March 1975 – claiming a British negotiating triumph for something that in reality was not hugely significant. But David Cameron and Philip Hammond possess barely a fraction of the heft and political nous of Harold and Jim. In any case, the 1975 “triumph” was a trick that could probably only have been played once.

Firm predictions at this stage are difficult to make and probably unwise. Carswell’s announcement took almost everybody by surprise. The unexpected will happen again. If the former MP wins Clacton for Ukip – well, it could all get worse than 1997 for the Conservatives, with in the longer term worrying implications for Labour too.

Thirty years ago the SDP tried and failed to “break the mould” of British politics. Ukip, whatever you think of them, may be about to get a bit nearer to achieving that goal. That fox was not shot. It barely felt a thing.