What is the point of the Tory party? If it can’t find an answer, oblivion awaits

The Conservatives face one of the most dangerous moments in their history – and it is their own fault

In politics, as in private life, perhaps the most dangerous question is: “What’s the point of it all?” It is just about the only question which, once asked, never goes away without an answer. An individual who doubts the point of it all, and keeps on doubting, is well on the way to depression. Party politicians, puffed up with their own importance, rarely have self-doubts. But when party members and voters ask, as they now do, of the Conservative Party, “What’s the point?”, they had better receive a convincing answer. Or imminent, perhaps irrevocable, collapse awaits.

Tory leaders over the years would have given different answers to the question at different times, sometimes contentious ones. There were serious disagreements, for example, about free trade, appeasement, decolonisation and, naturally, Europe. Some led to splits and resignations, others just to serial disgruntlement. But it is hard to recall any point in the party’s recent past when there was a greater sense among party supporters of the utter futility of the whole

business of Conservatism as such.

The main point of the Conservative Party was, over the past couple of years, to deliver Brexit in line with the expectations of those who voted for it in the referendum. This was never going to be easy. But it was not impossible. The Prime Minister’s shortcomings created obstacles that few could have envisaged beforehand. It was certainly unwise to select a taciturn Remainer rather than a vociferous Brexiteer to take charge. It was catastrophic to choose a leader without their being fully tested on the hustings. Yet to find that someone could have risen so far and yet lack even the rudiments of campaigning skill, strategic instinct or sense of proportion was a shock to outsiders. Worryingly, it also shows how the party insiders, who had the information and the power, have been systematically promoting non-entities.

That system failure is the root cause of today’s debacle. At each stage in the Brexit saga, the wider party failed. Most of the Cabinet simply allowed the Prime Minister to get on with it. At each stage of the serial car crash, some figure from the Brexit side was staying on board, so as to slam on the brakes, or possibly throw out the driver, but it never happened. They briefed, they bluffed, and they backed down. Then most of the parliamentary party gave the Prime Minister another year, which has allowed her to turn political failure into constitutional chaos and national humiliation.

The features of those cheering Tory MPS, congratulating one another on the confidence ballot outcome, should be indelibly imprinted on the selection committees of their constituencies. But where, indeed, were the constituencies when it mattered? Only far too late did constituency parties start to wield the ultimate weapon of deselection – the only sanction that an MP really fears. There is something seriously wrong with a party that could show such collective feebleness.

The scrabbling around by the 1922 executive for a rule change to end the Prime Minister’s current immunity from challenge suggested an upsurge of the old party survival instinct. Its other instincts, though, are the problem. The deepest weakness of the Conservative parliamentary party has always lain in its cynicism disguised as worldly tolerance. At their worst, Tories behave like an easygoing, seedy club. This is manifested in the assumption that politics is no more than a jolly game, that promises are as disposable as an unread manifesto, and that honour is just a form of address in the House of Commons.

Repeatedly, the Tory party has had to be shaken out of its bad habits by accepting unwelcome ideas and individuals. Of course, the ideas had to have some compatibility with the party’s tradition, and the individuals could not be formally outside its parameters. But, for all that, they were radical departures from the way that the party really wanted to go. It was the outsider, the Jewish Benjamin Disraeli, who turned the Conservatives into the party of imperialism. It was the outsider, the reactionary Winston Churchill, who turned them into the party of victory. It was the outsider, the shopkeeper’s daughter Margaret Thatcher, who turned them into the party of economic liberty. Great causes, which can sometimes go too far, and great champions of it, who can sometimes make horrible mistakes, are essential every few years to give the Tories a purpose. Above all, though, you need a cause and a champion in a crisis. Perhaps, through some internal revolution, the champion can now be found. The name of the cause, though, should be self-evident – Brexit.

Today the Conservative Party faces one of the most dangerous moments in its history. It is its own fault. A Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, through frivolous, cynical miscalculation, opened the way for a referendum that raised fundamental questions, initially about Britain itself, but now about the Conservative Party too. What the leadership considered an unwelcome answer was given in the form of a majority to leave the EU. Theresa May then doggedly set about frustrating the decision. To find a parallel, one would have to imagine that Disraeli’s evocation of Empire was accompanied by mothballing the Navy, or that Churchill’s summons to “fight them on the beaches” was followed by acceptance of an armistice, or that Thatcher’s “not for turning” led to an incomes policy agreed over sandwiches with the TUC.

Any great cause has to be pursued aggressively if it is to succeed. The Conservative Party does not like that one bit. For a group with so many soldiers traditionally in its ranks, it oddly prefers collaboration to the spirit of conquest – even, as now, collaboration with a Marxist menace like Jeremy Corbyn.

Underlying the appeal of the Tories over the decades was the assumption that it was the patriotic party, which, however stupidly it might behave from time to time, could at least be relied upon to defend the national interest. The behaviour of many Conservative MPS has shown that it cannot be trusted to do that anymore.

It was a respectable patriotic stance at the time of the referendum to believe that, on balance, Britain was better off inside the EU. But it is not patriotic deliberately to weaken the negotiating stance of the British Government – weak enough, given who is conducting the negotiations

– by ruling out the only alternative, no deal. It is not patriotic – or constitutionally responsible – to vote to seize the power to initiate legislation from a Government that desperately needs that power in order to be taken seriously by Brussels.

Unfortunately, the Conservative parliamentary party still gives no real sign of understanding the magnitude of this betrayal. Until it does so, and until the constituency parties act to punish those responsible by deselection, the party will, itself, be punished. The argument has moved on, the damage done, and now the Conservatives must redeem and re-establish themselves to survive. There is obviously more to Conservatism than Brexit. But unless the party now wholeheartedly fights for Brexit, there will be no more Conservatism – because whenever the party calls for support, the response will simply be: “What’s the point?”