To Buckingham, where a tribe of true believers met on Saturday to attend the Margaret Thatcher Freedom Festival. Suella Braverman was the star turn in the evening, with Sir Iain Duncan Smith amusing attendees with his tales of Eurocrat meetings. But it was Steve Baker – the onetime arch-rebel turned Northern Ireland minister – who most intrigued Mr S with his pitch to activists on the need for compromise. Speaking three days after the vote in the House of Commons on Rishi Sunak’s Windsor Framework, Baker said that his decision to back the deal was based on his concerns about the government’s fate if he did not support it:
It would be too bashful of me to pretend that I wasn’t pivotal in this journey with the Windsor Framework, as anyone can see on the TV onwards. So the choice I faced on the Sunday night and into the Monday was: would I be backing the deal or resigning? What would it have meant if I had resigned and opposed the deal? Big news. It would have meant probably 100 Tory MPs in the rebel lobby. What would have been the effect of that? Two things: one the Windsor Framework would go through anyway, but it would be going through on Labour votes, we would be looking at another leadership contest, the government would have no credibility, the Tory party would be tearing itself apart, all as we go into another election after seven years of this misery.
Instead, Baker claimed, the party should put aside such infighting to focus on ‘winning elections’ and contrasted his approach with a rival Brexiteer with whom he has had fierce words before:
If you compare me to Nigel Farage, whether it’s at the time of Vote Leave or whenever, Nigel Farage is always really good as a core vote player. Nigel can keep his core Brexiteer voters who are just dissatisfied, he can keep them rejoicing all day and then they don’t make a bit of difference to who governs the country other than the extent to which they rely on the Conservative party. Core vote players are just a total waste of time because they just damage the mainstream centre right of the Conservative party. And I would just encourage everybody to hold that in mind because forgive me this is a 13 year in politician talking now, four general elections, and I’ve done more politics through seven years of being at the centre of events than I think most members of the cabinet.
It wasn’t just Brexit which Baker focused on in his speech, with the former Covid Recovery Group mastermind reflecting on how he and fellow skeptics found themselves in a minority when it came to public opinion:
There does seem to be a problem that was manifest in that time, that people didn’t want their freedom. I can tell you as someone who took a very robust stand on this, representing a normal parliamentary constituency, it was tough. I suddenly discovered a lot of my voters didn’t want me doing the defence of liberty. Now if we had a PR system and I could stand as a libertarian party candidate, I’m pretty sure these days I could enjoy myself, I could be absolutely pure on every issue, make no difference whatsoever to government policy but get re-elected every time. But that’s not the system we have.
That question about the size and duties of the state has been one of Baker’s driving concerns since he was first elected to parliament in 2010. And it was to that theme that he returned when he sounded a warning on projections about welfare spending:
If you look at the government actuaries department report, the audit, of the National Insurance fund, the National Insurance fund is like a current account through which enormous sums of money wash to pay benefits. But it’s got to stay above zero. But according to our auditors, it will reach zero in 2043-44. So for me that puts a date on the beginning of serious default of the welfare state on pensions and healthcare in particular. It’s in twenty years.
Gulp. Maybe by that point the Tory party will have resolved its issues on Europe…
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