The Spectator's Notes | 29 October 2011

When, roughly 60 years ago, Aneurin Bevan described the Conservatives as ‘lower than vermin’, Tory supporters all over the country formed a Vermin Club in proud response. Now it is time to form a Graffiti Club. On the Today programme on Monday, the day of the referendum vote in Parliament, William Hague foolishly compared his own party’s MPs voting for a referendum on the European Union to people who scribble graffiti on the wall. His comparison encapsulated why the government lost the argument. It disclosed an underlying contempt for anyone who actually minds about being ruled by the European Union, and a belief that this is not a subject on which the public’s opinion, or even that of backbenchers, should be sought. The Graffiti Club would be formed to mobilise the opposite position. If this doesn’t happen within the Tory party, it will be led from outside it. Already, backers are talking of starting the Referendum party all over again.

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The original Writing on the Wall (see Daniel chapter 5) said: ‘Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.’ This is an accurate verdict on the Conservative leadership, though for ‘Medes and Persians’, read ‘Liberal Democrats and European Union’. I had previously tended to discount the standard criticisms of David Cameron and George Osborne for being arrogant as class-based chippiness, but I’m afraid that in this case they have been fully justified. The opinion of most of one’s party on a great issue may sometimes have to be argued with, but it should never be slapped down. The tactics failed. The leadership was determined not to offer any words of comfort to the sceptics, but to show them who was boss. After so many rebelled all the same, poor Michael Gove, the strongest sceptic among the Cameron loyalists, was sent out into the studios to offer words of comfort to the sceptics…