How much does Boris Johnson’s move to an early election resemble Mrs May’s disastrous one in 2017? In two important respects, not at all. He had to call an election because of the numbers in parliament: she did not. Voters understand this. He is also a born campaigner, while she — well, no more need be said. But there is a possible similarity between the two situations. In 2017, the manifesto described the Tories as ‘Theresa May’s Conservatives’. All the eggs were in her basket. It feels as if the Tories will be ‘Boris Johnson’s Conservatives’ this time, though no doubt that phrase won’t be in the manifesto. Whenever Boris is seen to falter or err, voters will then ask ‘Who are the Conservatives? Do I like them?’, questions which go well beyond Brexit. On present showing, the answer to the first is all too often ‘Not sure’ and to the second, ‘No’. There is much work to do.
Philip Hammond told the Today programme on Tuesday that he was ‘agonising’ over whether he should advocate a Conservative vote at the coming election. ‘It really doesn’t matter how many times my party kicks me, abuses me, reviles me,’ he went on, sounding like Jesus, ‘they’re not going to stop me feeling like a Conservative.’ Obviously Mr Hammond has a right to ‘feel like a Conservative’, but is that the relevant point? He reached the pinnacle of his career by becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer just after the 2016 referendum vote for Leave. From his first day in office, he saw it as his task to frustrate that vote, trying, chiefly by covert means, to keep Britain in the Customs Union. In 2017, he fought the general election on a manifesto which declared that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal for the UK’; but was all the while working tirelessly for a bad deal.
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