Who is to blame for last night’s Tory uprising on Europe? It’s more entertaining to pin the blame on everyone, rather than one person, and in this case, it’s wrong to insist that the leadership is entirely to blame for the confusing fiasco of the past week. So here are the many, many different options for pinning blame on someone for 114 Tory MPs telling the Prime Minister that they regretted his failure to introduce an EU referendum bill in the Queen’s Speech. Coffee Housers can choose their favourites.
1. Blame the leadership (Part I)
David Cameron should have had a proper strategy to deal with the ongoing demands of his backbenchers for a bill guaranteeing the 2017 referendum. Cabinet Ministers were pushing him for it to be published alongside the Queen’s Speech with an explanation that the Conservatives wanted to do this, but couldn’t. Instead, the Lib Dems claim the Prime Minister didn’t even raise the idea of legislative underpinning for the bill, and Cameron rushed out the announcement 48 hours before the vote. This appeared panicked.
2. Blame the leadership (Part II)
David Cameron has been trying to show his backbenchers that he loves them, he really does. There was a sense that he had succeeded in patching things up before this week, but it took just one article from Lord Lawson to send the party back into freefall again. Which, as Charles Moore argues in this week’s magazine, shows how ineffectual his refusal to ‘bang on about Europe’ has really been. And his attempt to appear loving was rather undermined by Downing Street’s failure to square John Baron on the draft bill. They could have made him believe it was his idea and a huge victory for backbenchers. Instead, Baron felt as though Downing Street was trying to detract from his Queen’s Speech moment of glory.
3. Blame the leadership (Part III)
It would have been easier for David Cameron to resist demands for a bill as well as a promise of a referendum if he wasn’t so very good at changing his mind. I blogged recently that Tory MPs think they are psychic because they can rebel on something which causes an enormous fuss at the time, only for it to be adopted as official party policy months later. Why bother being loyal? You can have far more influence if you’re a rebel who steers your leadership by causing panic. Watch out for how this affects the next backbench charge for a joint Tory/Ukip endorsement on the ballot paper.
4. Blame the leadership (Part IV)
As James explains in the magazine this week, the Prime Minister doesn’t have a Europe strategy. Eurosceptics I’ve spoken to this week suspect him of possessing a vision of a reformed Europe that is far from the minimalist one they dream of. On the day of that Big Europe Speech That Was Supposed To End All The World’s Problems, I noted that he referred to crime, climate change, energy and expansion of the EU. Lord Lawson’s observation that he couldn’t bring back anything of note struck a chord with those who are worried in the party.
5. Blame John Baron
It really has been a busy week for John Baron, a Tory backbencher who has not really registered on the consciousness of the normal voter who doesn’t spend their life studying Tory eurosceptic trends. Every show and media outlet wants a piece of him. But his colleagues are less enamoured. ‘Why did we have to push this to a vote?’ moaned one Tory MP. Number 10 has done everything it really can, and there were hardline eurosceptics like Douglas Carswell who wanted to give the Prime Minister credit for this, not keep pushing him beyond his red line. But there’s more to come from Baron. Last night he said:
‘The political establishment has closed ranks over the last thirty years to deny the electorate its say on the matter. We missed a chance to change that tonight but this is not the end.’
6. Blame Tory backbenchers
They’ll never, ever be satisfied, those at the top lament. Even if David Cameron gave them a referendum tomorrow, they’d be moaning that the polling booths weren’t open early enough. Whether you agree with that depends on whether you think backbenchers have been led on by the leadership before, or whether some of them are just re-enacting the early 1990s, like a political version of people who like to spend their spare time dressed up as Roundheads.
7. Blame William Hague
Yesterday afternoon, the Baron/Bone camp reported pressure from the whips and said they were hoping for 60 MPs to support the amendment. This might have been expectation management, but it might also have been true, because other MPs report that what really swung it was William Hague’s reassurance at the 1922 Committee just a few hours before the division that this really was a free vote. But he was trying to show that the leadership was relaxed about the vote.
8. Blame Nigel Farage
The Ukip leader has arguably made ‘europhile’ one of the dirtiest words in the Conservative party. As I reported yesterday, the mere suggestion that you might not be as robustly anti-Europe as you say you are is enough to send many a backbencher scuttling through the rebel lobbies, free vote or not, sensible demand or not. Farage’s interest in a joint Ukip/Tory deal is interesting because even if CCHQ continues to refuse to alter the rules to allow two badges on the ballot paper (and many suspect this is simply a holding line), Ukip could become a sort of kitemark denoting a Really Robust MP, like the British Lion mark on eggs, or the Fairtrade logo.
9. Blame the Westminster bubble
This week seven men were convicted of horrific sex crimes against young girls in Oxford, motorists were told they might have been paying over the odds for their petrol for over a decade, and, more cheeringly, the Bank of England suggested this country’s economy might be finally heading out of the woods. But instead, all eyes in Parliament were focused on a vote that makes no difference to government policy. MPs work hard for their constituents, but sometimes Portcullis House can turn into a hothouse of internal party rows about strategy.
10. Blame Nick Clegg
This is what Grant Shapps wants us to do. The whips kindly supplied Tory MPs with that useful 2008 leaflet featuring Nick Clegg talking about a referendum in time for PMQs yesterday. If Nick Clegg weren’t so intractable about giving the British people a say over their country’s sovereignty, the Queen’s Speech would have contained a referendum bill last year, backbenchers argue. And if all else fails, blaming Nick Clegg is usually where disgruntled Tories end up anyway.
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