The Tory Left wants Rishi Sunak to take a leaf out of Theresa May’s book by unilaterally giving up British leverage in a dispute with Brussels. Where May boxed in her country and her successor by accepting the UK must do nothing in pursuit of Brexit that would lead the EU to think it needed to impose a ‘hard border’ on the island of Ireland, the issue now is the passage of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill which is currently paused in the House of Lords.
The Bill, which would give the Government legal power to walk away from onerous aspects of the Protocol, has undoubtedly helped concentrate minds at the European Commission as regards the need for that instrument to be made more flexible.
Yet the Remainer rump among Tory MPs and peers is pressing for the Bill to be dumped as part of any new fix on the Protocol agreed between Sunak and Brussels rather than have it passed and then held in reserve as a power that could be deployed in the event of future disputes. Some even wish to see it dropped before a new deal is reached.
The blueprint of the Tory Left has become an electoral cul-de-sac
MPs on the left of the party have been hostile to the very idea of the legislation from the outset. Simon Hoare, the Tory MP for North Dorset, last year described arguments for it as ‘flimsy at best and irrational at worst’. Today Hoare renewed his campaign against it on Twitter by claiming: ‘With negotiations on-going through the process there is no ‘need’ for the Bill”.
Many Tory grandees in the Lords share that view and could be expected to rebel against the legislation if it were to be re-started. By contrast, Boris Johnson has let it be known that he believes Sunak would be making ‘a great mistake’ were he to ditch the Bill.
So what should Sunak do? He has three main options; withdraw the legislation before a new deal with Brussels, withdraw it as part of a new deal with Brussels, or get it passed anyway as an insurance policy for the future.
No doubt he will be tempted to take the second, ‘middle’ way. That would indeed be a mistake, not least because it would embolden the Left of his party to place more pressure on him over other issues, such as crucial impending legislation to crack down on illegal immigration.
Were the ‘liberal Conservative’ tendency – which already considers the UK agreement with Rwanda ‘ugly’ (copyright Jesse Norman) – to succeed in emasculating proposed new powers to ensure illegal arrivals cannot stay in the UK or claim asylum here then Sunak might as well just give up and roll out a red carpet outside Downing Street for Keir Starmer to walk up.
Because the key point for even the most pragmatic or ideologically vacuous of Tories to understand is that the blueprint of the Tory Left has become an electoral cul-de-sac.
Millions of voters may agree with the central nostrums of its parliamentary representatives – that we shouldn’t have left the EU, that the Government shouldn’t prioritise another crackdown against asylum seekers coming from France, that the Tories shouldn’t engage in a ‘culture war’ against militant trans or the demands of BLM – but almost none of those people will even consider voting Tory in 2024.
The only hope for the party is to sustain the new coalition between traditionally-minded core Conservatives and the Red Wall electorate that proved so successful in 2019. This necessitates Sunak’s administration being far more in tune with the instincts of its new deputy chairman Lee Anderson, despite a briefing campaign against him being in full swing among the patrician tendency.
The leading lights of the Left flank of the Tory party are now praised mainly by those who detest the Conservatives. Some would even say they have become the useful idiots of such people. It is a major come down that they are struggling to come to terms with, given that they have always regarded the Right as unelectable and themselves as bestriding the crucial centre-ground.
This longstanding over-estimation of their own popularity is surprising given Edward Heath’s poor electoral record and Margaret Thatcher’s excellent one. But for many, history starts in 1990 and tells a story of John Major rescuing a party headed for oblivion because of surging Euroscepticism and the introduction of the poll tax.
Of course, the Right (‘the bastards’) get the blame for the rout of 1997, rather than Major. After that Hague’s right-wingery as leader (‘let me take you to a foreign land’, ’24 hours to save the pound’) is blamed for Labour’s 2001 landslide – possibly even by him these days – and then Iain Duncan Smith, the Quiet Man of the Right, had to be withdrawn before Michael Howard got an unwelcome response to his 2005 question: ‘Are you thinking what we’re thinking?’, ie ‘not really’.
Then Cameron’s moderate ‘modernising’ project is heralded for bringing the party back to power (rather than the waning of Blair, the clunkiness of Brown and the financial crash).
But under any reasonable reading the interpretations of the Tory Left then become increasingly fanciful. They have no credible explanation that can blame the Right for May’s loss of a majority followed by Johnson’s landslide won on the basis of doing whatever it took, including flouting constitutional norms, to implement a ‘hard’ Brexit. And they offer no path to retaining power.
If Rishi Sunak allows himself to become a hostage of the Tory Left then he will also become a hostage to ill-fortune. He needs to play hard ball with Brussels.
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