What does the Conservative party stand for? That’s no longer possible to answer because it is now a divided party. With a week to go before the EU referendum, the gloves have come off in an increasingly fractious blue-on-blue battle.
News articles, editorials and columns in newspapers of every political hue reflect the deepening divisions. And it is has become apparent that David Cameron and George Osborne are taking greater heat for the way in which they are arguing the Remain case than their leading Leave rivals, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.
Headlines on news pages across the national press on Thursday - left, right and centre - made miserable reading for the chancellor:
“Tories revolt over Osborne’s Brexit ‘punishment’ budget” (Guardian); “Tory civil war over Osborne’s Brexit budget” (i); “65 Tory rebels tear into Osborne” (Mail); “Tories turn on Osborne over ‘punishment budget’” (Times); “Osborne faces his own exit over EU threats” (Express);
“Chancellor finished if Britain quits Europe, say scores of Tories” (Telegraph); “Tories mutiny: 65 MPs threaten to topple chancellor” (Sun); “57 Tory MPs would vote against emegency budget” (Financial Times); “Tory MPs revolt over Osborne’s budget to fill £30bn ‘black hole’” (Metro); “65 Tory rebels: we’ll block an emergency budget” (Mirror).
Editorials in traditional Tory-supporting papers that favour Brexit were nothing more than full-frontal attacks on Osborne:
“His threat to punish voters with swingeing tax rises and spending cuts if they decide to pull out of the EU is an act of utter desperation”, said the Mail.
It was “deeply irresponsible of him to talk Britain down - ludicrously predicting ‘decades’ of woe if we withdraw.” Then the Mail widened its attack:
“The chancellor is a supreme exemplar of the political class, never having held a job in the real world since he entered the Westminster bubble at 23.
Indeed, he often appears to have more in common with Labour spinmeister Lord Mandelson, his fellow architect of Project Fear, than with voters...
And there’s an ominous message for his cheerleader, the prime minister, too. It will not have escaped Mr Cameron’s notice that 65 irate Tories signed yesterday’s protest letter, while only 50 MPs are required to trigger a leadership election.”
The Telegraph saw Osborne’s warning of a punishing budget in the event of Brexit as “a sign of panic among Remain leaders.”
It referred to “the extraordinary spectacle” of 65 Conservative MPs pledging to reject Osborne’s budget, but imagined that “cooler heads” would prevail after the vote.
Tories on both sides of the argument should work together “for the good of the Conservative party, and the country.”
That’s the last thing the Sun wants. In the event of a Brexit vote it does not expect - and clearly does not want - Osborne and Cameron to survive in office.
It thought it depressing that Osborne would stoop so low as “to terrify people away from voting Leave.” The chancellor’s claim that Brexit would blow a £30bn hole in Britain’s finances “is wild speculation...
“Our view is that those predictions would be exposed as phantoms. And as bogus as this Brexit budget.”
Several columnists added to the chorus of criticism. In the Telegraph, Allister Heath called Osborne a “kamikaze chancellor” by employing a “disgraceful, self-harming... suicidal set of policies” with his forecast of an “absurd, recession-inducing emergency budget.” He wrote:
“Mr Osborne no longer has any hope of leading a Tory party that he now despises, and is unlikely to remain as chancellor for long even if Remain wins next week.”
In his Express column, “Osborne has lost all credibility with his budget threat”, Leo McKinstry accused the chancellor of “gross irresponsibility” with “a desperate act of political intimidation” and “an astonishing display of contempt for our national interests.”
“With polling day so close,” he wrote, “the treacherous political establishment is fighting viciously to defend its vested interests.”
Simon Jenkins, in a typically counter-intuitive Guardian column, said he had been “shocked at the mendacity of ‘project fear’” and the “silly talk” about the likely economic effects of Brexit, asking rhetorically: “what on earth is George Osborne on about?”
You have to read his full column to appreciate the subtlety of his argument that has convinced him, a long-time Eurosceptic, to vote Remain.
Hamish McRae, writing for the Independent, was sceptical about Osborne’s threat of another austerity budget. In the real world, he doubted that the chancellor would tale such stringent measures.
“The deficit-correction programme would be pushed back by two years,” he suggested. Even accepting that Brexit would have a negative effect on public finances, and also accepting it would be £30bn hit, it “would be bad news, but not a catastrophe.”
Aside from Osborne, there were plenty of knocks for Cameron too. The Mail’s Stephen Glover, for instance, aimed his cannons directly at the prime minister. An almighty mess will follow the referendum vote, he forecast.
“In the Tory party there will be acrimony and division. In the country as a whole, the political class will have never been held in such low esteem.”
We could have been spared “much of the rancour and vituperation”, he wrote. But Cameron “above all others, has succeeded in turning this debate into an ugly bare-knuckle fight.” (Did Glover fail to notice the Mail’s lack of boxing gloves?)
Anyway, he argued that if Brexit wins, Cameron is finished and if Remain prevails “unless it is by an overwhelming majority, he will be a wounded, discredited and unhappy.”
Glover believes that the Leave camp’s leading lights, Johnson and Gove, “have for the most part maintained a more good-humoured and statesmanlike air than Messrs Cameron and Osborne.”
By contrast, the prime minister “has lowered the tone, and turned what should have been a respectful, if inevitably lively, debate into a nasty, and very un-British, slanging match.” He concluded:
“Perhaps the greatest casualty of what has happened is the loss of public trust. Even voters drawn to Remain recoil at the debasement of political discourse, and regret that lying has become such an accepted part of political life.”
Are we then to believe that the pro-Brexit press has not been indulging in a slanging match? Have papers earned public trust through truth-telling? And, as many people on radio phone-ins and in TV discussions have asked in recent weeks, whose truth should we believe?
