After spending much of the year briefing against one another behind the scenes, the Tory party broke cover in the Commons when Bill Cash tabled an urgent question on the government’s Brexit negotiation strategy. As the whole point of the government’s strategy is to have no fixed plan about anything, as there is no one plan on which more than a handful of MPs can agree, open warfare was the inevitable result.
With David Davis doing his best to provide no clarity about anything – a task to which he is ideally suited – before the Lords Brexit committee, it was left to his junior minister, the hapless Robin Walker, to put a positive spin on the government’s difficulties. Everything was going extremely well, he insisted in a pinched voice, because the country was going to leave the EU in March 2019.
This wasn’t exactly the answer Cash wanted to hear. He was outraged that the EU had had the cheek to publish its own guidelines – how dare it sneak out its position in broad daylight – and wanted reassurances that Britain wasn’t going to have anything to do with Johnny Foreigner after March 2019. Just one EU regulation was one too many. Better to be bankrupt than a vassal state. Walker squeaked something non-committal in reply.
The shadow Brexit minister, Paul Blomfield, stepped in to act as an unwanted marriage guidance counsellor intent on achieving the messiest divorce possible. Ignore the small minority of Tory MPs who wanted Brexit at any cost and stick with the majority who wanted a sensible resolution. One where there were no red lines over the European court of justice or the customs union. One remarkably similar to what the chancellor had suggested in Davos the previous week.
At the mention of Philip Hammond, John Redwood became apoplectic. The chancellor was an apostate. The betrayer of the one true Brexit. The only way to show the EU we meant business was to crash out on World Trade Organization rules. That would show them. Redwood becomes more detached from reality by the day. Anna Soubry responded by imploring the government to stand up to the 35 Tory hardline MPs who were driving the calls for an ideological Brexit.
By now Walker looked to be on the verge of a breakdown. Mainly because he had absolutely nothing to say. He couldn’t be seen to do anything to upset the ideologues who scented betrayal. And he couldn’t do anything to give any reassurance to the remainers on his own benches because the government’s official position was that it could get a deal that wasn’t on the table. So all he could do was be a bit useless. To his credit, he did this well.
Tiring of the Blue on Blue attacks that were exposing the divisions in his own party, Walker eventually went for the nuclear option. “The prime minister has shown real leadership,” he observed. This briefly shut everyone up, as MPs on both sides of the house wondered if he was trying to be funny. It’s the absence of any leadership that is largely responsible for the disintegration of the Tory party. A prime minister who is too weak to call out a small minority of both her cabinet and her party.
Within a few seconds, hostilities within the Tory party were resumed. And when there was the odd lull, Labour MPs were more than happy to fan the flames with a few well-judged interventions. The longer the Tories fought amongst each other, the more securely Walker impaled himself on the head of a pin. Neither side gave an inch. It was all going to end in tears.
