We are now seeing how the Tories prize loyalty above all else

Yesterday's manoeuvrings within the Tory party are some of the most bizarre I have ever witnessed in all my time following politics.

For Michael Gove who had been seen as one of Boris Johnson's key allies and a likely future Chancellor under a Johnson premiership to suddenly abandon his colleague, denounce him and announce he would be standing himself was extraordinary to watch. Then Boris, showman to the end made a speech peppered with references to Julius Caesar's Brutus and where in its denouement he withdrew from the leadership race using the carefully calculated phrase we have seen repeated on all media outlets: "..in view of the circumstances in parliament that person cannot be me.".*

It is becoming clear that Gove is now himself a busted flush having first brought down David Cameron's premiership (along with Johnson) and then latterly turned on Johnson and brought down his leadership ambitions too. There are lots of Tory MPs shocked by this behaviour and although politics is a dirty business I think there are now simply too many who will not want to be seen to reward this sort of behaviour. It's possible now that Gove doesn't even make it to the final ballot of members. He may even, if reports today are accurate withdraw from the race and throw his weight behind Theresa May who is now the clear front-runner and very likely to be the next Prime Minister.

Nothing is certain but May is 4/11 with Betfair with Gove at 19/2. For the rest of this post I am going to assume that Theresa May will now win.

Because in reality that fits the pattern of almost all the Tory leadership campaigns that I have witnessed as an adult. Right through from the one that followed the fall of Margaret Thatcher.

In 1990 Geoffrey Howe dropped his bombshell as he resigned from Thatcher's cabinet and Michael Heseltine responded to his clarion call that "The time has come for others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties, with which I myself have wrestled for perhaps too long." by challenging Thatcher for the leadership directly. As we all know his bid failed and instead the hitherto ultra-loyal John Major who had rapidly risen through the ranks to have recently become Chancellor of the Exchequer won the crown**. Heseltine was widely seen as having been punished for his disloyalty. This is despite the fact that the majority of Tory MPs knew that Thatcher was finished anyway, they did not want to reward Heseltine for having been the one to actually bring her down.

In 1997 after the Tories lost the general election the subsequent winner was William Hague. He had been very loyal to John Major all throughout his travails in the 1990s and was appointed to the cabinet after John Redwood had quit in 1995 order to challenge Major. He was seen as a trustworthy pair of hands to guide the Conservative Party through a difficult time. Redwood was eliminated in the second ballot, another victim of the Tory Party's dislike of disloyalty.

In 2001 the story was a little bit different and deviated from the norm in that the winner in the end was Iain Duncan Smith who himself had been a serial rebel in the 1990s against John Major's government. Duncan Smith was actually the beneficiary of the fact that he ended up in the final ballot against Ken Clarke who as a Europhile was wildly out of touch with the Tory membership who by now had the final say when the MPs had whittled the field down to two. This aberration however was short lived as the party rapidly realised they had made a mistake selecting Duncan Smith not least because it was very difficult for him to credibly demand loyalty from his parliamentary party after all the times he had failed to do the same thing himself under Major. So in 2003 without even a leadership election the Tories got rid of Duncan Smith through some back-room shenanigans and replaced him with Michael Howard the former Home Secretary who himself had been (publicly) loyal to Major in government thus ending the experiment of allowing a former rebel to lead them.

2005 saw another loyalist David Cameron push through the field to emerge victorious. Cameron in fact is the epitome of a loyal party member having devoted much of his life to working in the engine room of the Tory Party before he became an MP first in Central Office and then as a special adviser to Norman Lamont and Michael Howard. Indeed he and George Osborne used to help out prepping John Major for PMQs during the 1990s.

And so to the current leadership contest 11 years on. Given the history of how the Tory party selects its leaders and the disaster that befell it the one time it deviated from this norm and selected someone who was widely seen as disloyal it is looking like once again that rather than the showboating politicians and/or the ones who have been willing to publicly betray the party leadership it will be the quiet, unassuming but publicly loyal Theresa May who will win the ultimate prize.

There is almost certainly a lesson in here for future aspirant Tory leaders. Keep your head down, get on with the job and no matter what you might really think, always, always swear absolute loyalty to your leader.

It's the Tory way.


*As an aside this debacle shows how wrong I was when I wrote the other day that it was most likely to be Boris Johnson who won the leadership. I should have adhered more closely to what history tells us myself! I'll be more careful in future for sure.

**It's worth noting that Major was able to "have his cake and eat it" when it came to Thatcher's nomination for the first round of the leadership ballot. Thatcher's team had wanted Major's signature on her nomination papers as he was Chancellor and that would add weight to her bid. But Major did not sign her papers as at the time he was under anaesthetic having dental surgery. Hence he was able to both profess loyalty and simultaneously not dirty his hands by directly backing her. This contributed to his success in the second round and will perhaps go down as the luckiest dental problem in political history.

Is this what Boris is going to be like in the next few years?

I was amused to hear on the radio that Boris Johnson has waded into the BP situation by attacking American "anti-British rhetoric". He also said that the company was paying a very, very heavy price for the consequences of an accident and that UK pension funds had a “huge exposure” to BP

His words have a distinctly off-message tone and he is clearly positioning himself as the champion of the British underdog. Of course as Mayor of London he is not subject to the same diplomatic strictures that his governmental colleagues are. David Cameron might well agree with him but he cannot say so. He has to maintain relations with Obama and the US administration. William Hague for example has had to come out and say that he cannot detect any anti-Britishness in a clear rebuttal of Johnson's comments.

You can imagine senior Tories rolling their eyes in frustration at the fact that "good ol' Boris" is chipping in like this with his "voice of the people" act. After all, "He says wot the people are finkin' innit?".

We can expect to see much more of this sort of thing as Johnson continues to carve out his niche in anticipation of an eventual triumphant return to parliament and we can only presume a bid for the leadership at some point.

Of course then, episodes like today may come back to haunt him...

Fisking Boris Johnson on Clegg

Boris Johnson has a fascinating article in the Telegraph today. Fascinating not because it's a well thought out or argued piece (as Boris is well capable of), but because it is a hopelessly muddled and poorly constructed transparent attack piece. The sense of entitlement just drips off the page. I can only assume it is "written for the troops" to keep up their morale because I am sure this will do little to persuade the waverers as indeed a brief glance at the comments below it from the readers will make clear.

I have responded to some of his points below:

It must have been a couple of years ago that I was having dinner with the great Max Hastings, former editor of this paper, and he was being so gloomy about Conservative prospects that I scented a financial opportunity. Tell you what, I said, let’s have a bet. A thousand pounds says the Tories will win the next election. How about that?

Way to get the "party of the average person" vote Boris. You just casually bet what for many people would be several months worth of disposable income (after bills etc.) and think that people will be impressed by that? All you're doing is underlining how different the world that you and your fellow Tories move in is compared to most people. 18 days outside of a general election. Well done!

...My bet remains quite safe. I am certain that the Tories will win, and that the current fantasy of a Liberal Democrat resurgence is the biggest load of media-driven nonsense since the funeral of Diana.

Watching that debate, I had the clear impression that Cameron aced every question. His answers were clear, concise and knowledgeable, and in my focus group of 12- to 16-year-olds he was the overwhelming winner. “David Cameron knows more than the others,” said the 12-year-old, “and everything he says is true!”

This is why it is notoriously risky to try and judge how well someone did by your own partisan standards. I thought Clegg did very well on the night but it was only when the polls and commentators started to confirm this that it became clear this view is widely shared. Boris, you are biased and a room full of impressionable 12 - 16 year olds (I am not clear what demographic they are chosen from either) who doubtless wanted to impress the powerful Mayor of London who was asking them for their opinion is hopeless as a "focus group" as well.

Gordon Brown seemed stale and deeply unconvincing in his core assertion, that it was necessary to keep wasting exactly the same amount of money in order not to stall the recovery.

As for Clegg, I remember thinking that it was indeed a historic debate – the moment when the idea of a third force in British politics finally shrivelled under the Manchester TV lights. He was by far the worst, with many of his answers seeming to be semi-masticated versions of something Cameron had already said. And so you can imagine my amazement when those polls started to come in, and the news that the punters overwhelmingly scored it for Cleggie. It was one of those times when there seems to be only one solution to the problems of British politics, and that is to dissolve the electorate and summon a new one.

Yes, you are amazed because you are biased and cannot believe that people would think anything other than your boy done good. But they do. Cameron was pretty unimpressive Boris. "I once met a black man..." type stories, hopeless attempts to skewer Clegg which just left him able to set out more detail for our policies and a real inability to connect with the audience were the impression many were left with. I realise you are being tongue in cheek with your "dissolve the electorate" comment but is that really the right joke to make just over two weeks out from a General Election telling the voters that they are wrong? Let's see how this goes down shall we?

What has happened to us all, when serious papers can start raving about “Prime Minister Clegg”? Has someone put something in the water supply? Has some sulphur yellow cloud descended imperceptibly from Iceland and addled our brains

These are Lib Dems we are talking about!

How DARE these oiks get above their station like this!?

They say anything to anyone. They are not so much two-faced as positively polycephalous. They go around every university campus promising to abolish “Labour’s unfair tuition fees” – while dear Cleggie tells his party conference that this policy, this cardinal Lib Dem policy, would cost £12 billion and that the country can’t afford it.

Er, the party is committed to this policy in principle but the finances are in such a mess that we cannot afford to do it at the moment. You know, like the tax cuts that your party would like to implement but cannot for the same reason (well apart from the tax cuts for millionaires of course that you are still managing to fund). We are being sensible and pragmatic about what can be afforded whilst being clear as to what we would like to do and the principles underpinning our approach. You would attack us for being unrealistic if we did anything else.

In the north of England you will find plenty of Lib Dem literature extolling their “mansion tax”, a proposal on which they remain deafeningly silent in places like Richmond and Kingston, where it would mean a vast new tax on people who happen to live in overvalued houses.

OMFG!!!!11 A political party targeting its messages!? How very dare we? Not something of course that the Tories would ever do now is it?

Everybody treats Vince Cable as a semi-holy Mahatma Gandhi of British politics, because he is supposed in some way to have anticipated the financial crisis. Actually his most notable recommendation before the crisis was that Britain should join the euro – a move that would gravely have worsened our current position by leaving us in a Greek-style straitjacket.

No Boris, his most notable recommendations were that borrowing was spiralling out of control and the banks were making stupid mistakes which would all end in tears. You know, like what actually ended up happening because of the policies of the government that the Tories stood on the sidelines and cheered for. That's why people trust Vince most on the economy rather than Darling or Osborne.

What crouton of substance did Clegg offer last Thursday, in the opaque minestrone of waffle? He wants to get rid of Trident. Great! So Lib Dem foreign policy means voluntarily resigning from the UN Security Council, abandoning all pretensions to world influence, and sub-contracting our nuclear deterrent to France!

The policy is just to say no to a "like for like" replacement of Trident which we think is not suitable for the threats we now face. We are not advocating unilaterally disarming but instead are committed to a multi-lateral approach. You know, like Barack Obama has just announced in the US.

They are a bunch of euro-loving road-hump fetishists who are attempting like some defective vacuum cleaner to suck and blow at the same time; and the worst of it is that if you do vote Lib Dem in the demented belief that there could ever be such a thing as a Lib Dem government, you won’t get Prime Minister Clegg. You’ll get Prime Minister Gordon Brown, for five more holepunch-hurling years, because the Lib Dems almost always vote with Labour, and in my years in Parliament I can’t remember a single moment when they opposed a Labour measure to expand state spending or state control.

The Lib Dems almost always vote with Labour!? Absolute rubbish which a brief glance at voting records will make clear. How about 90 days detention without trial, 42 days detention without trial, ID cards, Digital Economy Bill (which the Tories broadly supported), Extradition Act 2003, DNA Database, Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, Trial without Jury etc. etc. etc. I could literally go on for hours.

I can’t think of anything worse for this country than some great ghastly soggy Lib-Lab coalition, dripping with piety and political correctness and unable to take the decisions we need for fear of offending the vast hordes of public sector special interest groups they collectively represent.

When have we said that we would form a coalition with Labour? And we have no special interest groups unlike the Tories funded by big business and multi-billionaires to whom they are beholden or Labour funded by the Unions.

That is why the current madness cannot last. The Lib Dems are everywhere today, like the orange spores of an exploded puffball. Next week they will be gone with the wind. Clegg is the beneficiary of cunning Labour spin, bigging up the third party in order to take the shine off the Tories. But when people understand that a vote for Clegg is a vote for Brown, they will stay their hands, and they will see that it is only by voting Tory that they can give this country the change it needs. That is still my prediction, and if Max disagrees, we can always increase the stake.

No Boris. A vote for Clegg is a vote for Clegg. The party is now in the lead in multiple polls. This tired old argument that "a vote for the Lib Dems is a wasted vote" or really a vote for someone else is falling apart. People have tumbled yours and the Labour party's anti-democratic game.

If people want real change they should vote for us and that message is now getting through. You can bluster and stamp your feet all you like that the electorate is not behaving as you decree they should. In the meantime we will go on spelling out our policies and explaining how we can help people with their lives.

The fact that one of the Tories' big hitters such as yourself is willing to devote an entire column to attacking us in this way just demonstrates how rattled you are by how the election campaign is going.

Is Paxman/Boris the new Frost/Nixon?

It was highly entertaining to see Jeremy Paxman interview Boris Johnson last night on Newsnight. Boris was most definitely not "on message" but I guess trying to make him toe the party line is a bit like trying to herd cats! However Jeremy's attempts to Paxo him did not really work out as you might expect...

Boris answered Paxman's questions about the Lisbon treaty and David Cameron's Bullingdon days in his own inimitable style, giving as good

as he got and taking the interview off on some fascinating tangents. He even at one point delivered a direct to camera statement after Paxman insisted following Boris' assertion that Paxman was seeking to "intermediate" too much!

It is well worth checking out and will surely become a classic of the genre. It is currently on the iPlayer here from about 16 minutes in or you can watch the embedded Youtube of it below: