May’s deal with the EU will go down in flames in the House of Commons on Tuesday. To say her situation is hopeless is an understatement.
More than 100 of her own Tory MPs have publicly committed to vote against her, as have the DUP. She could have hoped to get a few Labour Brexiteers to get her over the line if she was close, and her whips could have bullied, bribed and cajoled a few of her own waverers with knighthoods, plum jobs and threats to expose girlfriends, boyfriends and dodgy business deals.
But with defeat absolutely certain, there is no point in expending that political capital. It is now certain that her margin of defeat – thought to be less than 50 just a week ago – will be closer to 200 than to 100.
We don’t need to know the details, but one thing is certain: she cannot survive. Whether she resigns voluntarily, whether she is ousted by threats from party grandees, or whether that bit-part player from a cheap Dickens novel TV adaption finally gets his 48 letters simply doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t even matter if she tries to cling to power. The simple point is that no political leader can survive such an enormous rejection by her own ‘supporters’. She’s toast. If you are gaming it out, any scenario that includes her staying on as leader can be discounted.
The Conservative Party will need a new leader; the selection mechanism is that Conservative MPs vote to select the two most popular candidates from their own ranks, who are then put to a vote of party members. Who those members would choose is tracked the website Conservative Home. This website is public, but contributions are restricted to card-carrying party members – literally; you have to show your party membership documents to get an account.
Sajid Javid
They have run an opinion poll of this rarefied electorate, and the result is clear. Boris Johnson, at over 24 per cent, has more than double the support of any other candidate. His three closest rivals, Sajid Javid, Dominic Raab and David Davis are bunched around 11 per cent. Regardless of which of the three are put to a membership ballot against Johnson, there is no reason to think the supporters of the other two would favour them so heavily as to overtake Johnson.
Boris Johnson is an utterly amoral, deceitful, lying, unprincipled, greedy mixture of equal amounts of ambition, privilege and grease. He built his career on lying to his readers in the Times. He was the prime distributor of fake news before the term was coined. He believes in nothing at all and he’s willing to burn his country to the ground to achieve it.
If, as seems at least a strong likelihood, Boris Johnson becomes UK prime minister within a couple of months, however briefly, it is certain that he will pursue the hardest of hard Brexits, quite possibly walking away ina ‘no deal’ scenario.
I had previously thought this unlikely, since the sense of self-preservation of the British establishment would compel them to accept whatever humiliation was needed to avoid catastrophe, much like they turned tail and ran in 1956, when their pretensions to imperial power died on contact with reality in the Suez Crisis, and President Eisenhower ordered the British to cop themselves on.
But Suez was not given careful consideration – it was over in 10 days. Brexit has been a reality for more than two years, yet when persistently told of the havoc that a no-deal Brexit would inflict on the UK economy, Johnson’s response was concise – ‘Fuck business’.
This chaos of an unplanned Brexit is not something that comes as a surprise to Johnson or his ilk. There is ample evidence that they are fully aware of it, and are taking steps to mitigate its effect on their income and personal lives. Former Conservative deputy chairman Michael Ashcroft has advised British firms to re-domicile themselves to Malta.
Jacob Rees-Mogg has moved to establish his Somerset Capital Management in Dublin, Nigel Lawson has taken out French residency. Former Brexit minister Steve Baker has made a large investment in a company capitalising on Brexit instability, John Redwood advised clients of his investment firm to move from the UK to the Eurozone, and Nigel Farage has already taken out German passports for his children.
Boris Johnson
Johnson and his cohort may not have made themselves fully aware of the details of the chaos that will ensue for the UK – and for Ireland, as if they cared – but he is not totally naïve. He has made a simple calculation: his lust for power is worth more to him than his country.
It is possible that Johnson won’t get the leadership, but it is hard to see how any of the other candidates would do much different to him;Davis out of laziness, Raab and Javid, as hardline ideologues.
The bottom line is that we are in for a very hard landing. Brace yourself. There’s No Hope. It’s Over.
