Moving on

I recall a chilling moment some years ago at a Select Committee interrogation, though fortunately as a spectator rather than the witness. The Minister for Immigration of the time was being asked repeatedly about her department’s figures and statistics. As the Committee drew breath, she said to the Chair, “I think we’ve spent enough time on these now”. After an agonising pause came the icy reply, “In this room Minister, we decide when we move on, not you.”

And that is the Conservative Party’s current dilemma. No matter how much some figures wish to move on from the leadership issue, it is not up to them, and repeated requests to do so will be judged by the ultimate committee chair, the electorate.

The sudden, though not unexpected no confidence vote in Boris Johnson had a predictable outcome. There were not enough votes against him to see him off, and not enough for him to see off the challenge. The only certainty is that the uncertainty continues.

There are a number of risks ahead, some obvious, others less so. The first is the bitterness that follows such a vote. Without a vote the size of concern is disguised. The vote has flushed out the numbers, and with it the statements of those who were for and against. These cannot be undone and have been carefully stored by media and local constituency opponents. At some stage, MPs will be gleefully asked to explain how they made what turned out to be “the wrong choice”. In the meantime, the Parliamentary Party is divided into camps, and the upping of the rhetoric by Boris Johnson’s supporters will continue, unless self-discipline gets a hold.

The second risk is the inevitability of a second vote. The number of votes cast against the Prime Minister was substantial — 40%. A similar figure was taken by some MPs to signal the end of Theresa May’s tenure in Downing Street. This will suggest that all items of government business and policy must be judged against the possibility that more MPs will join the anti-Boris Johnson camp, rather than on the merits of the policy itself. The coming storms of by-election defeats may already have been priced in. But these and the Privileges report from the Commons suggest that, however much No10 wants to draw that line, there are inevitable “events” that will derail them.

The third risk is drift, at a time when all acknowledge that the Government will now have to deal with economic consequences that will inflict financial pain of a kind not seen for decades. Full concentration and urgent measures are necessary, and if an appearance emerges that the Conservative Party has more on its mind than the needs of those affected, then the party’s electoral chances will fall even further.

But, for Conservative supporters there is a possibility of resolution, and a glimmer of hope. The resolution should come from swift action. It needs to get on with it. If it believes that the problems surrounding Boris Johnson’s leadership are so acute, then senior figures around him — those who have custody of the history of a party that is bigger than any individual — know what their duty must be. Equally, if a policy programme to deal with the current crises, put forward by a cabinet which might now be augmented by some previously excluded senior MPs, is supported afresh then the Parliamentary Party needs to say so, and get on with it. I fear a long drawn out summer of speculation is however the more likely path. That is what will most dismay party supporters.

The glimmer of hope comes from an Opposition which ought to be 15 points ahead in the polls, but is not, and is now about to be engulfed in a series of union led strikes in which they will tie themselves in knots. Yet again an unexpected cavalry has ridden over the horizon for the Government, and sympathy for those threatening disruption on a 1970s scale will be scant. If the threat is seen off, and if Labour is damaged, then a lifeline will have been thrown.

For the most historically successful political organisation in the western world, the Conservative Party certainly makes heavy weather of it.

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