Boris’s pitch to “shy Tories” is on the money

At the One Nation Hustings on Tuesday evening, Boris Johnson said that if chosen as Prime Minister he would “rule out” a snap General Election. It was a decisive line, and a smart one: his colleagues, who will decide whether he makes it onto the final ballot paper, are terrified of going to the country, and allaying their fears is vital for his campaign.

But it can be taken with a big pinch of salt.

Boris has said that if he becomes Prime Minister, we are leaving the EU – Deal or No Deal – on 31st October. That means that unless he can get a Brexit Deal through the House of Commons within a month or two of moving into Number 10 – which seems vanishingly unlikely, particularly as the House is due to rise for a three week Conference Recess just two weeks after returning from the long summer holiday – he will start preparing for a No Deal Brexit.

When those preparations are held up by Parliament, as is inevitable given the arithmetic, the Government will crumble – brought down, perhaps, by Philip Hammond and a rump of fellow hardcore Remainers – and a General Election will be called. The Tories under Boris will enthusiastically champion No Deal (swallowing up the Brexit Party) and Labour will either come off the fence and advocate a second referendum, or else be eaten alive by the resurgent Liberal Democrats. In all likelihood, in short, Britain will hold a proxy second referendum sooner rather than later.

The former Foreign Secretary knows only too well that this is how his Brexit strategy will pan out, which is why his leadership video, released yesterday, plays more like official propaganda the Conservative Party might release in the run up to a General Election: the polished two minute film shows the newly shorn candidate posing for photos with people in the street and explaining to potential voters the policies which they might like to get behind.

In other words, the Big Campaign has already begun for the former Foreign Secretary – and if he is after the segment of the electorate which won Cameron the 2015 election, it’s begun well.

When the Conservatives astonished the country by pulling a victory out of the hat four years ago, it was because “shy Tories” – public sector workers too afraid to call themselves Conservatives to their friends and colleagues – were nonetheless convinced that optimistic young Cameron and Osborne could offer more to them and their families than the virtue signalling Ed Miliband and his Ed Stone.

In the four years since that memorable election, virtue signalling both in Westminster and outside of it, has increased exponentially. Last month, London was ground to a standstill because politicians of all stripes decided that disrupting the climate change rallies led by Greta Thunberg wouldn’t look good, and just yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition spoke at a protest to wag his finger at the bad behaviour of the elected President of the United States.

Ordinary voters don’t like the gloomy smugness of it all, but understandably, given the aggressiveness on display at the Trump protest this week, aren’t prepared to shout back. Instead, they are showing their feelings at the ballot boxes by turning en masse to Nigel Farage – the antipathy of virtue.

Boris’s fiery, patriotic optimism offers them an alternative. He promises to spend more on infrastructure, on schools and on policing, not because Britain is on its knees and needs fixing (as Corbyn would claim) but to “make our country even greater”. To “shy Tories”, tired of dreary virtue signalling but too afraid to speak up, it must seem very attractive indeed.

Conservative MPs may be burying their heads in the sand right now, but deep down, they know they need an election winner. And Boris Johnon, like him or loathe him, is proving yet again that he could be just that. This race really is Boris’s to lose.