If your television screens are suffering serious interruptions, it’s not the weather. It’s Margaret Thatcher spinning in her grave. She would be horrified at how the Conservative Party has degenerated from a party that really cares about ordinary folk and is dedicated to equality and opportunity, to a one issue dictatorship.
Harsh words? Not at all. Just a depressing hard truth.
Poor Theresa May. My God that woman has guts and determination, perhaps as much as Thatcher had. But Thatcher was there to slay the dragons of the left. They were a clear and necessary target. They were destroying Britain and had been for years. On this her party was totally behind her and any criticisms on other matters, were in coded language. In other words, we behaved like decent people towards each other and her.
But Madame has been kidnapped. And ransom notes with dark threats of death and torture come with the regularity of the flash of the assassin’s stiletto. Gavin Barwell doesn’t have to whisper in her ear every day, ‘thou art only mortal’. She bloody well knows it. And the IDS of March are fast approaching.
And her kidnappers? That awful, demented, chippy and repellant organisation called the European Research Group. One thing I can assure you of is that Madame will never suffer from Stockholm syndrome. They are far to odious to form any sort of attachment with. This group effectively controls all utterances from Number 10. Mogg sits on his throne with the triple crown of ERG and with his gift of infallibility gives blessings or condemns with bell, book and candle a heresy worthy of excommunication. In over thirty years I have never seen the Conservative party lose its way in such sinister circumstances.
I used to regard Mogg as a rather harmless eccentric who would entertain the House with whimsy and the occasional barmy idea. And perhaps one day be elevated to the chair of a committee in a bad year. But Mogg is very dangerous. He is a hyena in meerkat fur. Not only does he believe in the delusion of Brexit, he helped create it. Unlike Boris, who is a bumbling opportunist with a Rolls Royce brain which he drives like a Skoda, who believes in nothing other than himself. In other words a self made man who worships his creator.
And what would Thatcher have thought of the personalised abuse of John Major as a traitor and worse? She would be incandescent with rage. Horrified. John is as honourable and decent a man that has ever lead the Conservative Party and the country. He must have agonised about whether to speak out. But he knew that it was his duty. I would imagine that most MPs of all parties would agree with every word he uttered. The game is up. He knows it. Everyone knows it, except for the minority in the cult of belief. Even with the most optimistic of economic models post Brexit, the future isn’t good. And it might not even be Orange.
So who is going to stand up to the ERG? What on earth are Parliamentarians afraid of? Their shadows? Colonel and Mrs mad who run their associations? For God’s sake grow some balls. Do what you were elected to do. And what might that be? The right thing.
The ERG give a good impression of nothing more than a group of bitter people who suffered a rotten time at school and have come back years later with a political assault weapon in revenge. The Boringdom Club as a hellish antidote to the Bullingdon.
I really don’t think that the Tories can hold together for much longer. And neither can Labour who have had their long march to the wrong end of the ice pick. So who can I vote for? Who represents the middle ground? Who can lead the fight for decency and moderation. Nobody. Yet. But they have under a year to come forward. As Tony Blair once said, ‘it’s time for a change’. Courage mon braves
