The other day, Theresa May slunk into the Commons slightly late. I watched as a female MP, who’d made the mistake of sitting in her usual seat, hastily jumped up and scuttled away, mouthing apologies. It echoed that scene in the Devil Wears Prada where the formidable Miranda Priestley turns up at the Runway Magazine offices unannounced andincites panic among her employees.
Perhaps it was just an example of the aura of deference which usually envelops elder statesmen and ex-PMs in Parliament, but it got me thinking. Since her departure Theresa May has enjoyed a post-No 10 rehabilitation of sorts – from weak, unpopular Calamity Jane to unofficial Queen of the backbenches. On everything from lockdown to Afghanistan, she has been an articulate, effective thorn in the Government’s side, winning The Spectator’s “Backbencher of the Year” award and acquiring a range of unexpected admirers.
Many compare Mrs May’s backbench opposition to that of Ted Heath, who, after being ousted by Mrs Thatcher in 1975, retreated, fuming, to the green benches for what proved to be the start of an infamous 26-year tantrum. At the 1998 party conference, William Hague’s team had the naff wheeze of seating Tory grandees on the main stage on Ikea armchairs in primary colours – with blue ones reserved for Mrs Thatcher and Heath. Heath, who’d spent the afternoon complaining about them, duly glowered into the middle distance throughout the speeches. Later on in the green room, Mrs Thatcher attempted some small talk with her predecessor about the awful chairs. “Oh I rather like them,” piped up Heath, quick as a flash.
The Thatcher/Heath comparison isn’t quite fair – Mrs May often succeeds in criticising the Government without descending to Heathian pettiness (while Boris Johnson today enjoys nothing like Mrs Thatcher’s popularity). It’s easy to imagine her in years to come, swanning about future Tory conferences as a grande dâme, her chaotic tenure defined by deadlock and acrimony apparently forgotten.
When the time comes, will the Tory grassroots be so forgiving of Bozza? Memories are short in politics, and it’s far too soon to start writing this serial survivor’s obituary, but it’s worth asking nevertheless. Recent events leave the overwhelming impression of a rudderless outfit where no one is really in charge; an administration characterised by frenetic U-turns with no underlying strategy, let alone a philosophy; a Government whose authority is vanishing inside and outside of the Commons. Last week Sajid Javid flatly contradicted the PM’s press conference speculations about “a national conversation about mandatory vaccines” within 24 hours – one of several examples of high- ranking Cabinet members moving unilaterally to rein in the PM’s excesses.
What is notable about the Tories’ Plan B rebels, whose numbers last night sent a chastening message to their party leader, is the lack of any obvious unifying trend to their manoeuvrings. They are drawn from all sides of the Party and oppose the Government for myriad reasons.
Away from Parliament, the PM’s tax-raising green agenda has alienated many of his most loyal grassroots supporters, and fuelled a cost-of-living crisis which the pandemic can only partly explain. Even Donald Trump broadly kept his base onside while he repulsed large swathes of the American public. By contrast, it is not obvious who, if anyone, would rank as a Boris Johnson “fan” nowadays.
In the annals of other supposedly “bad” PMs, where would we place ours? Certainly the pandemic dealt the PM a particularly terrible hand. Perhaps one day, like Gordon Brown, future Boris will maintain that the public funds he sprayed around were the result of a once-in-a-generation crisis. (Like Brown, this will be only be half true.)
Last night’s dramatic vote on Plan B measures left the Government flirting with Ramsay Macdonald territory; relying on political opponents to pass votes. Anthony Eden took considerable flak for Suez, but some historians are beginning to reassess his tenure, concluding that Eden, for all his faults and economy with the truth, was contending with events beyond his control. And unlike our current PM, he at least had well over a decade as an effective foreign secretary under his belt before the crisis hit.
What, I suspect, will most doom Johnson in the eyes of grassroots Tories is a sense of overwhelming disappointment after the triumph of defeating Corbynism and leading Britain out of the EU. He is arguably the first PM since Thatcher to have a meaningful chance to define his own form of Conservatism, yet “Johnsonism” remains amorphous. No Tory leader in recent memory has enjoyed such a unique opportunity to implement vital reform or make conservatism palatable to future generations – and none has squandered it quite so quickly. “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”
