“I somehow fear,” texted James Cleverly to Rory Stewart, “that the people who are going to decide the Tory leadership are not the ones who turn up to see you and Alastair Campbell.”
The now former future Tory leader was responding to a message from his fellow former future Tory leader, who is managing to get over the brutal experience of political defeat through the therapy of our podcast, The Rest Is Politics.
We had just launched our recent tour in Brighton, at a time Cleverly was still in the race, where on a show of hands as to who should lead the Conservatives, he had the support of well over 90%, while Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick between them failed to reach double figures in a crowd of several thousand. Rory passed on the news.
By the time we reached Manchester, Cleverly was out, Tory MPs having decided in their wisdom that Jenrick and Badenoch were the final two from which the members should select the successor to Liar Johnson, Economy-wrecker Truss and Get-me-out-of-here Sunak.
But for the rest of the tour, we kept Cleverly in, and so by the end had polled more than 30,000 people, asking them to imagine they were Tory members, and vote for whoever they felt was best placed to take on Keir Starmer. North, south, east, west, England, Scotland and Wales, it was a landslide for Cleverly. Even at the O2, with almost 15,000 people present, Jenrick and Badenoch between them secured fewer than 20 hands raised.
Just as Labour, first in the era of Tony Benn, then under Jeremy Corbyn, decided that a move to the left was the way to respond to defeat, so the Tories have decided to move even further to the right. Just as Labour’s leftwards lurch was a guarantee of time in the wilderness, so too is the Tories’ lurch to the right now.
Though we had a smattering of Tory members present, Cleverly is right that our spectators will not be deciding the outcome. They will, however, be helping to decide the outcome of the next general election. And their very strong message was that neither Jenrick nor Badenoch has much chance of becoming prime minister.
The government has had a few rocky weeks, but Cleverly’s elimination is without doubt a dreadful error by the Tory MPs who like to sell themselves as “the world’s most sophisticated electorate.” Labour gain.
Yes, of course, I also asked our audiences whether they thought Brexit was going well. At the O2, Brexit polled even worse than Badenoch, just one hand raised to say it was a success. The biggest pro-Brexit vote was in Cardiff, with three, outnumbered by 1,000 to one.
I ask the same question of business audiences, schools, colleges, charities and random conferences, and it is pretty much the same story, and the same score, everywhere. Practically nobody thinks Brexit is going well.
When we reached the O2, the climax of the tour, the vote was so overwhelming, I couldn’t help going off on one when we were asked what single thing we would like this government to do in the current term. I am grateful to the audience member who taped it and sent me a transcript, and suggested that I record it in her favourite newspaper, ie this one.
“This is a form of madness,” I said, after that sole pro-Brexit hand was raised. “Politics is supposed to be the art of the possible. How can it be possible that something which has made us poorer, which has taken 5% out of the economy, which has hit trade with our closest partner so badly, is just parked, when millions and millions of people are unhappy with how it has gone? It’s made us weaker in the world too… did you hear the ex-head of MI6 this week, Alex Younger, saying that Putin and Xi are laughing at us for what we have done?
“Poorer and weaker, yet somehow, because of one vote, on one day, June 23, 2016, when 52% voted for a plan that didn’t exist, promises that couldn’t be kept, lies for which nobody has been held accountable, somehow the country cannot revisit it.
“Tell me of anything else that takes such a huge chunk out of the economy and the politicians all go… ‘nothing to be done. Move on’.
“Wes Streeting was at it yesterday – I like Wes, he is a good minister – but there he was, the big investment conference in London, ‘debate settled, move on.’ There were some big names there and it’s great they want to invest in Britain. But they all know the damage Brexit has done. I back the government trying to get in investment, but we could do such a better job if we faced the truth, that Brexit is a disaster; a gigantic act of self-harm, a mess; and we have to do more than reset, we have to fix.
“They are going to fix the foundations, they say, fix the fundamentals. This is fundamental. So at a minimum, I hope that by the end of this parliament, the government will recognise that the decision to rule out even trying to rejoin the Single Market and the Customs Union was a mistake, and that they reverse that decision.”
I was going to add something about giving back to younger generations the rights and freedoms taken away from them, but the applause was rolling round the auditorium, so I shut up. For now…
Given my addictive personality, it is definitely a good thing that I have never been into drugs, soft or hard. But even I, innocent though I am, could not fail to notice the pungent cannabis odour in my O2 dressing room. American rapper Lauryn Hill had performed the night before. She and her friends certainly left their mark on the place. And Rory Stewart – he of the opium fame – seemed to want to spend more time in my dressing room than his own.
I was looking forward to debating with former Tory minister Jo Johnson at an education conference in north London. Alas, Tory and SNP legacy transport issues left him stranded in Scotland. The organisers asked if I could think of anyone to stand in at such short notice.
There, sitting across the kitchen table, was one of the country’s foremost education journalists and campaigners, my partner of more than 40 years, Fiona Millar. She did a fine job. We probably agreed more than Jo Johnson and I would have done, not least shared views on the societal downsides of private education. We also both lamented the fact that education has fallen down the political agenda from the days when “education, education, education” wasn’t just a Tony Blair soundbite, but a genuine indication of priority.
Talking of which … I spent Saturday with David Blunkett, who was a great education secretary, watching his team, Sheffield Wednesday, against mine, Burnley. It’s not the first time we’ve watched a game together, and it is always fascinating to see how much he can read of how the game is going from the commentary through his headphones, the atmosphere, the shouts and the conversations around him.
“What a pass,” he said at one point.
“How do you know?”
“I heard it.”
What a man.
