cancel2 2022
Canceled
Cameron could placate his party but he is dividing it
Let us remember that Friday morning, after the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, when the Prime Minister addressed the nation from Downing Street. Despite a clear margin of victory – 55 to 45 per cent – he still felt the need to appease, bribe, and propitiate the Scots, lest the 45 per cent who had, to coin a phrase, voted “leave”, turned restive. Despite being offered more powers – including fiscal ones – the Scots did indeed rebel. At the general election seven months later they returned 56 SNP MPs out of 59; opinion polls showed a majority wanting to leave the UK; and the SNP is predicted to continue its advance and demolish Labour in the Scottish elections next week.
Recalling this, some Tory MPs wonder what Mr Cameron will do if, after 23 June, he has deceived the public sufficiently to have them vote to stay in the EU, but by less than the 10 per cent margin that provoked concessions to the Scots. His management of his party so far has been abominable. Given the vast majority of Tory activists want to leave, and most of his MPs feel that way either overtly or covertly, how would he hold the party together after, say, a 51-49 victory? The country would be angry and divided enough , but his party might prove unmanageable. The Prime Minister continues to use public funds to sanction a torrent of lies, exaggeration, distortions and “forecasts” based on apocalyptic assumptions.
If we vote to Leave, we’re out: a change is a change. But if a slim majority endorses the status quo matters will be fractious. What could Mr Cameron offer a massive minority of disaffected people in those circumstances – a group for whose views and intelligence he shows nothing but contempt? I have heard suggestions that Michael Gove should be made deputy prime minister: I’ll second that, but it would buy the silence only of Mr Gove and those of his friends who would benefit from his deserved promotion. Millions of others, Tory supporters or not, would not give a stuff.
The impotence of Mr Cameron to do anything else brings us back to the reality of why we must leave the EU. In September 2014 he could offer things to the Scots to make them feel better about the Union. But because the EU controls Mr Cameron and the United Kingdom, rather than the other way round, there is nothing he can offer the 49 per cent – or whatever the high number for the minority would be – to make them feel better about deciding to remain a client of Brussels.
He can’t promise to restrict immigration from the EU, which is what people most want. He can’t realistically promise to cut our £350m a week membership fee (£276m after our rebate). He can’t even promise that the so-called “deal” he got in February will be implemented, because our partners may still decide to chuck it out once we have voted. And he certainly can’t promise that other intrusions into UK sovereignty won’t happen – once we have voted to stay in we would have to take the EU on its terms, and not the reverse. Our people do not take kindly to being bullied, or deceived, or manipulated, or told what to do by foreigners.
Managing a country with such high levels of disillusion will be made worse by having to hold together his party. A very senior and thoughtful Tory MP told me last week of his annoyance that the BBC were gleefully reporting a “civil war” in his party because of the penetrating critique Mr Gove unleashed against the worthless Treasury document predicting economic ruin if we left the EU. He was right: the party is, for the most part, rubbing along together, and maintaining the civilities normal between colleagues.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...paign-cameron-is-preparing-his-own-death-bed/
