Five seconds ago, Michael Howard was walking on Tory water. Any suggestion either that his opportunism might rebound on him or that the party was making a strategic error in clinging to the Blairite consensus was dismissed by those who thought deliverance was at hand on account of their new leader's manifest 'grown-up' political skills. Yet now, panic is breaking out and internal recriminations are reportedly flying. At the eleventh hour, the party has suddenly woken up to the threat posed to it at next week's European elections by the UK Independence Party, which wants the UK to leave the EU altogether. To see off this threat, the Tories planted a briefing in Monday's Times painting UKIP as off the wall. But as the Times reports today, the silly chumps now realise this might not have been too clever:

'Some of Michael Howard’s closest advisers are alarmed that this week’s attack on UKIP as “extremist” may have backfired, alienating prospective Tory voters. They fear it looks like an admission that the Conservatives have failed to get their own Eurosceptic message across. Many were horrified that a briefing describing UKIP members as “cranks and political gadflies” was revealed in The Times on Monday. Mr Howard, the Tory leader, is thought to have been deeply angered by the revelation. “It was not what Michael intended at all,” said one insider. Mr Howard backed away from the slur in a halting performance during a BBC interview yesterday, saying it only applied to some UKIP members. The recriminations over how UKIP has gained a foothold in the Tory heartland are so intense that some are predicting a Shadow Cabinet reshuffle after the June 10 elections.'

The Tories' discomfiture has only been increased by another maladroit move, in which Howard first supported next week's threatened fuel protests, but then apparently backtracked when accused by the government of irresponsibility, as the Telegraph reports:

'Asked whether he would back protests, he said: "As long as they are peaceful and within the law, they may well be supported." But Mr Howard appeared to qualify his support for the protests after Labour and the Liberal Democrats accused him of "irresponsibility" in supporting action which could disrupt people's lives. He said he would not back any protest that stopped people "going about their daily business". Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, accused Mr Howard of "complete opportunism". "He knows what is driving up prices at the pump is the high international oil price," Mr Darling said.'

Darling is right. Blaming the government for the current oil hysteria, which has been caused by a combination of soaring demand and the gathering crisis in Saudi Arabia, leaves a bad taste in the mouth. By playing such games, Howard makes himself look untrustworthy. Voters smell out opportunism from a long way off and don't like it. Ever. It's a political killer.

As for the UKIP threat, this is just bad politics. The Tories haven't been listening to the people. They have made two seriously flawed assumptions: that staying in Europe and pledging to reform it from within is 'the centre ground' of politics, and that the be-all and end-all of the Europe issue is to paper over the deep fissures within the party. Wrong on both counts. All across Europe, populations are in revolt against the EU project because they realise the threat it poses to democracy and to national self-government. In this country, the passionate anger over the way the EU has already all but destroyed our capacity for self-government over a vast swathe of issues cannot be over-estimated; and that's before people get onto the prospect of the EU constitution.

People have understood that the prospect of reforming the EU from within to accommodate the UK's national interest is nil. They therefore think that any politician who promises to do just that is merely yet another lying toad. Their frustration is at boiling point, because they believe that there is not one mainstream political party which is prepared to face up to this honestly and squarely. On this issue, if they are Conservative voters, they have given up on the Tories. That's why they are going to vote UKIP, even though it almost cerrtainly contains individuals who are wacky, fringe politicians and maybe -- round the edges at least -- who hold unsavoury views. People don't care. They want to register their protest, to fire a shot across the bows of mainstream politics to show that they have had enough of the lies and that they want someone -- anyone -- to give them their country back.

Opinion polls show that somewhere between one quarter and 40%+ of the public want to leave the EU altogether. Given that there has never been any mainstream campaigning to that end and that the arguments for such a move have never been put, these are astonishingly high percentages. The Tory party has not noticed that the centre ground of British politics has moved. Still in the grip of deep demoralisation, it remains unable to elevate its gaze from the obsessive perusal of its own navel. Were it to do so, it would realise that until and unless it has the intellectual understanding of what it is that it should be fighting to articulate and to defend, and that only a display of conspicuously brave leadership will win it the respect and trust of the electorate while craven followership will earn it only contempt and derision, it will remain a squabbling rump doomed to irrelevancy.

Posted by melanie at June 3, 2004