It is hard enough to hold a political party together when you are dealing with squabbling egos who each want a better job and are motivated by jealousy and envy. It is a lot harder when you add to the mix a whole lot of MPs who think they see the truth with same misty eyed certainty. Particularly when every faction within the Conservative Party is pushing a different and entirely incompatible version of that certainty.
We now have the ludicrous position of having a Prime Minister that isn’t very good at her job, has a set of MPs and party members who all know that, but who can’t be removed. The day she goes open warfare breaks, the party splits in two and it becomes clear to the entire country just how big a mess May has got the country into as a result of her desperate attempts to patch up the divisions within her Party.
So how long she can last has become a pretty important question.
I have been arguing since she lost seats at the General Election that the very certainty of chaos as soon as she leaves made her very secure in office indeed. The absence of any other leader who could be tolerated by both of the factions is her prime asset and it shows no sign of going away.
And yet. As the Brexit deals get closer it is getting harder for her factions to stick with her. One faction is trying very hard indeed to make sure Brexit isn’t a total cock up and believes that the only way to avoid serious harm to British business is to move very slowly and to make sure nothing much changes in April 2019. That faction recognises that it is going to be necessary to follow all the EU rules for at least another two years and probably for quite a bit longer if not permanently. The other faction genuinely believes that the UK can only truly prosper the second it ceases to be a vassal state of the EU and all this shilly shallying around is simply delaying the glorious day of deliverance – or worse still ensuring that it never arrives.
With every passing day it gets harder for those two factions to swallow their frustrations and to stick with their hope that if May clings on to power for long enough then they’ll eventually get what they want. You can only fudge a deal and play off one side against the other for so long. As soon as you actually write down the deal the game of compromise is over.
Then there is the small issue of local elections coming up in May. If the Prime Minister proves to be an excellent campaigner and the Conservatives hold their own with the electors then she could yet succeed in her strategy of doing as little as possible and muddling through. She hasn’t shown much talent in that regard so far. If the Conservatives lose heavily she is toast. The clamour for her to go from within her own party will be impossible to contain. If she goes under those circumstances then the level of chaos that will follow will be off the scale. A ruling party tearing itself to pieces weeks before the Brexit deal is due to be completed is not exactly anyone’s idea of good stable government.
So I think the next local elections are a defining moment in British politics. The government is highly likely to fall within weeks of the May elections if the Conservatives lose.
Put simply I believe that if we succeed in voting out a lot of Conservative candidates in the local elections in May then we will also finish off Theresa May and with her the Conservative Party as a single united force in British politics.
The local elections in May are therefore going to be extraordinarily important. If you want change then this is your chance. For once voting really could make a very big difference.