The second you start to examine the track record of some of the people who were elected as Conservative MPs at the last election that assertion rapidly falls apart. There have, it is true, been some astonishingly cynical acts by people who have sacrificed every shred of principle for their career. There have, however, been some Conservative MPs who have done the opposite. They have sacrificed their careers for the good of the country. A comparison might help to illustrate the point so here goes.
My own MP is the Right Honourable Julian Smith. When he weighed up the advantages and disadvantages of Brexit, and came to his own considered judgement, he decided to campaign all out against it. He stood with me on the streets of Skipton and bravely faced down some fierce criticism as he tried to persuade local people not to damage the country’s economic, social and environmental best interests. He invited Ken Clarke to visit the constituency to help make the case and wrote to all of us who campaigned with him to thank us for our efforts. Then he was offered the chance to be a whip and then Chief Whip. He took the jobs without hesitation. He became responsible for using every trick in the book to force through Brexit. Effectively his job was to bully people to vote against the very thing he had so recently supported. His explanation was that it was the will of the people. Then Boris Johnson got in. This time Julian Smith was offered the chance to become Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Provided, of course, that he was prepared to sign up for leaving the EU regardless of whether or not a deal was struck. Or to put it another way regardless of the will of the people who have never been asked for their views on that and had been promised during the referendum that it would never happen. Within three short years he had moved from telling us that his honest assessment was that we should remain to telling us we had to crash out without a deal.
Contrast that with the behaviour of a woman of fierce intelligence who seems to hold very similar core beliefs. Anna Soubry is someone I disagree with on a whole series of issues. Not least her attitude to who should experience austerity. She was, however, one of those Conservatives who took the job because she wanted to defend the interests of the business community. So instead of taking a Ministerial post under Theresa May and keeping quiet, she began a consistent attack on any measure that her own government put forward that damaged the interests of business. That led her to oppose almost the entire Brexit agenda of the May government. It left her out in the cold on the back benches. Eventually it led her to quit her own party and put her own seat in Parliament at extreme risk. It simply isn’t possible to find a careerist motive behind this. She simply thought that the best interests of this country were served by helping business and couldn’t stay in a party that was about to vote in a Prime Minister who is happy to say “Fuck Business”.
The contrast between self-serving pursuit of career and determination to pursue the best interests of this country as you see them could not be more clear. Whatever you think of Brexit it isn’t hard to see which politician has behaved with the greater integrity.
To be fair to Julian Smith, his betrayal of his original beliefs hasn’t been as quick or as dramatic as most of the rest of his current cabinet colleagues. Michael Gove was talking a great game as Environment Secretary. Not actually allocating much money or doing anything remotely substantial enough but at least sounding as if he understood the environmental crisis. He also sounded as if he genuinely had grasped how risky Brexit was for British farmers. He repeatedly told everyone that a No Deal Brexit would be hugely damaging for farmers and had to be avoided if at all possible. He also told the British public that in his honest opinion Boris Johnson simply didn’t have the necessary character and judgement to be Prime Minister. Then Johnson offered Gove a job in his Cabinet. Within minutes Gove’s views changed. Now he started to tell us that we must leave at all costs deal or no deal. He also told us that we must allow the man with known character flaws to cancel Parliament at his own convenience. At least half of the new cabinet made the same instant change. During the campaign to lead their party they queued up to tell us that no deal was a huge mistake and had to be avoided. The moment they were in the Cabinet they queued up to tell us it was just a little bit of inconvenience that we mustn’t worry our little heads about. Before agreeing to suspend Parliament in case it exposed any of the hugely damaging problems and actually did anything to prevent them happening.
The future of the country now hangs on the issue of how many Conservative MPs are prepared to sacrifice their personal future in order to secure the future of the country. If every one of them meekly follows Johnson into the lobbies – if Parliament is allowed by his graceful benevolence to be open to our elected representatives – then Parliamentary democracy in this country is finished as a serious force. We are faced with Prime Ministerial dictats issued by a cabal of unelected special advisers and a rubber stamp Parliament that does what it is told.
If, on the other hand, a handful of Conservative MPs decides that they don’t want to go down in history as people who meekly gave in to the ruination of the “mother of Parliaments” then the country has a renewed and invigorated democracy. One in which the voice of the MP you elect really matters.
I am no Conservative but I am also no blind opponent of every person who believes in the importance of having a political party that sees standing up for the interests of business as its prime purpose. I would therefore like to believe that a significant number of Conservative MPs simply cannot be made to vote for a no deal Brexit or a Johnson putsch. Unfortunately, I also believe that there are a handful of Labour MPs who will vote with Johnson with every bit as much self-serving thought for nothing but their own career as the worst Conservative MP.
The critical question over the next few days is how many MPs have the courage to go with their convictions and vote against Johnson. One thing is clear. Johnson himself clearly believes that there are a lot of Conservative MPs who will never vote for the No Deal he himself said was a million to one outside possibility. That is why he is scared of Parliamentary democracy. Let us hope that for once in his life Johnson’s judgement is correct. The time has come for honest Conservative MPs to vote down a dishonest Prime Minister and to rescue the country and their own party from the consequences of listening to far-right political fantasies. The time has come for them to listen to colleagues like John Major, Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine who are former members of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet.
Our country needs some honest politicians. Let’s hope that we have enough of them to face down this cynical betrayal of our country’s values.