Boris’s two-faced strategy might just work

White doves may yet be pulled from a conjurer’s top-hat. Pigs may fly over the Palace of Westminster. Steve Smith may be dismissed for a duck in both innings of the Fifth Test which begins at The Oval on Thursday. Boris Johnson may turn a cartwheel and make a proposal for a Brexit deal which the EU welcomes. Such a proposal would surely require reflection in Brussels and consultation with the member states of the EU. It must be doubtful whether this could be completed in the seven weeks between now and the 31st of October.

So, if it wasn’t quickly rejected but was seen as a basis for further negotiation, the EU itself might offer a further extension. This would at least spare Mr Johnson from the embarrassment of being seen to obey the legal requirement imposed on him by Parliament or whatever might be the consequences of refusing to do so. Nevertheless any extension would dismay many on the Tory benches and Johnson would be rash to take their continuing loyalty for granted. It still seems more likely that we shall leave the EU without a deal on the 31st of October when the present six months extension of our membership granted to Theresa May expires. Soon after that there will be a General Election as a result of which a Tory Government with a sufficient majority will, they hope, be returned.

All this is speculative but that’s how it looks this autumn.

Pursuing the speculation, one may ask what the Tory Party returned to government will look like. Well, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Allister Heath, gave us a hint the other day – a hint or perhaps his own view of what it should be.

He called for “a tougher rougher non-deferential Conservatism” and said that the prospect of “losing anti-Brexit irreconcilables, especially overrated Establishment figures, is a huge step in the right direction.” I presume this means good-bye to the twenty-one Tory MPs who had the party whip withdrawn from them last week. Not all of them can reasonably be called “anti-Brexit irreconcilables”.  Almost all of them voted in the Commons for the Withdrawal Agreement negotiated by Mrs May’s Conservative Government which, if it had been approved by Parliament, would have ensured our orderly departure from the EU.  Even those who, like Mrs May’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, had campaigned on the Remain side in the Referendum, had accepted the verdict delivered by the majority in 2016. Only a handful of them could be called “irreconcilables”. The real Tory “irreconcilables” are those MPs who couldn’t stomach Mrs May’s deal and hope for the Hardest of Hard Brexits.

The Tory Party is in a paradoxical position. Its Remainers, with only a small child’s handful of exceptions, accepted the verdict delivered in the Referendum. Many did so reluctantly. Nevertheless they loyally voted for the Withdrawal Agreement. The Tories who refused to do so and voted against the Government belong to what Allister Heath would call the “tougher and rougher” branch of the Party. Had they supported Mrs May, the United Kingdom would have left the EU months ago and we would now be in the Transition period provided for by that Agreement, the period in which negotiations about our future trading relationship with the EU were to take place. The Withdrawal Agreement was killed by Tory rebels, several of whom are now in the Cabinet, seemingly happy, even eager, to leave without a Deal.

Our first-past-the post electoral system has no doubt had many defects. But by ensuring that elections were in effect fought between only two parties both large enough and popular enough to secure a majority in the House of Commons, it also ensured that each of those parties represented a wide spectrum of interests and opinions. The Conservative Party was often described as a broad church, and so indeed was Labour. A tougher rougher Tory party will be a narrower Church, a point made by two former leaders, William Hague and John Major.

Will such a Tory Party command the broad support of 40 per cent of the electorate?

The danger that it may not has been recognized, for, with the coming election in view, the Johnson Government has embarked on a two-prong strategy. First, it is appealing to all those who voted Leave in 2016 and especially to voters who are eager for a clean break from the EU and who might be attracted to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. They must be lured back into the fold, and to secure their votes Mr Johnson is happy to play tough and rough, the champion of the People against Parliament. This is, I suppose, what Allister Heath means by “non-deferential Conservatism”, even though it is hard to see the present Leader of the House, Mr Rees-Mogg, as an enemy of deference.

In addition to the appeal to unbending Brexiteers, Mr Johnson is cheerfully playing the traditional Tory “Law and Order” card with promises of more police and stiffer prison sentences for street crime. The assumption surely is that this will shore up the tabloid vote.

The second prong, however, is neither rough nor tough. Quite the contrary. The days of austerity are, it seems, over. There will be higher spending, much higher spending, on the NHS and schools. Theresa May said there was no magic money-tree, but Johnson has apparently found one lurking in a corner of the orchard, and, even if a No Deal Brexit knocks the economy somewhat, the money-tree is bearing ripe fruit ready to be plucked.

Johnson is presenting himself as a Tory version of Janus, the two-faced God. One face is hard, rough and tough, the other soft, smiling and generous.

It may work. You can fool some of the people all the time and all the people (or enough of them) some of the time.

And when the alternative is Mr Corbyn …