One Nation Tory MPs will have to suck up a clean Brexit or be squashed

How do you solve a problem like Theresa? The Tory party’s tortuous attempts at Westminster to force the Prime Minister to accept reality – she is finished – continue with no practical explanation forthcoming as to how she might actually be compelled to quit this side of the next millennium. Even now, defeated, done in, she clings to office, leading, if that is the word, a ruined government that has ceased to function in any meaningful fashion.

“No-one at cabinet says anything about what is really going on,” an appalled cabinet minister told me earlier this week. “It is weird.”

Weirdly, today, it seems, quite a few finally said something at their latest meeting. There was a feverish discussion about the scope for a compromise on customs. All the cabinet – at the time of writing – are staying in and pledged to vote for her fourth attempt at passing Brexit. They have all nailed themselves to May’s final doomed attempt to pass her deal.

Meanwhile, the plotting among MPs and Westminster watchers about the possibilities builds to a crescendo.

I’ve run in to assorted Remainers in recent days who have got hold of the idea that pragmatic Boris is going to switch to backing a confirmatory referendum – a referendum rerun, really – once, or if, he becomes PM because otherwise he’ll have to hold a general election. Incidentally, I think it’s clear he’ll have to hold a general election anyway, because he (or whoever it is) will have no majority.

Nothing is impossible. It’s Boris. Perhaps Boris will try that second referendum wheeze, falling out with all his donors, the majority of Tory MPs, the membership and the Tory parts of the press. Such a manoeuvre on his part seems highly, highly unlikely.

Clustered around Boris are Brexiteers and a few former Remainers now determined to get out. All the donor money that will fund an election and the strategic support in place now is for out, quickly. Strategist Lynton Crosby – who worked successfully with Boris for both his London mayoralty campaigns – is as likely to advocate a second referendum as he is to start supporting the defeated Aussie Labor party.

There is no soothing way round it. The next leader of the Tory party needs to get Britain out of the EU, by Christmas, or the Conservative party is toast.

Remember, the dynamics with Farage on the rampage in England and maybe even beyond. The new Tory leader (chosen by the start of September presumably) will win with a pledge for a quick renegotiation (unlikely to get anywhere) and then will have pledged to leave without a deal if that is what it takes.

This is rather obviously highly problematic for the group of Tory MPs who this week launched the mainstream “One Nation” initiative to point out to Boris that they will not tolerate no deal. There is a caucus of somewhere between 60 and 100 MPs in that strand of the parliamentary party.

Some of them know Boris himself is pretty One Nation. If he wins his party’s leadership he will obviously pivot post-Brexit (if he can get there) to the politics of One Nation, to boosting local government and public services. In large swathes of the country – in Scotland for example – he is toxic to voters and he will have to try early on to confound expectations. The spending taps will be turned on by a new Chancellor and Prime Minister.

First, he must get Britain out. Or the Brexit party will carry on surging and that’s that for the Tories. It could mean “hello, Chancellor McDonnell, here is all the money that hasn’t flown at high speed out of the country.”

Of course, in this hothouse atmosphere the term One Nation causes some confusion. This week one particularly over-excited professional Tory young person on Twitter denounced One Nation as reheated Milibandism.

The news that Amber Rudd and her colleagues nicked One Nation from former Labour leader Ed Miliband would come as news to Tory leader from the 19th century Disraeli, who first utilised the term, as a way in which to appeal to new voters. Numerous Tories after Disraeli have spoken of One Nation, including war heroes such as Harold Macmillan.

The members of the contemporary One Nation crew – led by Amber Rudd – had better put their tin hats on. They are going to have to steel themselves for what is coming post-May. Unless the EU moves, and it won’t, it seems, then a new leader will only have one option. No deal, quickly. That means asking for a mandate to do it from the country because parliament won’t allow it. As I have written several times recently for Reaction, the numbers don’t work. There is no majority and this parliament is dead. An election is coming.

This being the case, it’s time for some tough news – tough love, if you like, for the One Nation crew. They are going to have to sign up in this process to something like a no deal (or managed no deal, that phrase is back again, as cover) or they will be whacked by the Tory associations and CCHQ under new political direction. Or they can retire. Or if they’re really desperate, they can join the Liberal Democrats.

It will get very brutal this summer and autumn. Why? The Tory party will have only a few months to save itself. That means leaving the EU immediately and putting the Brexit party out of business.

Here, I must confess I like quite a few of the current One Nation gang. They understand that it is never sensible to go into the jungle with the Tory right. The Tory right will stitch you up and then they will stitch each other up.

Several veterans will protest loudly. Ken Clarke will smile and get a free pass. One can envisage Nicholas Soames shouting – if he reads this piece – that he has never heard of such an outrage in all his long career and that he is not going to start shaping his views to the preferences of eurosceptics – absolute bloody shower! – after all these years.

For the rest, there is not going to be much of a choice. Get with the programme. Or it’s good night.

Now, you might say that this will all be the ruin of the Tory party and they’ll lose all their liberal-leaning seats and still lose in leave areas if it fails to pacify determined leavers. You might turn out to be right. It is high risk and could go very badly wrong. There are no easy choices in the worst mess the Tories have landed themselves in, and the rest of us, for perhaps a century.

Yet like it or not, after the shameful shenanigans of the last two years a moment of brute political truth is upon the Tories. Either they get under a new leader Britain out of the EU, quick sharp, or their party will be a shell, with no money, no members, and few voters.