The Tories must shut down the Brexit party or they will be obliterated

The Brexit party held a rally at Birmingham’s NEC on Sunday to which it is estimated more than 5,000 of its supporters turned up. Invoking the spirit of the Blitz, the party’s leader Nigel Farage entered a darkened arena to the sound of air raid sirens. The vibe was “national emergency” meets “afternoon rave for ageing visitors to clubbing venue Amnesia in off season Ibiza.”

Critics of the Brexit party were appalled by the martial nature of the production. But love or hate the Brexit party, it must surely be acknowledged that they are playing an exceptionally good game in organisational and social media terms. In only five months, the former UKIP leader Nigel Farage has, with his new party, transformed the British political landscape, once again, and now he is choosing candidates to fight the potential early general election that could come this autumn. His furious activists are fired up and determined to destroy the established parties for, as they see it, betraying Brexit. The Conservative party’s leadership contest is framed in terms set by the Brexit party.

“Nigel is not going away. You watch,” says one of his confidants.

For all the crude, tough talk, the Brexit party high command are not fools. They clearly know they have a problem, hence the rally held last weekend on an impressive scale with war-time rhetoric. They suffered a rather serious setback in failing to win the Peterborough by-election last month in Leave territory that should have suited them perfectly. Fighting a detailed ground game in a constituency is a trickier than organising a nationwide protest vote at European elections. Building an operation with local knowledge and a canvassing infrastructure, in sufficient seats to challenge at a general election, is tough. Who knew?

If they can’t build the machinery in time for a general election, the legacy of the Brexit party could end up being no Brexit. They could destroy the Conservative party but still end up with few seats themselves. Then Remain parties such as the rump of Labour, the surging Lib Dems, and the SNP could combine to block Brexit. (Those Reaction readers who are Remainers, stop cheering, please.)

Suggest to a Brexit party advocate that this – no Brexit – is where their efforts could lead and they will rocket up into the stratosphere while shouting about revolutions and “the will of the people” (a terrible and bogus old Marxist phrase). Yet, surely the Brexit party’s supporters should at least acknowledge the ironic possibility, in such a febrile and unpredictable period, that the efforts of a vehicle called the Brexit party could end up delivering Remain.

It is in this extremely perilous context that the Tory leadership contest is taking place. (And what a contest it is! Are you enjoying it much?)

Liberal Conservatives, and non-conservatives looking on in horror, are appalled by the whole farce in general, and specifically by the two candidates trying to outbid each other in their full-on Brexityness. In recent days, former Remainer Jeremy Hunt has mapped out his plans for a no deal departure from the EU. This is presented, by critics of the Tories, as more evidence that the Conservatives are now revelling in no deal, seeking a cheap thrill via hard Brexit.

That is a misreading of the Tory party’s desperate plight. The truth is that both Hunt and Boris Johnson have little choice to be so Brexity. Neither is doing this because they particularly enjoy it; the electoral dynamics necessitate it.

Why? The next leader of the Conservative party must effectively shut down the Brexit party or face electoral catastrophe. Failure to do so will almost certainly equal death in a first past the post system. In the most recent YouGov polling for The Times, the Tories and the Brexit party were both on 22%. Labour was on 20% and the Lib Dems 19%.

That’s why the two Tory candidates are emphasising so incessantly the urgent delivery of Brexit, to persuade Brexit party voters to try the Tories under new leadership. It is done not just to convince pro-Leave Tory party members now, but to clear the ground ahead of a messy general election in which the Brexit party could take sufficient votes in Tory seats to let another party or combinations of parties through.

Of course, the Tories do need to worry about putting off liberal-minded folk who voted Remain and who might, in 2015, have voted Tory to stop Ed Miliband becoming Prime Minister. In some seats, come that general election, the Tories will not be aided by being the party of Brexit and individual MPs in such seats are terrified. But the South East (outside London) and the South West voted for Brexit, albeit narrowly. In that crucial swing area the West Midlands, Leave won 59.3% of the vote in the 2016 referendum. The Tories either deliver on that result for those voters, or in an age of anti-elite insurgency they will be smashed to bits.

Theresa May’s failure to deliver Brexit, while committing the stunning error of letting a new populist rival get established, means that leaving the EU rapidly has become the brute question of basic survival for the Tories. In a high turnout general election (as opposed to a low turnout and quixotic European election) if they can’t put the Brexit party out of business – ideally before the election campaign starts, by having delivered Brexit or by pledging clearly to do so – then voters and activists who strongly favour Leave will likely defect in sufficient numbers to wreck the Tory party.

For this reason,  later this month a deeply worried Conservative party looks set to choose Boris Johnson over Jeremy Hunt. If they do, it will be because Tory members calculate that he is the only person who can stop an epic, historic collapse, by being a bigger (and more famous) figure than Farage. And that’s true, Johnson is a bigger figure than Farage. Hunt is not. Johnson’s efforts – no matter how erratic – have eclipsed Farage on the national stage already, before Boris is even Prime Minister.

It could go badly wrong for the Tories, obviously. Goodness knows – and no-one knows yet, no psephologist, pollster or strategist – what precise impact this new dispensation will have in terms of the map of seats when the electoral map is being remade in realtime along new demographic and Brexit v Remain lines.

There are no easy choices on offer for the Tories, considering that they face what they have never faced before, a populist movement pledged to destroy them unless they deliver – within months.  That air raid siren used by Farage at the start of the rally on Sunday was a warning signal – for a Tory party facing annihilation.

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