The Remainer revolution has begun: From ex-Prime Ministers to the Whitehall Blob, from the courts to the TV studios, from New York to Brussels, Boris Johnson is set for the fight of his life, writes DANIEL JOHNSON
This week, we have witnessed the emergence of the most dangerous threat to Britain’s prosperity, democracy and independence since the defeat three years ago of that absurd crank Jeremy Corbyn.
On Monday night, no sooner had Boris Johnson narrowly survived the treacherous attempt to destroy his Government with a vote of confidence than a coalition of counter-revolutionaries assembled to launch a multi-pronged assault.
They have one key target: restaging the battle of Brexit that the rest of us thought had been decisively and painfully won three years ago.
Not long after Boris Johnson narrowly survived a vote of confidence, a coalition of counter-revolutionaries assembled to launch a multi-pronged assault with one goal – restaging the battle of Brexit
The Prime Minister has been badly damaged by a Tory rebellion spearheaded not merely by backbenchers but by some of his own ministers.
Smelling blood in the water, the Tory Remainer rearguard has joined forces — explicitly or otherwise — with Opposition parties to overturn or at least water down Brexit, and with it everything that the Conservatives were elected to achieve.
In this, they are supported by much of the unelected Establishment — from swathes of the judiciary, legal profession and House of Lords to the infamous Whitehall ‘Blob’ that stymies ministerial plans — as well as by the ‘Remainstream media’ that has never got over the shock of the 2016 referendum and obsessively peddles an anti-Government, anti-Brexit narrative.
Just as Theresa May, a weak prime minister without a majority, was unable to pass her doomed Brexit deal, so now a weakened Boris Johnson is beset on all sides by the same anti-democratic forces.
The legal system repeatedly delayed Brexit. Now that we have regained the right to control our borders, these same elements — bolstered by an ‘immigration industry’ comprising charities and human-rights agitators — are striving to thwart Home Office plans to stem the tide of illegal migrants by sending them for processing in Rwanda.
Within the Home Office, meanwhile, a Civil Service guerrilla movement has been plastering stickers across the department, defending the right of refugees to enter Britain, regardless of the law.
‘We have the spine to say, “No minister”, ’ the anonymous mandarins boast. ‘No to hostile environments, no to shutting down democracy, no to racist deportations.’
Challenge: Ex-Labour MP David Miliband (left) and Tory MP Tobias Ellwood
Once upon a time, civil servants who harboured conscientious objections to ministers’ plans would resign. Now — when, that is, they bother to get up from their kitchen tables to come into the office — they seek to subvert the policy of the elected Government while still collecting their pay packets, generous pension provisions, ‘London weighting’ and all.
Underlying the strategy of the anti-Brexit counter-revolution, appropriately enough, is President Emmanuel Macron and his En Marche movement, which has elbowed out traditional parties to dominate politics across the Channel.
Many Remainers would love to emulate this ‘petit Napoleon’ former banker with a new pro-European movement of their own. And now moves are afoot to make it happen.
Sir Tony Blair, who has never enjoyed surrendering his powers as prime minister, is assembling a ‘Future Of Britain conference’ on June 30: a gathering devoted to turning back the clock.
Diehard Remainer attendees will include Rory Stewart, who failed in his bids to become both Tory leader and London mayor. Joining Stewart will be Luciana Berger, who, you’ll remember, quit the Labour Party to co-found the Remainer ‘Independent Group’, later ‘Change UK’, then simply joined the Lib Dems.
Also on board for the jamboree is Emily Maitlis, the ex-BBC Newsnight presenter and arch Tory-basher who was upbraided by Auntie for delivering nakedly biased, grandstanding lectures.
Just as the Home Office guerrillas epitomise the rot in our ‘politically neutral’ Civil Service, so Maitlis — notwithstanding her recent move to LBC radio — embodies the collapse of impartiality at the national broadcaster. The world once envied Whitehall and the BBC. Not any more.
Blair reportedly hopes to lure two other colourful fish to this genuinely important event: his favoured successor, the former Foreign Secretary David Miliband; and Macron himself.
Opposition: Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer (left) and Sir Tony Blair
Now running the ‘International Rescue’ charity in New York — on a bloated salary for the sector of about $1 million per year — Miliband yesterday approvingly retweeted an ITV report promoting the Remainers’ most seminal article of faith: that Brexit has wrecked the British economy.
‘The economic damage that Brexit has caused is becoming clearer and harder to ignore,’ averred ITV’s business and economics editor Joel Hills.
‘Candour and clarity,’ was Miliband’s approving verdict.
Here is the counter-revolution encapsulated: the Blairite ‘king over the water’ endorsing the Remainstream media.
As for Macron, his En Marche party, which swept into the Elysee in 2017, began with a meeting and a think-tank. Blair’s Future Of Britain conference is itself linked to a think tank called the Britain Project.
But whether or not a new Blair-led Remainer party emerges from this month’s plotting session, a clearer manifesto for the anti-Boris counter-revolution is a certainty.
And at its heart will be a plan to depose the Prime Minister.
It was Margaret Thatcher’s nemesis, the Europhile Lord Heseltine, who recently wondered wistfully: ‘If Boris goes, does Brexit go?’
Leading the charge on this theme, of course, is Sir Keir Starmer. Both the Labour chief and his shadow cabinet refuse to talk about Brexit, fearful of alienating the ‘Red Wall’ voters who elected Boris in their droves at the last election. But in their hearts, the Labour politburo still hankers to rejoin.
It is no accident that another ghost of politics past, the former EU commissioner Lord Mandelson, reappeared this week, urging Starmer to be more ‘ambitious’. This ermine-draped Remoaner openly longs to return to office — and who better than him to build bridges with Brussels?
To capitalise on Boris’s party travails, Labour is determined to cause maximum economic chaos in the hope that the PM will get the blame.
Despite being supposedly on Labour’s Right, rising shadow cabinet stars Lisa Nandy and Wes Streeting have both backed striking train drivers hell-bent on ruining the first post-pandemic summer.
Never mind that these strikers are earning on average £44,000 a year, or that they are clinging on to working practices from the steam age. Labour’s well-heeled metropolitans are siding with the union militants to turn predictions of Brexit-blamed economic doom into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To judge from watching the BBC, Sky News, ITV and Channel 4, you might suppose that the country was already back in the grim 1970s — and that all its troubles were because of our departure from Brussels.
In fact, there is no comparison between Boris’s Britain and the Labour governments of Wilson and Callaghan, which ended with the Winter of Discontent of 1978-79. Our economy is far more robust than it was then, or even than it was when Labour left office in 2010 and outgoing Treasury minister Liam Byrne scribbled that infamous note for his successor: ‘There is no money left.’
Of course Britain faces stark problems: inflation and the risk of recession foremost among them. Yet these headwinds, which the PM freely concedes are holding back recovery and reform, would not die down if he were removed.
On the contrary: all the dynamism in British politics is still coming from Boris Johnson and his allies. This week’s speech on home ownership offered hope for up to four million people unable to get on the housing ladder.
The PM has also promised initiatives to cut back on red tape (much of it a legacy of the Brussels bureaucracy) and bring home the benefits of Brexit. There is a great deal more to be done to make food, fuel and other essentials cheaper, while lifting the burdens of taxation.
None of this is likely to happen, however, if Boris is brought down in a fresh plot by Tory malcontents, perhaps after predicted by-election defeats in West Yorkshire and Devon later this month.
Instead — and only after a change in the Tory party’s internal rules — the nation would once again suffer the grim spectacle of yet another orgy of Conservative bloodletting. The ‘summer of discontent’ promised by the railway unions might seal the party’s fate at the next General Election.
Jeremy Hunt (pictured) claims it is his ‘duty’ to bring down the man who thrashed him in the leadership contest three years ago. ‘Hunt blamed his ignominious defeat by Boris on his own support for Remain’
That defeat, in turn, would usher in a coalition of chaos — and with it, mark my words, the betrayal of Brexit and its ultimate undoing.
With the drab Starmer unlikely to secure a majority on his own, the Liberal Democrats, Greens and SNP — Remainer zealots all — would be called, together or singly, to join a ragtag coalition. The threat to the Union, let alone Brexit, is clear.
Starmer himself will not campaign to rejoin: he knows doing so would thrust Red Wall voters back into Tory hands. But it’s clear where his heart lies, and the lack of a mandate would not stop him from sidling the UK closer to the European system once his feet were under the Downing Street desk.
Unfortunately for the 17.4 million who voted for Brexit, there are senior Tories who relish such a nightmare scenario. For these recalcitrants, dragging an unwilling nation back under the Brussels yoke transcends party politics.
Former minister Tobias Ellwood, one of the most brazen of the 148 rebels who tried to knife their leader in the back this week, declares that for the UK to rejoin the EU single market is a ‘no-brainer’. Well, he’s half-right—- only someone with no brains would want to see it happen.
Then there is Jeremy Hunt, who claims it is his ‘duty’ to bring down the man who thrashed him in the leadership contest three years ago.
Hunt blamed his ignominious defeat by Boris on his own support for Remain: evidently the rout still rankles. This sore loser is swiftly becoming the Ted Heath — the ‘Incredible Sulk’ — of our time. As for so many like him, vanity trumps responsibility. Like Japanese soldiers still fighting the war deep in the jungle, they will never give up — just as they have never forgiven Boris for winning.
This, then, is a moment of maximum danger for the Conservatives — and for Britain. The Government was elected to deliver Brexit. If that settlement is called into doubt, millions who voted Tory for the first time in 2019 will desert the party. The North will be recaptured by Labour and the Lib Dems will devour the southern shires.
Hence, the survival of Boris Johnson in No 10 is about more than the career of one politician. It is about respecting the decision of the British people: a decision made narrowly but definitively in the 2016 referendum and reaffirmed with a thumping mandate in the 2019 general election.
The counter-revolution has begun. From ex-prime ministers to the Whitehall Blob, from the courts to the television studios, from New York to Brussels, the forces ranged against the Prime Minister are legion. They would consign the country to pandemonium.
It is the fight of Boris’s life — and he surely knows it. He must never see Brexit undone.
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