Brexit

The Tory leadership contest has been dominated by Brexit so far. To a large extent, this is inevitable: Brexit is the biggest issue facing the country and the Tory party. But dealing with Brexit is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a Tory recovery. If the Tories are to win a fourth term in office, they are going to have a compelling domestic agenda as well. So far, the ideas put forward in this contest haven’t been particularly imaginative—doubling defence spending and a penny off the basic rate are standard Tory fare. The biggest question, to my mind, for the Tories is how to revive the ownership society. The Tories cannot expect people who don’t have any hope of obtaining capital, to be capitalists.

If it was in a playground in one of the rougher parts of town, which increasingly it resembles, this could easily escalate. One candidate remarks that he thinks the party should ‘f**k business’ so another one wades in to argue ‘f**k 'f**k business'’. And perhaps by lunchtime some other candidate you have never really heard off will be tweeting that instead the party should ‘f**k, 'f**k, f**k business'’. Before long, the Tory party leadership contest will start to look like the bits that were edited out of a Malcolm Tucker rant in The Thick of It for being too sweary. And yet the row spectacularly misses the point. Of course the Conservative party should be pro-business. But that is not quite the same thing as being pro-Big Business and its lobbyists.

I have often wondered what would happen if politicians were bound by the same rules as advertisers, or if manifestos were brought within the scope of the trading standards laws. What if we could take legal action against a government for failing to provide the extra NHS beds or school places they had promised? Given the propensity for governments to excuse themselves from their own legislation when it suits them – Blair’s government simply passed a clause excluding political parties when Labour’s women-only shortlists fell foul of sex discrimination legislation – it is hard to imagine such a law being passed by Parliament. But on 14th May, Westminster Magistrates heard an attempt to create one through political precedent.

I love everything about the European Parliament election results. As a Brexiteer, of course I love that the Brexit Party came out of nowhere to obliterate the Tories and Labour and induce yet another outbreak of Brexit Derangement Syndrome among the chattering classes. But I also love the fact that Remain parties did well, too. I’m happy that the Lib Dems, with their sneering, juvenile, anti-democratic slogan of ‘Bollocks to Brexit’, came in second place. And I’m pleased that the Greens, for whom Brexit is a calamity on a par with the climate catastrophe they breathlessly drone on about, also had a good showing. Why? Because the victory of a proper Brexit party on one side and of the Bollocks to Brexit lobby on the other is a wonderfully clarifying moment.

Alastair Campbell has been something of a Labour party fixture for the last twenty years – but not any longer. Blair's former spin doctor has just been given the boot from the party for revealing that he voted Lib Dem at the European elections. Campbell said he was 'sad' and 'disappointed' to get an email from Labour expelling him from the party: 'I am and always will be Labour. I voted Lib Dem, without advance publicity, to try to persuade Labour to do right thing for country/party. In light of appeal, I won't be doing media on this. But hard not to point out difference in the way anti-Semitism cases have been handled.

Rory Stewart is emerging as something of a dark horse in the Tory leadership contest. But while the international development secretary is an impressive candidate he is not immune to making a mishap. Richard Madeley reminded him this morning of a particular low point for Stewart: his made-up 'fact' about Brexit –that 80 per cent of people backed Theresa May's deal – during a radio interview last year: RM: Why did you say that? RS: It was a weird thing to say. It was straight after it was announced, and I wanted to say that I felt the vast majority of the country were in the centre ground and I couldn't have been more wrong. Actually as soon as I said it, I apologised 15 seconds later.