Charles Moore

As Boris’s team should have predicted, the BBC, via Emily Maitlis, attacked Boris throughout the Tory leadership debate. So did its coverage the following morning. ‘Words are actions,’ said Nick Robinson on Today, sententiously editorialising. ‘Again and again Boris Johnson gets his words wrong.’ Up duly pop Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Heathrow airport expansion and the precise wording of the promise to leave on 31 October — all licensed to do so by the weak decision to let Boris go on. Such debates are structured against Conservatives and conservatism.

You would think it would be unarguable that ‘Serious times demand a serious leader’. This, with small verbal variations, is the slogan of both Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt in the current Tory contest, so it is obvious against whom their phrase is directed. Yet there is a counter-argument. The times we live in are undoubtedly serious, and for the past three years we have had, in Mrs May, the most unrelentingly serious leader ever. It has been a disaster. The post-2008 revolts across the western world have all been against seriousness as defined by existing leaderships. Trump, Salvini, Farage, Boris etc. strike a chord because they can burlesque the pomposity and self-righteousness of the conventional politicians who have led us badly.

Jeremy Hunt’s approach is very odd. It is the first time I remember an aspirant for the top job saying: ‘Choose me: I’m frightened of a general election.’ He is obviously right that an election without Brexit accomplished would be very difficult for the Conservatives to win, but the way through that is not to narrow your possibilities in advance. If the newly chosen leader, with the mandate that being newly chosen brings, decided that no deal were his necessary negotiating backstop (which surely it is) or, more controversially, that he wanted it without negotiating at all, he would then be in a strong position to dare his parliamentary party to vote against him, bring down him and his government and thus nullify the choice the party members would just have made.

Jeremy Hunt’s approach is very odd. It is the first time I remember an aspirant for the top job saying: ‘Choose me: I’m frightened of a general election.’ He is obviously right that an election without Brexit accomplished would be very difficult for the Conservatives to win, but the way through that is not to narrow your possibilities in advance. If the newly chosen leader, with the mandate that being newly chosen brings, decided that no deal were his necessary negotiating backstop (which surely it is) or, more controversially, that he wanted it without negotiating at all, he would then be in a strong position to dare his parliamentary party to vote against him, bring down him and his government and thus nullify the choice the party members would just have made.

Almost everyone agrees it is a pity that so few pupils from ‘disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds’ get into Oxford. But no one has successfully proved that it is Oxford’s fault that they do not. (I went to Cambridge, by the way, so I do not have a dog in this fight, except that I imagine the same arguments apply.) One reason that some universities, including Oxford, are classified as ‘world-class’ is that they admit the best. The definition of ‘best’ cannot refer only to native ability, but must also take some account of how well prepared a pupil is.

Having been at Cambridge with the then-delightful Diane Abbott about 40 years ago, I know how hard it is for charming, intelligent black people with middle-class aspirations to make it in the Labour party without great sacrifice. They have to pull grumpy faces, pretend to be angry and claim membership — despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary — of what Frantz Fanon called ‘the wretched of the earth’. So one must sympathise with David Lammy — choral scholar of The King’s School, Peterborough, graduate of SOAS and Harvard Law School, member of Lincoln’s Inn, former government minister — as he feels the need to wave his arms about on television and denounce Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg at the top of his voice.

In his famous speech to both Houses of Parliament in March 1960, General de Gaulle praised Britain: ‘Although, since 1940, you have gone through the hardest vicissitudes in your history, only four statesmen [Churchill, Attlee, Eden and Macmillan] have guided your affairs in these extraordinary years. Thus, lacking meticulously worked-out constitutional texts, but by virtue of an unchallengeable general consent, you find the means on each occasion to ensure the efficient functioning of democracy.’ De Gaulle admired us and disliked us, and concluded that we threatened France if we joined the EEC. So he blocked our entry. He was right about us, wrong about the effect of our joining.

There was publicity last weekend for a report (Generation Why?) by Onward, the think tank of semi-young ‘mainstream’ Tories. Its survey seemed to confirm the widespread belief that hardly anyone young supports the Tories, which may not matter quite as much as Onward thinks, since it also showed that the young have astonishing difficulty in working out how to get to a polling station and write a cross on a ballot paper. Although the results collected by Hanbury Strategy were obtained via ‘an online smartphone poll’ of 10,031 voters, I found myself losing confidence on page 46.

If the EU grants us a long extension (and let us pray that M. Macron’s malice towards Britain leads him to prevent this), Remainers are worried. They want the extension, but not the European elections, since there is a real chance that ‘the wrong people’ might win. Ken Clarke, I gather, is working out a plan to head off this unpleasant potential outbreak of democracy. He seeks to persuade the EU high-ups to concoct a new rule by which countries which have already triggered Article 50 but have not yet left would not be allowed to take part. They will surely oblige. This article is an extract from Charles Moore's Spectator Notes, available in this week's magazine.

There is a logic in Mrs May’s late move to Labour. It is the same logic by which both parties, at the last general election, put forward very similar policies about Brexit. They need to stay together (while feigning disagreement for party reasons) to frustrate what people voted for. Just as they both said in 2017 that they wanted to leave the customs union, now both are working to stay in it. It is the same logic by which Mr Speaker Bercow has arranged for Sir Oliver Letwin to become prime minister on roughly alternate days. None of the main players really wants Brexit, but none can really say so.

There is a logic in Theresa May’s late move to Labour. It is the same logic by which both parties, at the last general election, put forward very similar policies about Brexit. They need to stay together (while feigning disagreement for party reasons) to frustrate what people voted for. Just as they both said in 2017 that they wanted to leave the customs union, now both are working to stay in it. It is the same logic by which Mr Speaker Bercow has arranged for Sir Oliver Letwin to become prime minister on roughly alternate days. None of the main players really wants Brexit, but none can really say so.

There is an obvious solution to the Brexit problem. It is based on a recognition that we want out and that the EU leaders want the moral high ground. Give it to them. Get them to expel us from the European Union. It cannot be too hard for them to persuade the ECJ, or some new body invented for the purpose, to declare the United Kingdom in breach of ‘European values’, and kick us out. Then we would leave with nothing at all, except our liberty. We might even bribe them for the privilege. As it is, we are committed by Mrs May to paying £39 billion, but that is over several years, and involves much ‘doubt, hesitation and pain’. Why not offer them, say, £10 billion on the nail, in return for them punishing us?