It is the butterfly-effect theory of politics made instantly visible. Dogged reporters uncover a story of Hollywood sexual assault, and across the globe one British cabinet minister resigns; another fights frantically to keep his job; a weak Prime Minister, Theresa May, finds the murmurs of discontent within her party swelling to an ominous chant; and suddenly the survival of her government and her ability to deliver a successful Brexit have all been thrown into question.
“We’ve had enough of this generation,” one furious young Conservative member of parliament (MP) told me. “They’re frankly embarrassing. What have they ever given us? Brexit, austerity, Theresa May, the threat of Boris Johnson, and now sex and sleaze. Last week, the mood of my generation changed from quietly planning for the future to ‘This can’t go on’.” This MP is, like his contemporaries, livid and in disbelief at the tarnishing of the Conservative Party’s name by reports about inappropriate behaviour of men decades older. He and the majority of his peers, who entered parliament in the last seven years, think of themselves as decent mainstream moderates. They came from businesses where, as one put it, “we’d have been instantly sacked if we’d behaved like that”. They want the groping dinosaurs and those who enable them out of power before they damage the party any more.
In the past few days, Tories have repeatedly told me that this was a “tipping point”. The accumulation of evidence of incompetence, followed by outdated sexism, has electrified them. A Conservative MP said the reality is that if May’s Cabinet had appeared to know what it was doing — on Brexit or on anything else — then the sexual offences could have been shrugged off. But the prime minister’s paralysis, indecision and incompetence have revealed that there is a terrible gulf where leadership should be.
May had a chance to rescue herself from some of that disillusionment last Thursday, when she had to pick a successor to the disgraced defence secretary, who resigned amid swirls of rumours. She could have used that opportunity to signal a new direction, breaking with the tarnished culture and bringing in fresh faces. Rumours swept Westminster that she might appoint the first woman as defence secretary. People I spoke to were hopeful that she might pick one of the party’s talented female, black or Asian rising stars.
Instead, in an astounding display of political deafness, May went for the appointment that made her feel safest, moving her chief whip and one of her closest confidants, Gavin Williamson, into the job.
The response from much of the younger section of the party has been fury. Williamson, though only 41, is known for his ties to the old guard. He was immediately described (anonymously) by two MPs as a “snake” or a “parasite”. This, after all, is the man whose job it has been to know exactly what his party members’ sexual transgressions are and to use them to ensure political loyalty, rather than deciding that some of them merit action by the party or the police. Williamson is at the heart of the old Conservative culture.
The problem for May is that almost overnight, the Conservatives’ previously moderate, quiescent centre has been galvanised. Until now these moderates, unlike the hardline Brexiteers, have declined to make trouble for the prime minister, recognising how tough the task ahead of her is and giving her the benefit of the doubt. “Not anymore,” one told me.
These Tories are seriously afraid that unless something changes, they could be heading for electoral and economic disaster with a combination of a chaotic, ill-planned Brexit and the appearance of complacent and entitled nastiness. They know that May, a principled woman, is personally blameless and embarrassed by the atmosphere of sexual scandal. But they have lost faith in her ability to control her party or her cabinet, and by her evident timidity when faced by Boris Johnson, her scheming Foreign Secretary.
Conservative MPs fear that this void at the top of their party will have political consequences. May has a tiny working majority in parliament, and to prepare for Brexit she has to spend the next months passing immensely complex legislation, transferring four decades of European rules into British law. She needs every vote she can get.
Now, many of these moderate MPs, distrusting her judgement, are saying that they are going to insist on amendments that would create a softer Brexit, retaining closer links with Europe, rather than the hard Brexit that May has been heading towards. (Whether they stand by these threats once temperatures cool remains to be seen.) “There are at least 150 of us,” one Conservative said. “And now we’re going to have a voice.”
But there is a limit to this threatened rebellion. No one yet wants to see May out of power for the same reason that has kept her there since she failed to win the election: Every faction fears that whoever replaces her may be worse. Everyone is seeking influence over an embattled prime minister as they compete desperately for their visions of the future and their own political survival.
— New York Times News Service
Jenni Russell, a journalist and broadcaster, is a columnist for the Times of London.
