After covering four hideous Westminster coups to topple sitting Tory leaders over the past four decades, I’ve come to recognize a pattern in these spectacles. They start with a leader who sometimes, like Thatcher, Major and Johnson, achieved unexpected triumphs and out-of-favour Commons majorities. The first attacks come from extremes, who could be ignored except that they speak out loud what the heavyweights are thinking privately. As poll ratings fall, panic spreads. This turns large Commons majorities, such as Boris’ 80-seat victory, into liabilities as newly elected MPs study their fragile chances of sticking around and yearn for new leadership. Then ministers and PPS start resigning. The former may be dismissed as bitter, but every departure draws blood. What sets Johnson apart from other leaders — and will draw comparisons to Donald Trump — is his refusal to accept that his time is up. Even Baroness Thatcher, who won three general elections, tearfully agreed when Cabinet heavyweights such as Ken Clarke read her the runes. May gave up after Commons defeats and pressure from the executive in 1922. But Johnson claimed the “14 million mandate” gave him, like the divine right of kings, the power to stay on until he lost a vote of confidence. The comparison to Trump, who has emboldened a mob in his efforts to overturn a Democratic electoral defeat, is partly unfair because Boris has stayed within the party’s rulebook, but it is simply in a different sense, as both men broke the contracts. At the heart of democracy is not really the ballot box, but the willingness of defeated leaders to leave power peacefully. Trump broke that bond, while Boris just pushed it to the limit.
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The next pattern in a coup is the sense of giddy liberation when a beleaguered leader finally throws in the towel. Thatcher was dazzling in her performance in the Commons after her resignation. The burden of decision making and compromise was lifted from her shoulders. I remember discovering one of the young PPS defectors in the Heseltine campaign crying in the cloisters late that night. “What have we done?” he asked, knowing at the same time the necessity of removing her. I suspect Johnson, if he gets his desire for a utility role this summer, will look to restore the sunny disposition of his prime. However, he may not get the chance. The final stage of the coup is the counterclaim. It took a whole generation after Thatcher for the civil war between dry and wet Tories to be resolved. For much of that period the Tories were weakened and doomed to opposition. Only the rise of the modernizers led by Cameron and Osborne pushed aside the old divide, and even that proved a temporary truce. Today’s dividing lines in the Tory Party are even more complex. Apart from the great differences between Left and Right, fiscal conservatism versus debt-led growth, authoritarian versus liberal, there is a stark divide between Brexiteers and the business community. To add to this melting pot of hatred, the party has made a series of strategic moves that a new leader must decide whether to keep or undo. One is the decision to prioritize the Red Wall, which pits ambitious new Tory MPs against Tory survival in London and the South West. But save your tiny fiddles for the Conservatives. The party drank deeply of the opium of a leader who offered easy wins rather than tough talk, who won through the politics of dividing lines rather than the hard pounding of evidence-and-compromise policy-making. The Tories face years of internal warfare as a result, whatever surface unity they create. And they have only themselves to blame. Joe Murphy is a former political editor of the Evening Standard
