The election-winning Conservative prime minister could carry millions. He could not carry Iain Duncan Smith. Rebellion by the MP for Chingford and other colleagues was his thanks for snatching a parliamentary majority from the laughing jaws of expert psephologists months earlier. With Europe working its vexatious effect on the party and a prime minister turning 50, that majority took on a fragile aspect in this, the year 1993.
David Cameron is only the second Tory prime minister to disappoint Duncan Smith, whose high standards slipped for the brief period of his own leadership in the early millennial years. John Major has, as they say, been there, even losing a television slot on Sunday to his tormentor from the Maastricht treaty revolt of 23 years ago. This time Duncan Smith insisted his resignation as work and pensions secretary over the budget last week had nothing to do with Europe.
"IDS" leaving the cabinet is not Michael Jackson leaving The Jacksons. The government should survive the loss of a minister who took the duration of the second World War to bring his universal credit to the less than universal number of 158,000 claimants. But it is a political fiasco for which Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, can only chastise themselves.
Their planned incursions into welfare were provocative; set next to tax cuts for high earners, they were incendiary. They had six years of ministerial reshuffles in which to act on their low opinion of Duncan Smith, and ducked each one.
If Europe is fanning old and unconnected grievances with their leadership, it is because of a referendum they chose to hold.
For Osborne, 10 Downing Street is next door and light years away. When he is not dauphin to the premiership, he is defending the job he has. These wild jolts in fortune, and his overexposure in the past year, must yield to a period of circumspection that draws on his least vaunted resource: stamina.
Tory dissenters
Other putative heirs to Cameron will see the chancellor’s fall as an opening. They should see it as a warning. The lesson of the past week is that whoever takes charge of the party will take charge of as many difficult people as it has ever contained.
Usually framed as the “Tory right”, these dissenters understandably resent such a blunt label. So let us characterise them by their history.
They did not vote for Cameron as leader in 2005, or for Ken Clarke in 2001, or for any of the handful of Tories that Britons recognise as fellow mammals. Since Margaret Thatcher, who they misremember as undeviatingly consistent, they have made apologies for every leader apart from the two winners, Major and Cameron.
When the party loses, they are usually in the vicinity. When it prospers, they are chuntering on the margins. You might infer that electoral politics is not their game but sheer pluck keeps them dispensing strategic counsel to others with the swagger of a Roosevelt. They would rather be central to an opposition than peripheral to a government. They want more austerity, except when they want less. Some have achievements to their name; many more reek of thwarted dreams.
No plausible Tory leader is of this tribe. Boris Johnson, the London mayor, does the best job of flattering them while stifling a laugh. Theresa May, the home secretary, does not share their support for Brexit. Osborne knows from experience what happens when they are allowed near the helm. You have to delve into the junior ranks to find a future leader who fits this crowd.
Future resentments
Although they obsess over Cameron with the kind of negative intensity that
Glenn Close
made famous in
Fatal Attraction
, the rebels are sunny about the future. They hope a new leader can erase old enmities. But it does not take pattern-recognition software to spot what happened before, and will happen again.
After smashing the Cameron-Osborne imperium, disillusion will set in. The new leader will adopt un-Tory ideas, or withhold ministerial jobs, or resist their marvellous political advice. Resentments will build like sediment.
During my life, the Labour Party and the Conservatives have taken it in turns to melt down. This seemed the natural equilibrium in a mature democracy, always leaving at least one, sometimes two, and during the Liberal Democrats' heyday, three broadly functional parties to vote for.
That number could soon be zero. Labour is a farce. The Lib Dems have eight MPs. And now fresh spores of the old flesh-eating virus have seeped into the Tory body politic. The next leader must hope that he or she has managerial gifts beyond a Major or a Cameron. Britons must hope that a nation can prosper despite its politics. – (Copyright 2016 The Financial Times Ltd)