IT’S a fair bet that when Theresa May sat back and relaxed on her 12-hour flight to China yesterday, she wasn’t listening on her headphones to the Bob Marley song Who The Cap Fit.
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Shame, she would have marvelled at the accuracy of his lyrics… Man to man is so unjust, children, Ya don’t know who to trust.
Your worst enemy could be your best friend, And your best friend your worst enemy.
Doesn’t that sum up perfectly the parlous state of the Conservative Party as it revels in yet another round of blue-on-blue bloodletting, Brexit versus Remoaners, winners versus losers?
When will Tory MPs grow up and start putting the needs of the country before the urge to rub out their party leader – and with her their own party?
We’ve all known for a long time that while those whom we elect may be intellectually sharp (I exclude Jeremy Corbyn from that category, of course), when it comes to common sense they are sadly lacking.
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Their clamour for Mrs May to be replaced as prime minister is based on a curious but false assumption – that the voters would welcome yet another round of political shenanigans, that business would applaud the prospect of yet more uncertainty and that Brussels would give us an easier time over Brexit if someone else were in Number 10.
You should always be careful what you wish for. What if that someone else were not Boris Johnson, Philip Hammond or Amber Rudd (to name but three of the Tories who mistakenly consider they’d make a better job of it)?
What if it were Marxist Corbyn, with his henchman John McDonnell as Chancellor and his juvenile revolutionaries in the Cabinet? Whatever some Tory MPs say about Mrs May needing to be “a lion not a tortoise” – a cruel and unjustified barb from George Osborne’s former lackey Robert Halfon – surely even the dimmest among them can see that kicking her out could hand Corbyn power.
Not content with destroying their party, do they really want to destroy the country too? Many of them have an axe to grind, however.
A well-sharpened axe at that. Nicky Morgan has never forgiven Mrs May for giving her the boot because she was a useless Education Secretary and Anna Soubry delights in moaning to anyone who will listen that the referendum result was “a terrible, terrible mistake”.
Theresa May visits university on her three-day China visit
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She believes she knows better than 17.4 million Brexit voters. Others are dyed-in-the-wool Europhiles who would love nothing more than to throw a gigantic spanner in the works and bring Brexit to a grinding halt.
Chancellor Philip Hammond doesn’t even try to disguise his animosity towards Brexit and were it not for the fact Mrs May has such a wafer-thin majority, backed by the DUP, he would surely have been sacked months ago.
Mrs May is not in the mould of a Churchill or a Thatcher, and some may wish she were more visionary and inspirational.
But one thing is true – if she’s not the best prime minister we’ve ever had, she’s the best one we’ve got right now and she is better than any alternative that could be dreamt up.
It is the duty of Conservative MPs to give her their fullest support. Just as Clement Attlee put aside political differences to give Winston Churchill his full backing during this country’s darkest hour, so today’s crop of political pygmies should do the same.
They insist that it would be much easier for Mrs May to attract their support were she able to galvanise them – and the nation – with a stirring speech.
She needs to set out with brilliance and coherence her vision of Britain after Brexit and her strategy for achieving what so many of us voted for.
If only she were an orator like Tony Blair. If only she were a smooth operator like David Cameron. If only, if only… If only they would wake up and see that what this country needs more than ever is someone who is not a slippery snakeoil salesman.
Someone who says what they mean, albeit it in a somewhat stilted manner, who is true to their word. Someone honest. Someone with principles. Someone who doesn’t cut and run when the going gets tough. That someone is Theresa May.
How can so many Tory MPs be so blind that they cannot see that? Or is the truth that they do not want to see it? Have their personal grudges, their lust for power, distorted their judgment and turned them all into Brutus, the ally only too willing to plunge in the dagger?
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If 48 Tory MPs write to the chairman of the backbench 1922 committee calling for Mrs May to resign, he is obliged to ask her to stand down and to hold a leadership election.
If anything near that number genuinely exists, who would those 48 treacherous saps see as being the perfect leader of this country, the person who would stand up to the EU and get a formidable deal from Merkel and Macron, who would give Corbyn a well-deserved bloody nose, who would unite not just the party but the nation?
The candidates whose names are being bandied around Westminster are scary. The very idea that any of them is suitable for the highest office is laughable. Except it’s no joke.
No one is laughing. This is deadly serious. Our future is at stake.
