Message to Tim Montgomerie: Why Did it Take You so Long to Quit the Useless Tories?

Yet again my analysis of British politics has been vindicated elsewhere (though without attribution). The idea that the Tory Party has become the new vehicle of Blairism, and is now itself the engine of the cultural revolution, an idea first set forth here many years ago, is beginning to dawn on others.

Tim Montgomerie of ���Conservative Home��� used his ���Times��� column (which alas I cannot link to, it being  behind a paywall) to announce that he is quitting the Tory Party.

It���s an interesting attack because it lists all the ways in which the Cameron government has failed and is failing (and will fail) , and it points out that the Tory Party is increasingly peopled by men and women indistinguishable from Liberal Democrats or Blairites. But it doesn���t make the connection between the two facts.

Well, well done, Tim, but why has it taken you so long? Why quit now, when the Tory Party sprawls across the political landscape, a great bloated toad of a thing, gorged with hedge-fund money and without any serious rival, attended by gargling choirs of media toadies and flatterers. Why didn���t you leave when you could have helped to prevent this?

You have noticed, at last, that the Tory Party is actually peopled with Liberal Democrats in all but name, and that it will soon be providing asylum for the Blairites driven from Labour by Jeremy Corbyn���s romantic attempt to return to socialism.  This ���radical transformation of the Tory Party��� of which you speak is not ���under way���. It is virtually complete, having been under way at least since 2003.

 

This was all predictable well before 2009, and indeed was already taking place in the wooing and flattering of Blairites such as Alan Milburn by the Cameron machine. Likewise, Michael Gove���s admiration for Mr Blair himself was open and unconcealed. The signs were there. Why didn���t you read them? Come to that, why didn���t you spot the Tory front bench���s eagerness to offer more concessions to the Liberal Democrats than they had actually asked or hoped for, in coalition talks? Did you really believe David Cameron���s pretence that he was prevented from following conservative measures by Nick Clegg? On the contrary, Mr Cameron much preferred a coalition to a majority Tory government, and heartily wishes he didn���t have a majority now (if this were so, there���d be no pesky referendum to worry about).

Before 2010, when I was urging any serious conservative to aid me in destroying the Tory Party, you were among those who didn���t listen, who thought my view laughable, who placed absurd faith in David Cameron. I remember a conversation in the porch of some Brighton hotel, during which you told me that Mr Cameron was serious about supporting marriage (This ended up with his long-delayed, useless allowance claimed by almost nobody. Do you now still think he was serious?).

Before 2010,  media and other desertions from the Tories, and a refusal to be fooled by Mr Cameron,  could have led to a fourth decisive defeat in a row for the Tory Party, which would then have collapsed and split ��� and so would have opened the door to the formation of the ���wholly new��� party which you now annoyingly suggest will emerge in the years ahead. If so, it will be too late, and will have a terrible struggle to find its place in our two-party system.

At the 2010 election, we would have had Blairite government whatever we had done. But we had it in our power to sack the Useless Tory Party as the opposition, a chance that will not come again in my lifetime or (quite possibly) in yours. Four successive election defeats are rare.  In the five wasted years of the coalition, we could have created a new opposition, morally, culturally and socially conservative, dedicated to national independence, and capable of sweeping New Labour out of office for many years.

Instead, we had a Blairite government headed by a nominal conservative,  the unthinking tribal Tory vote clung to Mr Cameron, and what might have been the greatest change in British politics since Labour superseded the Liberals was frittered away on the rise and fall of UKIP, a Dad���s Army rebel movement. So, while I���m glad you���ve quit the Useless Tories at last, I���m furious that you have left it too late to be of any use.