The Tory leadership debate is becoming vicious, with Brexit realism sidelined

It’s painful to watch Tory leadership runners tying  themselves up in knots over the choice of Deal or No Deal. Some of them are ducking and diving, others  go in for the full kamikaze.  The situation is so dire that the Chancellor Philip Hammond is offering himself as  the fallback voice of sanity candidate. All of them so obviously want to keep sweet the hard line activists who’ll decide their fate that it’s almost unkind to keep baiting them. But excessive generosity is not appropriate here.  You have to pinch yourself that these people are bidding to be prime minister of the United Kingdom and to pull us out of a  terrible morass. So Matt Hancock the candidate of Youth is forced to admit that only last week, No Deal would do real damage yet he’d still settle for it, stuttering. Jeremy Hunt tells us with a straight face that he believes that taking the DUP along with him to Brussels would  convince the EU to settle.

What they all care about now is no longer Britain’s future relationship with the EU but the survival of the Conservative party and their own careers within it. If it gets past the party it’ll do; the country comes later. The real split is between those who insist the UK must have left by Hallowe’en come what may, and those who recognise that even arrangements for leaving without a deal would take more time.

Macho man Dominic Raab would try  to block No Deal coming before the Commons

“I would use every lever of the executive to make sure that we could execute government policy. I want a deal. But those trying to take it off the table, or diluting a commitment to leave at the end of October, are weakening the chance, whatever the percentage odds of getting it.”He would not get into the specifics of how he would stop MPs preventing a no-deal divorce. “I’m not going to get into the tactical machinations but I am confident that the government… can get there.”

Raab makes a habit of producing dubious cunning plans  that don’t add up.  If he were to fail which he most likely would, the choice facing MPs is between  finding a majority in favour of a second referendum with the support of a Tory minority  (with huge work to do on that) or a vote of confidence in which the same implacable Tory anti- Dealers would bring the government down and trigger a general election.

The only way I can see  the circle being squared is for the new prime minister to present Conservative MPs with something much like the withdrawal agreement and defying them to vote  it down and  face oblivion in a general election – in other words, to call the bluff of the No Dealers. Yes, this is the same  basic strategy which failed three times for Theresa May.  But this time,  the disaster of the Euro election has given them sight of a grim future ;  there is also a new deadline to meet in the autumn  and one of these days, a deadline is going to matter. In that sense, the No Dealers have a case, only  with the wrong solution.  Success for a version of the withdrawal agreement  would require winning the support of enough anti-referendum Labour MPs to cancel out the DUP – (if necessary which is just might not be, if they were finally confronted with the spectre of a Corbyn government)

A great demolition job has just been done in Twitter by the Telegraph’s Europe Peter Foster on leadership contender Dominic Raab’s claim to have been on the brink of negotiating a new backstop deal with a time limit over lunch with Simon Coveney in the Irish embassy in London.  It adds up to a straight charge that the man is telling porkies.

Raab told the Spectator’s Katy Balls:

At a dinner in the Irish embassy in London last November, Dominic Raab believed he was on the brink of a Brexit breakthrough. In a meeting with Simon Coveney, Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Brexit secretary sought to find a compromise on the issue of the backstop. He explained that parliament would never agree an open-ended pledge in the way the EU envisaged: pushing things too far would end in the failure of talks. But Britain could make separate guarantees on the border, he said, leading to a ‘win, win’ for both sides. Coveney seemed interested, and suggested he would consider it.

Just days later, the idea was dropped by Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach. But why? Sitting in The Spectator’s office earlier this week, Raab tells the story — and he doesn’t blame anyone in Dublin. ‘I think there was a window of opportunity,’ he says. ‘The frustrating thing is that it was closed by our own side.’ Specifically, he suspects, by David Lidington, Theresa May’s de facto deputy, who held his own talks with the Irish and seemed to stop what No. 10 saw as Raab’s freelancing. ‘It wasn’t ruled out by Coveney, it was ruled out by Varadkar. The only thing that happened in between is that he met David Lidington. It’s clear what happened.’

 Foster replies:

This is a gross distortion of the truth. It mustn’t stand. For the record, Dominic Raab (who I have never had the pleasure of meeting) was NOT on ‘the brink’ of fixing the backstop or #Brexit. Do I even need to say that? And whatever claims he makes to be the new PM, this can’t be, seriously among them.

Raab blamed the Irish government – indeed Taoiseach @LeoVaradkar of briefing against him, and leaking the story. A claim that the Irish govt described as “off the wall”. But with Raab it is always someone else – Lidington, Varadkar – out to get him.

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I go back to the timeline. The two sides were on the brink of an agreement. The Irish position hadn’t changed for two years. Is Raab suggesting it was going to change over a nice meal and an unexplained promise. It simply doesn’t pass the test of credibility.  So in my discussions, the adjectives used to describe Raab’s dealings as Brexit secretary span from “disingenuous” at the kind end of the spectrum, to “dishonest” at the more frank end.

There was nothing constructive about his tilt at @simoncoveney (in terms of actually delivering a deal) and I’m told Coveney “didn’t rise” to Raab, which was a mistake – not setting him straight – because Raab has a habit of twisting meetings according to both sides.

So @DominicRaab tells @katyballs he was “on the brink” of a #Brexit breakthrough on Ireland, but was thwarted by @DLidington – this is a gross distortion of the truth. It mustn’t stand.

Brian Walker

Former BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London