How Brexit broke the Tory Party | Andrew Neil brutally analyses 14 years of the Conservatives

that was the reason from 2016 almost the sense of chaos of who's the next Tory leader who's the Prime Minister who's the chancellor do they have a clue what they're doing how many more MPS or PMS are they going to have that second part is the reason why they've ended up where they are now so behind in the poll so it's a as this year football it's been a game of two halves the first half quietly okay the second half a bit of a mess I think you look back at 14 years of conservative government it's basically in two bits it's uh pre the brexit referendum in 2016 and then after the brexit referendum and before that it was basically the years of David Cameron and George Osborne in 2010 as a coalition government with Nick clegs lib Dems they inherited a difficult situation because they' been the great financial crash of 2008 and that had wrecked the national balance sheet it racked up a lot of debt and big government deficits and they had to do something to put that right the opposition uh designated it as austerity and to some extent there was an element of that but the fact is it didn't matter who was in power there would have to have been a belt tightening to get the national finances back onto uh a level of Playfield and even kill again and by and large the Cameron Osborne year did that it was a years of some social progress uh gay marriage for example went on to the statute book it was quite Progressive in some ways the economy was sort of chuntering along quite well not growing too fast but not too slow kind of Goldilocks economy uh inflation was kind of under control uh there had been some foreign adventures in Libya which were not a great success they pulled back from Syria but overall it was a period of relative stability enough to get Mr Cameron an overall majority in uh 2016 or 2015 I should say 2015 for a bit more of the same bit more conservative but nevertheless a continuation of a a center moderate center right Canada government then came the brexit referendum which Mr Cameron had agreed to in the 2015 Tory Manifesto and that changed everything because it kind of blew up the Tory party it was deeply divided over brexit and then the country voted for brexit against Mr Cameron's advice and Mr Osborne's advice and it blew up the Tory party even more and Not only was it divided but it became exhausted by brexit uh it went through leader after leader and it could do nothing but brexit and yet having won the brexit referendum the brexiteers didn't seem to know how to achieve it or what to do after they'd got it so you moved into a situation where David Cameron stood down uh where uh because they' all stabbed each other in the back rather than a brexiteer you got Theresa May she largely made a complete horx of it so then you had Boris Johnson he won what looked like a a majority for two terms in 2019 blew that we Ed Liz trust for a nano it was what I like to call the cluster trust I'm always careful how I say that in case I say something else the cluster trust and then we ended up after that with Richie sunak and in the in the interim we had about five six seven chancellors as well and the Tes emerged from all that exhausted all over the place not knowing what they were could do and then the pandemic hit them sideways just as the national uh finances had got backed together uh after the great crash the pandemic threw them all sideways again with massive deficits and massive uh debt the national de now 100% almost of GDP and that that was the reason from 2016 almost the sense of chaos of who's the next T leader who's the Prime Minister who's the chancellor do they have a clue what they're doing how many more MPS or PMS are they going to have that second part is the reason why they've ended up where they are now so behind in the pool so it's a it's the year of football it's been a game of two halves the first half quietly okay the second half a bit of a mess I think David Cameron was a solid moderate Center Right leader a grown up not too exciting but uh a kind of decent enough leader for the country at that time looking back I think history will be kinder to him than people like me probably were at the time we then moved to Theresa May who was totally out of her depth and she'd never have been prime minister uh she was replaced by Boris Johnson who had everything going for him most expensive education that the world could buy uh smart uh authentic was able to cut through to the people to cut through to a lot of people who weren't Tes he was used to call him he was like the the Heineken candidate he could reach places that other candidates couldn't he won that famous Victory against Jeremy Corbin and then completely threw it away from his own indiscipline and self-indulgence and failing to grow into the job as many people had hoped but he's never done uh and then we ended up for a nano second with Liz truss who was Theresa May squared uh she' never have been in the job in the first place was never fit for it lumbered on on the country by a small group of about 150,000 Tory activists and then we uh Richie sunak decent smart hardworking Patriot but given what he inherited just too much to ground to make up and also probably too much of a technocrat to cut through in the way Boris Johnson could to ordinary voters and hence nothing he's done has moved the dial so it's a collection and you know looking back although he has his many enemies I think if they were honest they would not realize that they didn't at the time how lucky they were with David Cameron oh I think it was I think it was the brexit referendum because as long as Mr Cameron was in Coalition with the lids he knew he he couldn't call a referendum because the lib Dems wouldn't let him have one he put the brexit referendum into the 2015 Manifesto because he didn't think that he would win an overall majority he thought he was going to run again in Coalition with Nick CAG then the leader of the lib Dems and he would stop him again having it a referendum but lo and behold he wanted overall majority and he' promised a referendum and true to his word he gave us a referendum and that was the Watershed in these years that defined everything that then happened since and so that brexit referendum for good or ill was the defining moment of the past 14 years it uh it led up to what had happened before and it has defined and dominated everything since it divided the governing party and it sucked up all the bandwidth of the governing party so they they were so exhausted they had no energy or brain power for anything else but dealing with brexit and you've seen that in that the the advantage they've taken of brexit has been so little so few and behind it all they were terrified of Nigel farage and ukip that was why David Cameron promised a referendum in 2015 people forget that ukip had done incredibly well in the European elections I think it was in 2014 and Cameron was worried that ukip was going to go for his uh right flank that's why he promised the brexit referendum you could hung over that referendum they've hung over the Tories ever since they've been the kind of uh the elephant in the re in the room the ghost at Banko's feast and they're still there and the big question now is and who would have thought this was even a possible thought that if the Tes really lose badly on July the 4th will they be subject to a hostile takeover by faraj and the Reform Party I mean that really would be unprecedented

Channel: Times Radio

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Id: YfXeNbWIECs

Length: 9min 35sec (575 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2024