In a powerful section he told moderate Tory MPs who don’t like hard brexit to defect, resign or “we will do to you what we did to Zac Goldsmith.”
The Tories and Labour had gone to the extremes, he said. We were the only opposition. He told people not to bother waiting around for a new party but to join us.
A few weeks ago I was in Doncaster, filming for a Laura Kuenssberg documentary. They took me to a pub to meet a group of people who had voted Leave, and I got talking to one of the guys there – a Scottish businessman who’d lived in Yorkshire for many years, a bit older than me, pro-union, anti-Europe.
We bonded initially over football – he’s a Glasgow Rangers fan and I’m a Blackburn Rovers fan, so we have Graeme Souness in common; and Barry Ferguson;… and colossal disappointment!
We eventually got on to Europe – we had to, really, that was the point of the documentary – and he had a bit of a go at me for letting the side down. He said I should be backing Theresa May. We’d get a better deal if we were all on the same side.
So I asked him. How good are Celtic in Europe? Now, for the non-football fans among you, the answer is ‘not very’, but him being a Rangers fan, the answer I got back was a little more ‘post-watershed’.
I said to him: ‘You’re right, they’re absolutely dreadful. And why is that? It’s because they have got an absolutely dreadful opposition at home.’
There was a pause.
Now, given Celtic’s opposition at home includes, principally, Rangers, I thought he might be about to lamp me for insulting his team. But he looked me in the eye and said: ‘Yeah, I see your point’.
Because whether you support Brexit or not, Britain needs a decent opposition.
In January, Theresa May gave her big speech at Lancaster House where she set out her priorities for the Brexit negotiations.
After months of saying Brexit means Brexit, she finally came clean.
Brexit means Hard Brexit.
Brexit means Brexit at any cost.
Brexit means jumping out of the Single Market, the world’s biggest marketplace, with all the consequences that will have for people’s jobs and our economy.
That wasn’t what people voted for in June last year. Narrowly the British people chose Brexit. But it is this Conservative Government that has chosen this Brexit.
A Conservative Party that has presented itself, for as long as it has existed, as being a party for business is now prepared to walk away from our biggest market even though it means crippling tariffs on British companies.
Theresa May – the inheritor of the Government that sought to fix our economy after the financial crisis, wilfully choosing to do something she knows will wreck it.
The politician who rose to prominence in her own party for accusing it of being ‘the nasty party’ deliberately leaving millions of people insecure and uncertain about whether they can even stay in the country they call home.
But that speech told us more than Theresa May wanted us to know.
It showed us who Theresa May is worried about – and guess what, it’s not Her Majesty’s Opposition.
This was a speech designed to box off the right wing media and the right of her party. This was a speech that Nigel Farage could have given.
She didn’t even attempt to address the case from anyone on the centre or the left. She feels no threat from there.
One of the most pointed attacks on it was made by George Osborne, who accused Theresa May of putting concerns about immigration ahead of the economy.
George Osborne. That’s where the left starts now. So I suppose that makes the Evening Standard a lefty rag!
That’s how far Theresa May has moved the Conservative Party.
The Conservative Party has been taken over by its own version of Momentum. May’s Momentum.
The Hard Brexiteers. The anti-free trade protectionists. The shrink-the-state extremists. The anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, anti-international aid zealots.
It’s their party now – and it’s hard to be sure whether Theresa May is their leader or their captive.
And it wasn’t only the centre and the left she ignored in that speech. She even hung out to dry her own backers in British business.
Theresa May is treating British businesses the way Labour has treated the working class for decades. Taking them for granted because she thinks they have nowhere else to go.
Theresa May has put at risk the very people who have bankrolled her party’s success for years. And she didn’t have to.
She could have fought to keep us in the Single Market if she wanted to. She has chosen not to. She is pulling us out before the negotiations have even begun.
And because of that choice, she is to blame for every job that is lost, every shop that closes, every company that downsizes, every factory relocated overseas.
There was nothing inevitable about leaving the Single Market. That’s her choice. The blame for the damage lies at her door.
If I was a businessperson who had given money to today’s Conservatives, I would demand my money back.
You were sold a free market, internationalist, pro-business party but what you’ve got is protectionism, nationalism, economic vandalism.
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