Within the breast of every Tory MP, from One Nation Wets (the few that are left) to Thatcherite Head-Bangers, is a dirty secret. They lie in bed at night and feel rage and humiliation at not having won a Westminster majority. Despite…
- thirteen years of Labour rule
- 2008 bank meltdown
- Blair-Brown Downing Street Wars
- Gordon Brown’s self-immolation during the 2010 campaign
… the Tories still couldn’t win a miserable forty percent of the vote.
That stings. It places a black spot on Cameron’s leadership. It typecasts him as the man who couldn’t even beat Gordon Brown.
It gave Nick Clegg – previously laughed at, or ignored, by all decent Tories – the keys to Downing Street.
So they want another go. ASAP.
The question, therefore, is simple, and is being asked privately over port and cigars in exquisite Queen Anne manor houses in Dorset, Wiltshire and Berkshire, and in swish flats in Kensington, Chelsea and Docklands: how to engineer an early election which the Tories will win?
The nightmare scenario, of course, is for the Tories to force a poll which Labour then goes on to win. Or gains sufficient seats to form a working coalition with the ever-promiscuous Liberals.
Imagine the gnashing of teeth! Imagine the grins on LibDem faces! Imagine how long Cameron would last after that!
Opinion polls suggest the British public likes coalition government. They’re bored by Punch and Judy politics. They voted for a mixed-bag administration and now expect it to work, diligently, to solve the nation’s problems.
They want the British economy defended, as far as possible, from the Euro-quagmire which starts at Calais. They want the bankers disciplined, rioters put in chokey, the NHS protected, and benefits cheats made to work in a burger bar.
It follows that if the Tories are seen to engineer, arrange, provoke, encourage, or otherwise facilitate, a fallout with the Liberals, leading to an early election, they (the Tories) risk being chastised at the ballot box. People will think:-
“You bastards. You put party advantage over the good of the nation, a nation facing profound economic and other problems. Typical selfish upper class Etonians. You’re not getting my vote. You posh gits.”
There are a number of ways the Tories could play it. One is to find a method, with hard-as-nails plausible deniability, to destabilise the Liberals to such an extent that they, the Liberals, destroy the coalition and provoke a general election. Senior Tories would then go on TV, wring their hands, tearfully regret the need for an early election, beat their chests and explain how they love the coalition more than their own mothers and, with maximum humility, regret, weasel words, and hypocrisy, go to the country. They might just get away with it.
I suspect the Daily Telegraph’s bugging of Vince Cable’s constituency office was the start of just such an operation, quickly aborted. You only have to read the Telegraph blogs to marvel at the Tory Head-Bangers permitted to infest that newspaper. They’re David Cameron’s unpurged Militant Tendency. They’re cocky, pleased with themselves, and up for a fight. Oh, and they don’t like Mr Cameron much.
Senior Liberals are, naturally, aware of the problem and there will be a degree of healthy paranoia. They, or their researchers, also read the Daily Telegraph. Their job is to anticipate the machinations of the Tory Head-Banging Dirty Tricks Department, neutralise them, and ensure that blame for an early election lands firmly on David Cameron’s Bullingdon topcoat. 