The Three Brexiteers as photoshopped by The Sun
Three weeks to go to the EU referendum in Britain on June 23 and the Conservative party is close to explosion.
http://www.cicero.de/weltbuehne/brexit-so-zerlegt-man-eine-ehrwuerdige-konservative-partei/60981
“I don’t want to stab the prime minister in the back”, confessed a Conservative MP to the “The Sunday Times”: “I want to stab him in the front to see the expression on his face." The revengeful traitor preferred to keep his name to himself. But David Cameron must know by now: His Brits have watched too many episodes of the bloody TV series “Game of Thrones”. And: He himself could soon be lying dead on the ground like TV hero Jon Snow. Slain by his own men.
On June 23rd Britain holds a referendum if to stay or to leave the EU. It’s neck on neck for “Remainers” and “Brexiters”. In the latest poll of “The Telegraph” the pro-Europeans lead by five points, in the one of “The Guardian” they lag four points behind. There are still 18 percent of undecided voters. It is a real test of nerves for everyone involved.
Especially for the prime minister and leader of the Tory party, David Cameron. The Conservatives are split like the country and the sides are polarized. Facts have been long replaced by fiction and old friendships escalate into seemingly eternal enmities. Cameron was the one who called for a referendum in order to calm the EU-skeptics in his own party. His plan did not work out.
On the contrary. “Blue versus blue” is the frequent headline in the papers. The fighting starts in the morning: Two Tory MPs recently exchanged angry words over their English breakfast in the Tea room of the Commons. London’s former mayor Boris Johnson meanwhile spends the day on a Brexit Trail through the country. He functions as mouthpiece for the Leave campaign. His populist attitude to the truth and his fast wit whips his audience into an anti-EU-frenzy long before the Remain campaign can pull up dull sounding facts and figures to correct him.
Johnson does not stop with his accusations at the headquarter of evil, the EU institutions in Brussels. He recently attacked David Cameron head on. Voters had been promised lower immigration, he stated in an open letter: “This promise is plainly not achievable as long as the UK is a member of the EU, and the failure to keep it is corrosive of public trust in politics.” Boris Johnson is currently looking for a new job and he has his eyes fixed on the prime minister’s chair. It would be vacated if Cameron fails to keep Britain in the European Union.
It is not by accident that “Vote Leave” chose immigration as the last big topic in this campaign. Britain fears more immigration and the EU was always used as scapegoat for the ever rising numbers. 257.000 new immigrants arrived last year from EU member states and 273.000 from the rest of the world, from Commonwealth countries like Pakistan and India. Neither the first nor the latter number will be easily reduced. Like in all developed countries immigration is part of economic success. And leaving the EU might not help to lower numbers substantially: “If after Brexit Great Britain negotiates a new trade deal with the EU to regain access to the Single Market the free movement for EU citizens will be part of the deal”, explains Simon Hix, professor for European politics at LSE.
Academic analysis, however, is currently hard to find on the blue battlefield. Conservative daily papers like Daily Telegraph and The Times have a similar problem like the Tories on the front benches: They find it hard to find a common line in the EU-question. Five ministers in Cameron’s government openly campaign for Brexit.
Pritti Patel, minister for employment, attacked her prime minister in an interview with a hardly veiled attack: “It’s shameful that those leading the pro-EU campaign fail to care for those who do not have their advantages. Their narrow self-interest fails to pay due regard to the interests of the wider public.”
She might be right in that, but a personal attack like this must be painful for David Cameron as he fights for the most important decision of his whole career. Instead of supporting their leader, the talk is of a new manifesto of the “Three Brexiteers” – Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Pritti Patel and their fans - for the time after Britain voted to leave the EU.
Or was all this carefully planned? The painful personal attacks are part of the political game in Britain, explains Iain Duncan Smith, who resigned in March as secretary for pensions and employment. “The Conservative party was always a broad church. We are used to robust debates.” Duncan Smith is a hard line Brexit supporter. He compared George Osborne with “Pinocchio with a growing nose” because the chancellor of the exchequer presented a few positive numbers in case Britain should stay in the EU. Will he expect to sit on the same table with Osborne after the referendum again? “We will not be on each others Christmas card list”, Iain Duncan Smith says in a background briefing. “But politics should not be about personal things.”
Many observers doubt that the Tory party can be united easily after the referendum. Some even fear the Conservatives might break into two parts. If Britain remains in the EU, David Cameron stays as prime minister till 2018. If Britain votes leave, Boris Johnson hopes to succeed him. After the sleek Cameron Britain would get a leader with a rather erratic (hair)style. In both cases the Tory party will need a lot of reconciliation work.
But if Cameron wins this referendum and Britain stays in the EU, he has won on all levels: He will have kept the EU debate within his party, sidelining all others. Labour is mostly pro-European, but paralyzed due to its controversial leader Jeremy Corbyn. UKIP’s populist leader Nigel Farage is still well regarded in the pub, but has out-maneuvered himself in his own party because of his choleric personality. As this campaign has shown, Boris Johnson is definitely the better right wing populist.
David Cameron took a big risk with this EU referendum. But if he wins this round, he has won it all. A Yes vote for Europe would be the last one in a series of tough challenges. He kept Scotland in Britain two years ago, he won a majority for his party in national elections one year ago and he is now about to decide the European question for the next generation.
The early morning of June 24th might be the moment when his enemies in the party come to regret that they wanted to look him in the eye while they murdered him. It might just be like Game of Thrones, when presumed dead heroes suddenly get up and walk again. Then comes the day of reckoning.