Sea Change

A recent retweet of mine managed to clock up 45,000 impressions and a fair bit of online commentary. I'd spotted and circulated a post from Laura Smith, the Member of Parliament for Crewe & Nantwich, who was telling us about a 'people-powered mass meeting' just held in her constituency. Embedded in Smith's tweet was an image of the gathering. Last night's people-powered mass meeting proved that we all share a common vision for our local community and for a fairer society. Lots of campaign ideas to rebuild Crewe & Nantwich #ByTheMany @IanLaveryMP pic.twitter.com/yaJ4ipwdm7 — Laura Smith MP (@LauraSmithMP) June 26, 2019 The picture showed maybe 60 or 70 people standing with their arms aloft and fists clenched, as if gripped by a revolutionary fervour. The filter on the shot gives it a slightly retro feel and one might easily be looking at a contingent of Republicans determined to defend Barcelona from the fascist onslaught in January 1939. But ...

There are two battles being fought in the Tory Party right now. The first is the obvious one, which is over the Conservatives’ stance on the UK’s exit from the EU. With Farage riding high in the polls, the dynamic is clearly towards the election of a hard Brexiter, who is prepared to countenance a no-deal departure. That’s why it’s hard to see anything other than a Boris premiership, despite the Old Etonian’s obvious unsuitability for the role. Other candidates – Dominic Raab and Esther McVey, for example – have vowed to be just as tough with Brussels. We then see a spectrum of opinion and rhetoric, which stretches all the way to the fairly sensible, if skeletal, figure of Rory Stewart, who is presumed to have little chance among the Tory faithful. The other battle, in many ways, is the more interesting one. It’s over the long-term future of British conservatism beyond Brexit. This debate is understandably somewhat lost amid the current sense of intrigue and crisis, b...