In the Continental Telegraph, Hector Drummond describes the rise of Jeremy Corbyn despite the bitter resistance of the Labour party establishment and says that the mistake Labour made was allowing Corbyn on the ballot in the first place — the party rank and file were far more ideologically “left” than the MPs and party officials. “When Corbyn was elected leader, it looked like Labour had shot itself through the foot. It now looks like what actually happened was that New Labour shot itself through the heart.”
On the other side, the closest equivalent threat to the Tory party establishment appears to be Jacob Rees-Mogg:
It’s clear that the wet Tory establishment is not keen on Jacob Rees-Mogg. On the surface that appears to be because he holds robust views that are at odds with theirs: he’s an actual Conservative, and they are, of course, anything but. But I wonder if there’s a deeper fear there as well: do they worry that if Rees-Mogg becomes leader then the party will slip out of their grasp in the way that Labour was taken over by hard-left, Momentum commies?
[…]
So I suspect the Tory establishment think that at all costs Rees-Mogg must be kept off a leadership ballot, because there’s a good chance he would win: he constantly tops the polls among party members for preferred leader. You see how the thinking would go after that. He’ll appoint a dry Cabinet. The likes of Gove and Johnson would be given a freer rein. Maybe even John Redwood would come into cabinet. All the disgruntled right-wingers who’ve quit the party in recent decades would come flocking back, including all the racists. We’d have a proper Brexit. The new members would get involved in choosing more right-wing candidates in local constituencies, which the central office would now be okay with. Some centrist MPs and councillors would quit the party, and The Guardian and the BBC will big up their huffy resignation letters. Anna Soubry, having left the party, will do wall-to-wall TV interviews telling the BBC and CNN how bad the Tories are under Rees-Mogg. And so the Tories would lose voters from the middle as they come to be seen as another bunch of UKIP-style golf-club bores, and Jeremy Corbyn will win the election (which the Tory establishment will think is a horrible outcome, but not quite as horrible as Rees-Mogg winning the election).
However, such fears are a bit overblown. True, Anna Soubry probably would quit, but that’s a good thing. Disgruntled right-wingers may come back into the fold, but that’s a good thing as long for the Tories (as long as overt racists are kicked out) – the Tories need those people back voting for them, and working for them.
But I can’t see Rees-Mogg upturning the Conservative establishment. Maggie Thatcher couldn’t do it, she remained a outlier for her entire career despite being PM for years, so I doubt Rees-Mogg could either (although I hope he can). And although there’s a lot of energy on the right at the moment, there’s nothing like Momentum, with its quasi-religious fervour, and its Stalinist-style fanaticism. Plus the wider establishment, like the BBC, the civil service and the Universities are virulently anti-right, and they have a vice-like grip on power, and they’ll harry the Conservatives under Rees-Mogg. So the party would go right to some degree, but not to any great extent. And eventually the squishy MPs will kill off Rees-Mogg once he makes a mistake.
But it should be good while it lasts, as long the Establishment fails to prevent him getting onto the leadership ballot paper.
