Tory MPs have decided to get rid of their leader in what are, on the face of it, surprising circumstances. The party is ahead in the polls by as much as 5 per cent. The recent Blackpool conference generated a host of new policies on health, education and welfare, most of which attracted favourable notices even from the BBC. At the most recent test of national electoral opinion, the 1 May council elections, Iain Duncan Smith’s Tories romped to victory and picked up 3,000 seats. There must have been some powerful incentive that drove Tory MPs to unseat a man elected, never let it be forgotten, by 61 per cent of the party membership. That incentive was fear.
It is of course true that for many weeks the plot against the leader was hyped up, and the number of plotters was exaggerated by the trompe l’oeil of the media. There has been more than a touch of Wenlock Jakes about recent events. Jakes was the reporter in Scoop who was dispatched to some Balkan capital to cover a coup, fell asleep in his train, woke in the wrong capital, and precipitated a genuine conflict by the sheer eyewitness vigour of his reporting. Rumours of war have turned into war, and prophecies of disaster have become self-fulfilling. Like the troops of Midian, the plotters have prowled round and round in the dark, willing to wound, afraid to strike, but perfectly happy to brief off the record. Day after day, the fog of intrigue has thickened, not dispersed.
The whole ludicrous business has, naturally, made excellent copy, and by Tuesday morning enough MPs had decided that the position of IDS was irretrievable, and that it was time to bring matters to a head.
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