The Tories are addicted to self-destruction

Well, that round of party unity was fun, wasn’t it? Rishi Sunak, the pragmatist, ushered in an unfamiliar sense of calmness and competence as he entered Downing Street. It has lasted less than a week.

Yet again the newspapers are chock full of ‘senior Conservatives’ gunning for each other: the target this time is Suella Braverman, but it could be anyone.

The Tory cycle of violence continues, which raises the question as to whether the Tories are not just ‘ungovernable’ — as many said during Liz Truss’s collapse — but actually addicted to self-destruction.

So far this year 40,000 have entered Britain illegally: Braverman has said this amounts to ‘an invasion’.  David Cameron called it ‘a swarm’ in 2015 and he was also criticised, although of course in those days other Tories didn’t join in the outrage orgy with quite the same alacrity.

Now, the heat is blue-on-blue. Leading the attacks on the Home Secretary is Sir Roger Gale, whose constituency includes the Manston migrant processing centre. He called Braverman’s language ‘inflammatory’. Of course he did. 

Also, ‘allies of Priti Patel’ in the Home Office — who couldn’t possibly have any vendetta against Braverman or the Sunak administration — have described the Home Secretary’s use of the i-word as ‘horrific.’ Patel would never have used such a term, say her allies. The former conservative chairman Jake Berry put in his unhelpful oar by saying Braverman may have in fact been responsible for multiple security breaches in her last brief stint as Home Secretary.  

Braverman says that there is a ‘witch-hunt’ against her: you just need to pick up a newspaper today to see what she’s getting at.

But the people directing the witch-hunt aren’t Labour politicians or anti-borders activists. It’s Braverman’s department – unhappy officials at the Home Office now seem to think they can unseat any minister by briefing against them. And rather than standing up for her, Braverman’s fellow Tories are once again competing to outdo each other in expressing how ashamed they are to be part of this awful, awful government. 

It’s all so tiresome. Michael Gove said the other day that ‘after 12 months of turbulence, after a rolling news buffet, an all-you-can eat story extravaganza… boring is back.’  If only. What Gove didn’t get right about the self-destruct saga of modern Conservatism is that the drama is now what’s dull.

Braverman’s weakness stems in part from the silliness of her reappointment as Home Secretary, coming as it did days after she resigned, supposedly over a security breach. ‘The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes,’ she said. A week later, she was back in the job. 

But ‘Cruella’ Suella’s bigger problem is more significant. She is trying to grasp the thorniest nettle in British politics — and that isn’t the cost of living crisis. It is illegal migration, which remains a major concern for voters no matter how often it is dismissed as a toxic and divisive right-wing fetish.

Say she resigns: would her successor do any better? Her point is that the systems as they stand – the systems she inherited – are horrifically defective. As is evident to anyone wondering how an island nation can fail to protect itself against illegal entries running at 1,000 a day. Braverman’s real offence is to state the obvious: our system doesn’t work, and the people smugglers know it.

Yes, after a decade in power, that is the Tory party’s fault. Yet tackling this morally difficult, legally confusing and logistically impossible issue would be a desperate challenge for any government. For the self-loathing Tory administration that Rishi Sunak has just taken over, it may well prove too much.