complacency in this campaign”, said James
Forsyth in The Spectator. Throughout last week
Tory MPs – a third of whom had yet to declare
where they stood on the EU – were getting text
messages from UK Chancellor George Osborne
urging them to call him. A huge amount of
energy was spent trying to prevent Justice
Secretary Michael Gove not to mention London
Mayor Boris Johnson from backing “Out”. And
you can see why. For David Cameron, this has
been a career-defining moment. “How history
will judge him” depends not only on whether he
wins, but “whether he can put the Tory party back together
again afterwards”. Until last Saturday morning, Johnson was
still completely undecided about which way to turn. But now
that he and Gove – respectively one of the most popular and
one of the cleverest politicians in the nation – have come out in
favour of leaving, Out has a real chance of winning, even if the
odds still favour the In campaign.
“It’s not often you see a party of government splitting before
your eyes,” said John Rentoul in The Independent on Sunday.
It happened in 2003, when 139 Labour MPs voted against
Tony Blair over Iraq. Now it’s happening with the Tories over
Europe. I’d always thought all those Tory MPs who, like
Cameron himself, had expressed impatience with the EU
would, like him, vote to stay in when the chips were down.
But it turns out many weren’t like Cameron at all: instead of
a small rump arguing for Leave, it seems as many as half may
do so. When the history books come to be written about this
great clash, said James Kirkup in The Sunday Telegraph,
people will find it hard to believe that “the international
standing of a great nation” hinged on a personal
rivalry between two men which goes back to their
school days. At Eton, Johnson was the star, a scholar
and a prefect: even as a small boy he’d talk of one
day being “World King”. Cameron, by contrast, was
relatively ordinary, an inconspicuous chap in one of
the lower forms. But at Oxford, where they both
went on to study, it was Cameron Minor, not the
World King, who got a first. And it was Cameron
who won the top job in politics, said Robert Colvile
in Politico. This week we are witnessing the final
showdown that the “narrative demands”.
But Johnson’s critics are wrong to suggest he’s
merely “positioning himself for a leadership bid”,
said Toby Young in his Spectator blog. Like any
“front-rank politician” – think Churchill or Thatcher – he’s
a “mixture of conviction and careerism”. Were he solely
interested in advancing his career, he’d have taken the foreign
secretary job that he is rumoured to have been offered if he
agreed to vote to stay in. But because he was genuinely
dismayed by Cameron’s failure to bring home serious
concessions from Brussels, he took the far riskier path of
joining the Leave side. If his side loses, as is likely, his
reputation as an election winner will be “tarnished”.
Johnson’s motives may be questionable, said Philip Collins in
The Times, but it’s Cameron’s that got us into this mess. To
“staunch the internal bleeding in his party”, he embarked on
a futile negotiation with Brussels that has only served to highlight
what is unsatisfactory about the EU. As for the promised
EU referendum, like the Scottish one it will just serve to inflame
and solidify convictions on both sides. We are all victims of his
failed “party balancing trick”. Cameron began his time as
Tory leader vowing never “to start ‘banging on’ about Europe.
Now he talks of nothing else and it could be the death of him”.
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