Daily catch-up: Boris Johnson and Michael Howard, left-liberal Europhiles

The curious centrifugal forces of the Tory civil war, and a painting of Scottish winter

Another great painting by Claudia Massie. Glencoe. Oil on linen on board, 20x30cm.

µ Tim Shipman had several good stories in The Sunday Times about the state of the Dave versus Boris civil war (pay wall: the following were listed in his excellent Red Box email):

Cameron ignored advice from Lynton Crosby, mastermind of the Tory election victory, to declare that his new deal with Brussels was inadequate and delay the referendum until 2017.

Boris Johnson wrote a second newspaper article declaring his support for the "remain" campaign. This article was only written on the Friday night before he declared, long after some reports have claimed he made up his mind. Having read his own best effort to justify Cameron's position, he told allies: "The 'stay' stuff is not worth the paper it was written on. This is going to make me vomit. It's a crap argument."

Boris first thought he would have to back Brexit, not at the now famous dinner with Michael Gove on Tuesday 16 February, but five days earlier when Oliver Letwin showed him the government's plans to enshrine parliamentary sovereignty in law. Boris told aides: "I don't think there's much there."

Some people think that Johnson writing two drafts of his article shows how unprincipled he is. On the contrary, as someone who also thinks by writing, I think it shows commendable intellectual rigour.

µ Michael Howard is a left-liberal Europhile, says Peter Hitchens:

The ‘exit’ campaign was last week cunningly taken over by Tories who don’t want to leave the Superstate and will use a vote to leave (if it happens) as the basis for yet another round of negotiations with Brussels.

Boris Johnson and Michael Howard are ancient liberal Europhiles, who have learned how to seduce the Tory Party with speeches that sound Right-wing but aren’t really. It is painful to see this cynical seduction technique at work, and watch the old ladies fall for it.

Neither is what he seems. Lord Howard led a Left-liberal putsch against the genuine EU opponent Iain Duncan Smith in 2003. Mr Johnson is an act, not a politician. He is a keen Europhile.

Well, it's a theory, isn't it?

µ I wrote an apology to Nick Clegg in The Independent on Sunday yesterday (featuring my piranha theory of politics). The Liberal Democrats may have had more of an effect in counter-balancing the tendency of the Conservative party to wander off to the right than I thought at the time. The way the Labour Party and the US Republicans are defying the laws of politics by heading away from the electable centre makes me wonder if the centripetal force is as strong as it ought to be in a first-past-the-post voting system.

Alastair Meeks at Political Betting comments on this emptying of the centre ground: "This reversal of political norms is both highly unusual and very unstable."

µ Fraser Nelson writes in praise of Blair-Adonis-Gove revolution. The best state schools have pulled ahead of the best private schools in A-level results.

µ The Top 10 in The New Review, the Independent on Sunday magazine, was Obsolete Techology Clichés. I missed Desert Island Discs (thanks, David Grossman) and crossed wires (Dan Kelly).

David Freedman, meanwhile, offered a late addition to my Top 40 Lost Positives, compiled two years ago: scathed.

µ And finally, thanks to Glenny Rodge ‏for this:

"The first rule of thumb club is approximate."

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