I have never felt so ashamed for having once been a Tory MP as when I heard the Prime Minister address the Conservative Party conference on Sunday.
Wearing a black dress on a stage set painted in the petroleum blue of the night sky, she tolled the bell for the last pretence of pro-European Conservatism.
To raucous cheers from supporters of a party more thoroughly infected by extremist entryism than Labour ever was, Theresa May signalled that Britain is now heading towards a hard Brexit.
In doing so, she sought neither to heal the wounds, nor to soothe the pain of many of her fellow citizens, including those Conservatives who feel a real sense of loss – even, as some have said, of bereavement – at the decision to leave the European Union.
She sought instead to capture the applause of the crowd and to revel in praise from those she should long ago have learned to distrust and despise.
The daughter of the Reverend Hubert Brasier showed that what matters to her is not ensuring that the jobs, businesses and acquired rights of millions of Britons should be protected by ensuring that we stay in the single market but that our fellow Europeans should be prevented from living and working in our country (and that our citizens should lose the right to live and work in theirs).
The foxes have their holes and the birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.
Luke 9:58
Pastor Horst Kasner, theologian and father of the German chancellor, perhaps preached from Saint Luke more frequently than Theresa’s father. Or maybe Theresa didn’t listen.
Whatever the reason, the Prime Minister has made it clear that preventing foreigners from coming to Britain and working in our health service, teaching in our universities and helping to build our economy is a greater priority for her than protecting our livelihoods and those of our neighbours.
A comparison between the priorities of Theresa May and those of Angela Merkel is not spurious.
German friends, from across the political spectrum, have told me of their pride that, in spite of all the obvious difficulties of providing a home to a million homeless migrants, their chancellor’s priority was not restricting immigration but showing solidarity.
Theresa May’s concern, however, is not to weigh the strains and costs of immigration from the European Union against the many undoubted benefits but simply to address the bigotry and irrational fear of those in her party who worry about more black, brown, Polish or Romanian faces in the home counties.
Merkel’s response to Europe’s migration crisis is a testament to the extent to which her country has become a beacon of modern civilisation. May’s shameful prioritising of immigration above the economic well-being of Britain, on the other hand, is an indication of how far backwards her Government intends to take ours.
In dealing with refugees and migrants who were desperate for somewhere to lay their heads, the pastor’s daughter, Angela Merkel, showed that she was straightforward, honest and inspired by the most fundamental Christian virtues.
The vicar’s daughter on the other hand has shown herself to be merely duplicitous. Submarine May, who spent much of the referendum dodging appeals for her to join the fray, has now revealed that what she said in April was not what she really thought at all. In April she said:
If we… leave the European Union, we risk bringing the development of the single market to a halt, we risk a loss of investors and businesses… Remaining inside the European Union does make us more secure, it does make us more prosperous and it does make us more influential beyond our shores… I believe it is clearly in our national interest to remain a member of the European Union.
The national interest in April is still the national interest in October and, given those remarks, one might reasonably have expected Mrs May at least to do her duty and defend Britain’s position in the single market. But it seems that all along she had shared the dark obsessions and base instincts of the more ignoble parts of her party. It’s not about the economy, it’s about the immigrants, stupid.
Little wonder then that she chose to reward with high office those who won their victory in the referendum as a result of carefully fabricated lies.
Boris Johnson, for example, that great, blubbering blancmange of insincerity, helped to trumpet not only the lie that the NHS could be given the 350 million pounds we supposedly send every week to Brussels, but also the great immigration fabrication – that 70 million Turks were on their way into the European Union.
Theresa rewarded this supreme equivocator-liar with one of the great offices of state. We should have realised that, far from being an attempt to set Boris the Brexiteer up for a fall, the appointment was a mark of her esteem and an indication of the importance she attaches to pulling up Little Britain’s drawbridge at whatever the cost.
The woman who called the Tories the “nasty party” is now the leader of a party in its nastiest incarnation yet. She reserved a special sneer for those who are seeking to challenge her authority, as an unelected Prime Minister, to use antiquated royal powers to trigger Article 50 and set us on the road out of Europe, without a vote in Parliament.
“Come on!” was her condescending rejoinder to those seeking to challenge her in the courts.
Yet the courts are an essential part of our constitutional system and it is entirely right that they should review her authority to act without reference to Parliament, when petitioned to do so by concerned citizens.
The fact that the Prime Minister chose openly to criticise those seeking a legal review of her use of mediaeval powers says a great deal not only about her temperament and her lack of understanding of the issues, but also about her preference for the exercise of personal power over due process.
The most offensive aspect of her speech, however, was the threat it represents to the United Kingdom because of its failure to pay heed to the constitutional position and national interests of Scotland and Northern Ireland. Her reference, in one simple sentence, to removing the UK from the purview of the European Court of Justice has direct implications for the Scottish legal system but is the clearest indication of her evident intention to remove the whole country from the single European market.
That stated intention, adopted without reference to the devolved Governments of Scotland and Northern Ireland will undermine their interests and offend their sensibilities.
“Come on!”
The consequence of that one sentence will be the end of the United Kingdom.
It is a sentence which no other British post-war Prime Minister would ever have spoken and it will ultimately be her undoing.
Harold Elletson was Conservative MP for Blackpool North 1992-97 and parliamentary private secretary to John Major's Northern Ireland minister Patrick Mayhew