Opinion

Alex Kane: Conservative Party heading for rupture - and there's nothing Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg can do about it

Boris Johnson knows how to work a room, engage his party's grassroots and entertain, but - like Jacob Rees-Mogg - is unlikely to succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader
Boris Johnson knows how to work a room, engage his party's grassroots and entertain, but - like Jacob Rees-Mogg - is unlikely to succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader Boris Johnson knows how to work a room, engage his party's grassroots and entertain, but - like Jacob Rees-Mogg - is unlikely to succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader

IN politics, purists are the most difficult people to deal with. Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson are purists.

Irrespective of what happens over Brexit there will be very little difference to their lifestyles or income.

They both have safe seats and are likely to hold on to them for as long as they choose. They both make far more outside politics than inside. They both believe themselves to be above and beyond everyone else.

Compromise means nothing to them because they live in a world in which compromise, pragmatism and team spirit mean nothing.

All of which explains why purists tend to make very bad politicians, although they can be wonderful parliamentary performers.

Johnson's record as a member of both a shadow cabinet and government doesn't stand up to even cursory scrutiny.

Rees-Mogg, for all his supposed talent, hasn't even made it to the first rung of the government ladder.

But both are very good at self-promotion and very good at undermining a policy or person they don't like.

For them, that's the real pleasure of politics. Being difficult. Being noticed.

Yet for all their criticism of Theresa May over the past two years they have failed to land a killer blow on her.

They were aware that she leaned to the Remain camp in the referendum campaign - although she kept a very low profile - yet neither of them challenged her for the leadership when Cameron scarpered.

Instead, the almost unknown Andrea Leadsom carried their flag for a few days before she crashed, burned and left the race.

May managed to muzzle Johnson for a while by appointing him to the cabinet as Foreign Secretary, knowing that he would love the pomp, circumstance and media circus that accompanies the role.

But when he resigned after the Chequers Plan in July he cut a lonely figure. He had his moment - more than one in fact - to organise the cabinet 'mutiny' he now calls upon others to organise.

Just a few weeks ago he and Rees-Mogg also had the opportunity to plunge the knife into May during the annual conference.

They didn't, of course; contenting themselves with standing-room-only speeches and the thunderous applause from grassroots opponents of the Prime Minister.

That she has survived so long is partly to do with their incompetence and personal narcissism, for these are two men who are always willing to put the mirror, soundbite and camera before the killer blow.

It was almost as if they needed her in place, because what else was there for them to do if she were gone?

Anyway, she was easy for them to attack. They probably looked down upon her.

She wasn't comfortable in front of the camera and she was never particularly good at working a room. She didn't have their swagger or gift for public speaking.

And what maddened them more than anything else, of course, was the fact that she was Prime Minister.

If she falls in the next few days - and at the time of writing she is still in place - it won't be much to do with them.

The blow will be dealt by someone - maybe a handful of people - who have, until now, been reasonably loyal.

Johnson and Rees-Mogg may have made for good copy, but their attacks had become so routine and same-old, same-old that she was no longer bothered by them.

She had already factored their response into her decision to run with Tuesday's agreement. She may yet fall, but it will be at the hands of others, not theirs.

Will one of them throw his hat into the ring if there is a contest? Almost certainly.

Rees-Mogg reminds me of Enoch Powell. There's the same sort of dark intellect and bizarre appeal to people who didn't move in the same world.

Yet when he stood for the leadership in 1965 he received just 15 votes. When asked why someone who was so well known had done so badly, one MP noted: "The thing about Enoch is that the rest of us get off the underground at the Westminster stop; he goes on all the way down to Barking."

Johnson is popular at grassroots level but not across the front and backbenches, where he is regarded as mercurial, erratic, lazy and focused entirely on himself.

If he did succeed May, he would find it enormously difficult to rally a still deeply divided parliamentary party around a Brexit deal.

An election would be an option - and even with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act there are ways it could be managed - but he would need to win it with the sort of majority in which no-one could seriously challenge his personal authority.

If May survives, the Conservative Party will rupture. If she is toppled, it will still rupture.

Ironically, there isn't a damn thing that Johnson or Rees-Mogg will be able to do to stop it.