The Guardian view on the Conservative leadership: unserious contenders

It ought to be astonishing when the chancellor of the exchequer announces that he would consider voting to bring down his own government if it adopts the policy which the party members favour on the most important issue of the day, as Philip Hammond did on Sunday. Nowadays it just seems another reminder of the irrelevance of common sense to parts of the Conservative party and the danger that their fever dream poses to the country as a whole. Throwing off Theresa May has changed nothing significant. But it has made one important thing clearer, which is the fault line along which the party is being broken.

The schism in the Tory party lies between those who are prepared to bid “no deal” and those who are not. The latest round of escalation was precipitated by Boris Johnson, a man whose word no one has reason to trust. That aspect of his character turns out not to bother much of his party. Whether he means it or not, what matters is that he said it and others were forced to try to outbid him, or to repudiate him in terms.

On the one side, three leadership candidates, Dominic Raab, Esther McVey and Boris Johnson, along with what polls suggest is a majority of members of their party; on the other, Philip Hammond, Rory Stewart and Justine Greening, only one of whom is running for the leadership. Mr Stewart was clear enough: “a no-deal Brexit would in a single day undermine 400 years of our reputation for economic stability and competence”, he tweeted on Sunday. He is right.

Anyone who has thought about the matter knows that “no deal” will be a catastrophe for Britain, a disaster for Ireland, and in the short term damaging to the EU. In the long and medium term, it will of course strengthen the European Union just as it will weaken the United Kingdom. It will also be a fleeting state, almost as fleeting as if it were spotted in the bubble chamber at Cern. Trade needs rules; Britain needs trade; these rules will have to be agreed with our trading partners, and the only terms on which the EU will agree even to talk about them are those on offer now in Mrs May’s withdrawal agreement. That deal is still where any real Brexit negotiations would have to start. Yet half the ambitious politicians in the Conservative party feel they have to welcome this disaster if they are ever to become prime minister.

In last month’s indicative votes, when parliament overwhelmingly rejected the prospect of no deal, six of the present Conservative leadership candidates abstained, three voted in favour of leaving without a deal, and only Mr Stewart voted clearly against, although he abstained on the follow-up question of whether revocation would be a better choice.

Mr Stewart launched his own leadership bid with a denunciation of the unseriousness of British politics; its preference for striking attitudes over taking action and for moral purity over the compromises of real power. Naturally, he chose to illustrate these disastrous qualities with examples from the opposition benches but his own party provides a more urgent illustration today.

In politics as in life it is surprisingly difficult to stop telling lies when once you have told the first important one. The original lie of the leave campaign was that Britain could leave the EU quickly, easily, and without loss. No part of that was true. The thing could still have been done, but at a price which parliament, and possibly the voters too, would not agree. Since neither Mrs May nor anyone else was prepared to be honest about this, further, more extravagant, lies were necessary – the talk of no deal is the ultimate logical consequence.

It is also the point at which many who had until then gone along for the ride jump off the train. This is not an example of consistency or principle, but it carries a powerful political message. What gives the Tory moderates their power within the party is not their courage or the accuracy of their analysis: it is the threat to vote against their own government and precipitate a general election they can’t be confident of winning. Colleagues untroubled by the thought that unemployment might rise after Brexit gain a different perspective when their own jobs are at risk.