Tory pragmatists are now politically homeless

"This is a One Nation Government and this is a One Nation party," Sajid Javid, the Chancellor, insisted when framing this week’s spending review, which, “grubby electioneering” or not, begins to reverse the penny-pinching “austerity” of the last 10 years.

We live in an age of political mendacity, so the claim to One Nation Toryism at a time when the party is deselecting more than 20 of its centre-Right, parliamentary moderates, the Prime Minister’s brother is quitting in despair, and the leader of the Scottish Tories has already flounced out, shouldn’t altogether surprise. The irony seemed entirely lost on Mr Javid.

However tempting as political messaging the One Nation brand might be, its credibility is shot to bits when the likes of Kenneth Clarke, the very embodiment of the One Nation idea, are in the process of being purged from the party. The Tories are giving up one constituency for another: their moderates for the nationalist priorities of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. Boris Johnson is deluding himself if he thinks that once Brexit is done, he can take the Tory party back to some kind of non-ideological centre ground. Though he may not yet know it, he’s already a captive of the new political order.