Show caption ‘Tory politics resembles revolution on the Iranian model, where the elected political leader is subordinate to a supreme spiritual leader, a role performed in this analogy by Jacob Rees-Mogg.’ Photograph: James Gourley/REX/Shutterstock Opinion Brexit ultras v Tory realists: that’s the real battle Rafael Behr There is a mandate to leave the EU, but not for endless revolution on terms dictated by Jacob Rees-Mogg @rafaelbehr Mon 5 Feb 2018 18.37 GMT Share on Facebook

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Revolution is not an event. It is a process. So the zealous revolutionary is ever vigilant against backsliding and ideological deviation. For some, the battle never ends.

Brexiteers’ fear of counter-revolution is now stronger in the Conservative party than actual opposition to Brexit – and more disruptive. Only a tiny number of Tory MPs call the whole thing a folly to its face. The overwhelming majority accept the referendum result and expect EU membership to expire in March 2019.

And still discord convulses the government. That is because the true schism is not between pro-Europeans and sceptics but between incompatible theories of Brexit. It is between those who see it as a job to be done within the parameters of normal politics, and those who see it as a revolution in which the old politics should perish.

People who campaigned on the leave side of the referendum find themselves on different sides of this line. The tension was crisply illustrated in an exchange between David Davis and Jacob Rees-Mogg at a parliamentary committee hearing a couple of weeks ago. Rees-Mogg pressed the Brexit secretary to explain the difference between a transition that looked like EU membership and EU membership itself. Davis replied that full EU members could not strike independent trade deals, whereas the government saw that freedom as a condition of transition.

Rees-Mogg then wanted to know why the UK didn’t just “get on with it”. Why not ignore the terms of EU membership? By waiting for technical agreement, were we not acting as “lackeys” of the EU? Davis’s reply is one of the most revealing Brexit statements made by a cabinet minister. “No,” he said. “We are acting as a law-abiding country.”

Davis harbours no closet ardour for Brussels. The difference between his concept of leaving and that of his backbench inquisitor lies in wanting it to be done carefully, in accordance with existing treaties. For Rees-Mogg and his acolytes that is the cowardly spirit of remain. For them, it is not the security of jobs or Britain’s international reputation that matters, but the safety of the revolution from its hidden enemies.

The ultras will not be satisfied with Brexit at the moment when the UK legally ceases to be an EU member. They long for the day when Britain’s relationship with the EU is so completely transformed, the bridges so charred and ruined, that the very memory of membership feels remote. That is why they are so very incensed by suggestions that the UK might form any kind of customs union with the EU. It isn’t just independent trade policy, but the spiritual purity of the project that hangs in the balance. Every thread must be cut.

That pitch of radicalism is hard to sustain inside the cabinet. Ideological Brexiteers have been chastened by exposure to the technical challenges lurking in their ministerial red boxes. Davis is not the only one to have been on a journey. Liam Fox and Michael Gove acquiesced without fuss to all the compromises made by Theresa May to complete the first phase of negotiations in December. It is said around Whitehall that even the most giddy and cavalier ministerial leavers sobered up when they grasped the facts of the Irish border problem. Then they stopped agitating for harder, faster rupture.

Boris Johnson is still capable of mischief but his restlessness stems from frustrated ambition, not impatience for a more puritan Brexit. Tory guardians of the revolution know that the foreign secretary’s hostility to the EU in 2016 was synthetic. They despise him for that lack of principle, while gratefully receiving any help he lends them as part of his perpetual leadership campaign. Johnson is so wrapped up in vanity and the myth of his own intelligence, he can’t see that he is the useful idiot to a cause other than his own.

In ministerial offices, the idea of Brexit collides with the idea of responsible government. But on the backbenches, that dilemma is denied and the thing that diplomats and officials call reality is recast as conspiracy. The nefarious masterminds of counter-revolution are Olly Robbins, May’s chief Brexit adviser, and Sir Jeremy Heywood, head of the civil service. Neither man shows the slightest intention of keeping Britain in the EU. Their sin is trying to organise Brexit in a way that allows Britain’s economic and political institutions to continue functioning properly.

That appears to be May’s preference too, but she lacks the courage to say so in such bald terms. So where does power lie? May looks like the head of a Soviet republic, formally occupying the highest office, yet taking ideological direction from a superior authority in the party. Or, even more bizarrely, Tory politics resembles revolution on the Iranian model, where the elected political leader is subordinate to a supreme spiritual leader, a role performed in this analogy by Rees-Mogg. For all of May’s obvious commitment to EU withdrawal, the Brexit ayatollahs don’t trust her to do it with the correct fundamentalist spirit. And they call the shots.

The travesty is that this is happening in the name of democracy, to honour the sacred referendum result. The mandate from 2016 was to leave the EU, not to scorch the earth on which British governments have stood for a generation. The leave campaign promised many things, but obedience to the scriptures of Rees-Moggery was not among them. The battle now being waged for control of the Tory party is an offshoot of the referendum, but with a crucial difference. It is a campaign for power without even a pretence of wanting accountability. That is the point in every revolution where democracy gets left behind.