Tories at war or is Theresa May a safe pair of hands as PM?

Tories at war - or is Theresa May a safe pair of hands as PM.

This week the Conservative Party in Britain are fighting battles on so many fronts that it's hard to see who's winning and who simply doesn't care anymore. The ammunition has been fired, the artillery are moving in with a bristling snarl of menace and the foot soldiers are just getting their feet stuck in the mud. Who on earth would be a British politician?

The Tories are digging in both collectively and physically in the hope that should it all go perilously wrong they can still say they've been to Birmingham for the week which in the first week of October is probably very pleasant and desirable. Party political conferences are always worth the entrance money alone if only because they reinforce all of those stereotyped notions of politicians and how they should conduct themselves before their devoted followers.

Years ago all of the three mainstream British political parties would think nothing of rolling up their trousers, grabbing a deckchair, sticking knotted handkerchiefs on their heads and tucking into the customary plate of fish and chips when the sun had gone down on their yearly seaside visits. It was all very exciting, bracing and completely fascinating. But there was always something of the end of pier about these perennial shouting matches that nobody could ever hear let alone comment upon.

 All three parties including the Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems or- Liberals, as they used to be known, would get up on a platform at either Bournemouth, Brighton and Blackpool and spout their respective ideologies until some rational thinking stage director would whip them off their platform, switch off the lights and tell them that it was time to go home. Then the Punch and Judy show moved on and the party political conferences took themselves off to some of Britain's most important cities.

After the horror show that was the Labour Party debacle, the Tories have now travelled to Birmingham for their yearly conference. And this is where it gets serious for the government of the day because if the Tories are to survive perhaps the most tempestuous week in their recent history then they might be advised to strap themselves in, close their eyes and just hope that nobody gets hurt. There is a good deal of huffing and puffing, sighing and gritting of teeth to be negotiated and by the end of the week Prime Minister Theresa May may have to summon all her reserves of defiance just to get through it all.

Because this is the story so far. Britain is now into the kind of territory that it may have wished it had never got involved in the first place. The dominant issue of course is, as we've been repeatedly reminded since the Crimean War, is Brexit. Oh yes it's a gross exaggeration and total hyperbole but to those who remain impartial on such matters Brexit has to be the most appallingly, revoltingly and dreadfully irritating news agenda since the beginning of time. If we haven't heard or seen the same word over and over and over again then it's safe to say that we have.

But new buzzwords, phrases and peculiar uses of the English language are being deployed with such annoying frequency that at times it's rather like listening to some crazy, made up and garbled narrative that even a tourist from another country would have to ask questions. First Brexit entered our consciousness and we had no idea what that meant. So we looked  up the word in the Oxford English Dictionary and we were none the wiser.

Recent additions to the mad, crazy world of political vocabulary are Brexit with a million variations and inflections on the word itself. Suddenly the great British public have been confronted with hard Brexit and soft Brexit, Brexiteers accompanied by hard Irish borders and soft Irish borders. Then ladies and gentlemen we give you Chequers, Custom House, Remainers and Remoaners with just a small pinch of some completely incomprehensible word that has rendered the English language a nightmarish complexity.

Night after night, day after day the radio, TVs, Smartphones and Tablets of modern society have been bombarded us with constant references to a political agenda that would probably have driven Churchill completely bonkers. In the general scheme of things Brexit may well come to be regarded as one of those passing and faddish pains in the neck. It could be that, rather like one of those transient Christmas Day toys that the kids get, Brexit will simply lose its batteries and get broken by Boxing Day.

But for what seems like the best part of two decades, Brexit is here to stay until one day everything will be settled agreeably and we can all find something else to talk about. For the time being British radio phone in stations of every description will be filling their airwaves with the kind of conversations and boring rhetoric that none of us could ever have imagined.

We are now, or so it would seem, required to know that if we don't clinch a deal with our EU neighbours on our withdrawal from the EU next March then the consequences could be very damaging. Then we are told that it has to be the right deal and if it's the wrong one with strings attached then that could be curtains for Britain. Whether the fairground carousel will ever stop remains one of the most pertinent questions of our time or any time for that matter.

Now though another sub plot has emerged in the first couple of days of the Conservative Party conference. Just when the Tories thought it was safe to swim a formerly leading light in the party has jumped out of his hiding place ready to claim his revenge on Theresa May. His face is red with loathing, burning with anger, champing at the bit, and boiling over with furious indignation. He's determined to upset the proverbial apple cart, push over everybody in his sight and, above all, create a terrible scene into the bargain.

His name of course is Boris Johnson, probably one of Britain's cleverest and most idiosyncratic politicians of all time. The Boris Johnson CV could best be described as both varied and barely credible at times in the light of recent events. Johnson has been the Mayor of London, constituency member for Uxbridge and, most recently, the Foreign Secretary. Sadly though the Johnson juggernaut has come flying off the road and now his eventful career in the limelight has reached a crossroads.

We may be on Tuesday but the growling grizzly bear that is the blond bombshell of Boris Johnson is on the warpath. Yesterday he launched his first attack on the Prime Minister if attack it was. Johnson, in a comical dig at Theresa May, went galloping through a cornfield in a satirical swipe at May's occasionally stated ambition to run through a field. It had to be seen to be believed.

Then Philip Hammond, another Cabinet minister got stuck in as well with well aimed venom at Johnson. You're reminded of another famous Tory Prime Minister whose leadership qualities were severely tested to the full. When Margaret Thatcher was in full flight during the 1980s none dared to get anywhere near her ego or all conquering aura. It was all very bloody and very messy, sloppy and very unsavoury. The sight of Thatcher weeping quite openly as she ducked into her car at 10 Downing Street for the last time is engraved on the mind for ever. It was time to go for Margaret Thatcher.

It is hard to believe that Theresa May would never welcome any comparison with her Prime Ministerial predecessor but things could get very nasty for the Tories if Boris has his way. There are malicious whispers to be heard in wine scented Tory back rooms, petty in fighting, gallows humour, knockabout innuendo and perhaps unnecessary back biting. Voices are being raised, the verbal exchanges sometimes close to threatening absolute pandemonium and, quite possibly, bouts of childish bickering will follow. Then long held, deeply entrenched grudges will be exposed for everybody to see. 

And yet we've all been here before. This is the pantomime season known better as the party political conference circuit. If things turn out the way they normally do then it'll go off without any major international incidents. Reputations will be battered, insults will just bounce off walls and ceilings in the main hall and we'll all wonder why they bothered in the first place.

Still, all the traditional Tories will go back to their base camps ready to prepare for a General Election which Theresa May will call when she's ready and not before then. For the time being her immediate task is to tackle the minefield that is Brexit. She will gather her troops together, pull on her helmet, charge forward with all bloody minded courage and gritty determination, while acutely aware that by the end of  next March she could still be in the land of indecisiveness and muddled thinking.

So here we go then. It's that classic confrontation between a mild mannered, prim and proper lady and and a fearsome, fiery firebrand man with a score to settle. Theresa May against Boris Johnson does sound a fairly meaningless contest between two politicians who are quite civilly agreeing to disagree. By the end of this strangely surreal week for British politics we may find a good deal of bruising and sore heads. Then Judy will produce another string of sausages to hit Punch over the head with and Britain will stifle another belly laugh. Oh what a circus.