Last week’s Tory conference required everyone to clear their memory banks and delete all such inconvenient details of recent history. Never mind what Rudd had believed so passionately in June. Here was the new-look home secretary embracing a hard Brexit as a fantastic opportunity to slash immigration, keep young foreigners out if they were judged second-rate, and shame British companies who signed up too many overseas workers and not enough Brits. “Work with us, not against us, and we’ll better control immigration and protect our economy,” was her message now. When Theresa May spoke the following day, Rudd and Johnson, the prime minister’s surprise choice for the post of foreign secretary, were new best friends, sitting side by side, glancing approvingly at one another time after time as ovation followed ovation. [...]
The frustration of those who want to fight against hard Brexit and who are tearing their hair out at Labour’s divisions on issues as central to the Brexit debate as immigration was perhaps best exemplified by news that an exasperated Tony Blair was considering returning to some role in front-line politics. “Frankly, it’s a tragedy for British politics if the choice before the country is a Conservative government going for a hard Brexit and an ultra-left Labour party that believes in a set of policies that takes us back to the 60s,” Blair told Esquire magazine. “Do I feel strongly about it? Yes, I do. Am I very motivated by that? Yes. Where do I go from here? What exactly do I do? That’s an open question.” [...]
The second aim was to showcase the personal vision of prime minister May, allowing her to explain how she intended to create “a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few”. May’s first conference speech as prime minister shunned the individualism of Margaret Thatcher and the shrinking-state Conservatism of her successors, including David Cameron, replacing all that with a commitment to an active state that would intervene wherever and whenever it could to help people “across the line”. “We succeed or fail together,” said May, recalling one Brownlee brother dragging the other across the finishing line in their recent triathlon success. “We achieve or fall short together. When one of us falters, our human instinct is to reach out our hand and help them over the line. There is more to life than individualism and self-interest,” she declared, in what was intended to be a defining section of her speech.
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