If you want to get ahead in the Tory party, do not become an assassin
e shall probably never know what drove someone like Crispin Blunt to carry out a suicide attack on kin Duncan Smith. The young a respectable, middle-class, and pro-European background. That is, he came from the Tory breeding ground of moderation. But not all respectable, middleclass pro-Europeans try to assassinate their leader. vv man was from His neighbours on the backbenches said that they were amazed and shocked when they heard the news. To them, he was a rather ordinary man, polite and nice. None of them suspected that he would get mixed up in terrorism.
One theoryis that he was manipulated by the godfathers of anti-Duncan Smith subversion such as Mr Francis Maude. But Mr Blunt has never been linked to the Maude organisation, C-Change — the Hamas of the Conservative party. True, the aims of Mr Blunt and C-Change can temporarily coincide. Intelligence analysts assume that Mr Blunt carried out his attack in the hope that the destruction of Mr Duncan Smith would result in Mr Kenneth Clarke becoming leader. C-Change is thought really to be a Portillo front organisation. But it realises that Mr Portillo would either not stand for the leadership again or would be sure to lose if he did, because the party activists in the country would never elect him.
C-Change would therefore favour Mr Clarke, with Mr Portillo in support. How that would help Mr Clarke with the activists — given Mr Portillo's presumed unpopularity with them — is not explained. Alternatively, C-Change is playing a longer game; seeking to disrupt Mr Duncan Smith's regime until such time as a new candidate emerges — say, Mr Letwin. Alternatively, C-Change is just another lot of chirruping Tories in opposition, and is unworthy to be compared to Hamas at all.
What we can say is that Mr Blunt's was the second failed assassination attempt on Mr Duncan Smith in three months. Mr Portillo carried out the previous one himself, in that Friday interview on BBC Radio Four's World at One, the gist of which was that Mr Duncan Smith was not up to it. That it was a Friday was significant. The remarks were intended to have a huge aftermath in the Saturday and Sunday newspapers, and on the Sunday airwaves, leading — if all went well — to a Tory backbench uprising against Mr Duncan Smith in the Commons the following week.
It was said that Mr Portillo dared not wait until after the I May elections unless Mr Duncan Smith did respectably in them — which he did — and that the Tories would see this as a reason, or excuse, not to endure the pain and bother of overthrowing him. Alternatively, Mr Portillo had no plan, had not thought matters through, and had told the interviewer what he really thought — something unusual these days.
Whatever the explanation, Mr Portillo's attack went wrong. The war on Iraq was about to start. Most Tories thought that this was no time to be having weeks of leadership campaigning up and down the country. while Mr Blair became Churchill; better that Mr Duncan Smith be Churchill. too. When MPs returned to the Commons on the Monday after Mr Portillo's attack, the Clarke camp decided that Mr Portillo had harmed them, not helped. Over the weekend in their constituencies they had discovered that the activists disapproved of what Mr Portillo had done.
As failed assassins, Mr Blunt and Mr Portillo will have a place in history similar to that of one Nedeliko Cabrinovic. Some of us cannot claim to have had that name in our heads without having to look it up. We knew, however, that the 20th century's most influential assassination — that of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in June 1914 — was preceded about an hour earlier by an attempt that failed. A car drove the Archduke from the railway station to the town hall. when a young man — Cabrinovic — stepped from the crowd and threw a bomb. But it bounced off the car before exploding. Cabrinovic jumped over a wall into the river, from where the police soon
extricated him. The other conspirators scattered, in much the same way as the Clarke supporters did after Mr Portillo's bomb failed to do its work. But, returning from the town hall to the station later, the Archduke's car took a wrong turning into the path of the assassin whose name did enter history: Princip.
But there has so far been no Princip to make up for the botched work of Mr Portillo and Mr Blunt. Perhaps the conspirators will have another chance. They might be able to find a competent assassin. But there must be a limit to the number of attempts that can be possible on the life of a Conservative leader, even Mr Duncan Smith. Twenty-five MPs' signatures are needed to precipitate a vote on whether Mr Duncan Smith should stay or whether the activists should eventually elect a new leader. It is reasonable to assume that, if those votes are ever forthcoming, he will indeed lose. But the resultant disunity would make the Tories even more unpopular, especially since Tory leadership elections now drag on for months.
Finally, a historical analogy more suited to our peaceful polity than Sarajevo in 1914: politicians plot against their leaders constantly, but the last serious attempt to remove a Tory opposition leader against his fixed will was as long ago as 1930-1. when the Right — with Beaverbrook and Churchill in the van — tried to remove Baldwin. Churchill gave the assassins aid and comfort. Baldwin saw them off in the short run by winning a by-election at which the press lords had run a candidate against the official Conservative. The unforeseen 1931 economic crisis, so grave as to enable Baldwin to join the Labour prime minister MacDonald in coalition, perhaps saved Baldwin in the long run.
Churchill's disloyalty was one of the reasons why Baldwin and Chamberlain kept him out of office in the 1930s. Eden had no part in the attempted assassination, which was why Baldwin eventually made him foreign secretary. Mr Letwin, if he is wise — which so far he has been — should be the Eden of these present plots, and have no part in them. Then, like Eden, he could become prime minister at some point in the future, though, we must hope, more successfully. Mr Portillo must console himself that, with this analogy, he has become Churchill rather than Cabrinovic — and Mr Duncan Smith needs a grave economic crisis to precipitate a coalition.
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