Just as for football fans there are iconic moments like Koeman’s goal at Wembley, or Iniesta’s against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, or Maradona’s hand of God against England, something similar happens in politics. One etched in the collective memory of the British took place after three in the morning on May 2, 1997, when a young unknown named Stephen Twigg stole the seat of Tory heavyweight Michael Portillo, Thatcher’s dolphin and candidate for prime minister. A historic humiliation.
The conservatives fear that in the next elections (possibly in the fall, but no date yet) what happened to Portillo will happen to many members of the Cabinet and that political figures of the last fourteen years will fall like flies before a Labor avalanche . If the predictions of the polls were to be fulfilled, even the seat of the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, for North Yorkshire would be in danger. It would be a real pickle.
With the polls still a few months away, 66 Conservative MPs have already announced they will not stand for re-election, and it is expected that in the end there will be a hundred or more, almost a third of the current number parliamentary group (including former Prime Minister Theresa May). By announcing this in advance, they can start moving threads and put themselves in the lead to look for well-paying jobs in the private sector before the defeat is consumed and a flood of party colleagues find themselves unemployed .
To Michael Portillo’s credit, it must be admitted that he humbly accepted his defeat, took the hit with sportsmanship and congratulated his opponent in front of the television cameras. His political career was struck by lightning, and from potential heir to the right-wing throne of the United Kingdom he went on to make travel documentaries in Spain for the BBC, taking advantage of the fact that his father was from Ávila (a teacher and republican politician, friend of Unamuno, exiled to the United Kingdom following the war, who married the rich heiress of a Scottish billionaire).
Sunak, if he loses, will find a secure job in the world of investment banking or move to Santa Monica (California), where he has a house, and, in any case, they will not lack money (he is one of the most rich in the country), but to his potential successors (Kemi, Penny Mordaunt,, Priti Patel,, Grant Shapps…) the image of Portillo does not let them sleep. To be the leader of a party you need to have a seat, and if you don’t have one, you’re nobody.
The majority represent constituencies that under normal circumstances would be considered safe, Tory strongholds detoting life in rural areas, with a considerable number of retirees, vicars, ex-colonels, misses from the empire and other members of the conservative tribe, but, if Labor does not collapses, realizes a twenty-point advantage in the polls and Reform UK (Nigel Farage’s far-right party) also takes a hit, seemingly impregnable towers are in danger of falling, and no one will be safe.
Labour, a complex party like no other, which always feels in a kind of provisional freedom, is afraid that victory will still slip from its hands, and the Conservatives feel panic not of losing, but of suffer an extermination like that of their Canadian colleagues in 1993, when Kim Campbell succeeded Brian Mulroney, and went from governing the country to being left with 16% of the vote and only two seats.
Fewer and fewer Tories are counting on a miracle (that voters’ attitudes will change due to the improving economy, falling interest rates or sending asylum seekers to Rwanda), and more those who jump from the ship, write the epitaph or prepare the opposition. The big battle ahead will determine whether the Conservative Party surrenders to Trumpism and becomes a group of far-right insurgents and populists, climate change skeptics, who embody the xenophobic ideology of Farage and Reform UK, with no room for to the moderates, or if he recovers pragmatism and the role as defender of traditions, reformist, but not reactionary, gradualist and interpreter of the mood of the nation, defender of the establishment, authority and authority status quo, which has historically made him win two out of three elections. The fight between the two groups for the soul of the party will be to the death.
Everything points to the fact that during the electoral night, when it is, there will be an almost total solar eclipse like the one seen the other day. Portillo moments, there will be more than one.
