Toynbee regrets Tory problems

P Toynee in the Grudian is letting things get on top of her again, ruing the imminent departure of T May and maybe deep misfortune for the Party (which she has never supported, but anyone other than Brexiteers...)

Welcome to an extraordinarily bizarre election day. Pause on the way to the polling station to wonder at the astounding mayhem within our “ruling” party, soliciting votes even while wrenching its leader from Downing Street. We may be so used to the Tory party in meltdown that we forget to be amazed at what is unfolding before our eyes – on election day.

Toynbee seems unable these days to offer much more than abuse:

Andrea Leadsom’s fantastical ambitious absurdities, ...astonishing it is to see the leader of the house, no less, resigning on election eve just to steal a march on all her improbable leadership competitors. Jeremy Hunt is marching in to see the prime minister in publicly threatening mode – on election day. Forget any sense of decorum towards their party or their country, or the electoral process...now, Brexit fever has seized its core, its cabinet, its members and its grey suits. The initial handful of Europe-hating Typhoid Marys have infected a large part of the country with this mortal disease. [Beginning to sound a bit like a betrayal narrative] The few trying to cling to a modicum of sanity are cast as rebels – Philip Hammond warning what no deal will mean; Amber Rudd and Nicky Morgan striving to revive a rose-tinted false memory of one nation Toryism. In its Brexit delirium, the party will choose Boris Johnson, the sociopathic chameleon who is reported to be claiming the one nation ticket even as he spews out crude, membership-pleasing law-and-order columns in the Telegraph.

No gravitas, no dignity – the Conservative party is no longer the British establishment [Ludicrous support for the EU has really found them out --Offe couldn't be better illustrated by the contradiction between universal and sectional appeal] ...its grassroots rampaging off into the Farage wildwoods. The Brexit project is revolutionary: the “real Brexit” Leadsom claimed last night is an autonomous utopia of “sovereignty”, a self-propelling spinning star of an idea no longer claiming real-world benefits and consequences. 

On a broader canvas:

Conservatism as the British default is so deep-dyed in the national psyche [bollocks] it’s hard to think this is the end. This generation of Conservatives has brought us so low in this decade: in austerity, in stagnant incomes, in devastated public services, catastrophic productivity, lost social security and lost respect abroad.

Then, to business on Euro election day:

For today, all that matters is the final tally of remain v Brexit votes.[No more wriggling?]  Will the total of remain votes prove beyond doubt that any Brexit deal without the consent of the people would be a democratic disgrace? [Er no] That will depend on how the face-both-ways, we’re-not-a-remain-party Labour votes are counted....History will show the Labour leadership has made a dreadful error – when virtually all its members and the great majority of supporters are remainers. Most Labour people will, rightly, register their vote for a true remain party.

But -- if Labour vacillations have meant even Remain Labour people will vote for another party, what remains of the dilemma about how to count Labour votes [and any safe ambiguity]? If Brexit Party votes outnumber all the others, end of story, surely? However, there is a possible wriggle in the stories that European citizens are finding it hard to vote in the UK.