A Conservative death spiral?

 Former Foreign Secretary and Conservative party leader William Hague (a resident of Powys, as the County Times reminds us) was aghast at the news that disgraced PM Johnson aimed to get his old job back. Johnson, who was recuperating in the Caribbean after a remunerative lecture visit to the US, claimed to have the necessary one hundred supporters to put his name on the ballot. (One trusts that the voters of Uxbridge will take so dim a view of such absenteeism during a political emergency that they unseat him at the earliest opportunity, just as Montgomeryshire punished Lembit Öpik for his cruise.)  Hague told Times Radio that electing Johnson would put the Conservatives into a “death spiral”. He said that Mr Johnson’s return was “the worst idea I’ve heard of in the 46 years I’ve been a member of the Conservative Party”. 

It seems to me that the descent started in 2014 when Hague himself quit parliament when in the high office of foreign secretary. If he had stuck around to keep the party on the rails, the process which led to last week's ignominy might have been avoided - but perhaps he felt that the odds against were too great. He had been an outspoken critic of Putin. The year of his resignation saw the start of Russia's campaign of covert interference in UK politics, according to US official sources. 2014 was also when Putin annexed Crimea and Russian donations to the Conservative party were stepped up.

Roll on four years, and Boris Johnson was foreign secretary. While the affair of the Salisbury poisonings was still live, Johnson had a private meeting with an ex-KGB agent, Alexander Lebedev, while attending a weekend-long party in a castle in Italy owned by Lebedev's son. It was only earlier this year that Johnson owned up to this. It is still not clear that he kept officials at the foreign office completely informed as he should have done.

One could draw the conclusion that Russian money inhibited robust government action in 2014 and 2018. Strong sanctions then could have deterred Putin from his criminal invasion of Ukraine, whose results we are seeing as a large contribution to the current energy supply emergency.