Are the feared Tory ‘Spartans’ a busted flush?

Mark Francois and his band of right-wing rebels failed to make a dent in the Rwanda vote, writes Sean O’Grady. Is the faction all bark and no bite?

Francois and the other self-styled Spartans in the European Research Group saw themselves very much as a commando unit in a struggle for national survival (PA)

In his book Spartan Victory: the Inside Story of the Battle for Brexit, Mark Francois makes constant reference to the last war, and Winston Churchill’s leadership in our finest hour.

Intended perhaps as a modern-day counterpart to Churchill’s monumental History of the Second World War, Francois’ account sees his band of Eurosceptics as the “last line of defence” in the effort to leave the European Union (ironically enough a project Churchill had some sympathy with). His volume of memoirs, by the way, is predictably Partridgean – a fairly self-important, self-congratulatory read, along the lines of “needless to say, I had the last laugh”.

Francois and the other self-styled Spartans in the European Research Group saw themselves very much as a commando unit in a struggle for national survival, not so much against the Nazis and the Luftwaffe, but more Theresa May, her EU withdrawal agreement, and her plan for a Northern Ireland backstop.

Such is the sense of destiny felt by Francois that he quotes freely from Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “If”:

“If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too”

Now, to be fair, ex-territorial army reservist Mark Francois was certainly a power in the land back in those heady days of Brexit, though even then they weren’t quite the cohesive force sometimes portrayed. But now? Not so much when it came to another version of May 1940: the small boats crisis and the Rwanda Bill.

So far from suffering a humiliating Commons defeat, as Theresa May, at the hands of the rebels, Sunak ended the process with a relatively comfortable majority. For a few days, Francois, de facto leader of what he ludicrously calls the “five families” of the Conservative right – as if they were some kind of Mafiosi – menaced the Tory leadership.

In the event it was they who folded – not so much Cosa Nostra, more Costa Coffee in their intimidatory power. They made fools of themselves. Just like in the Theresa May era, we had Francois pompously convening the bogus Star Chamber of lawyers and then issuing his supposedly terrifying ultimatums to Number 10 at impromptu press conferences; but this time the threats came to nought. Not a single “rebel” voted against Sunak’s bill in the end. Not even Robert Jenrick, who resigned his post as immigration minister over it. Not even Suella Braverman, who declares the matter existential. Francois himself abstained.

So Francois ended up like Dad’s Army character Captain Mainwaring after the tussles with the whips, spectacles and cap askew, trying to retrieve whatever dignity he could. His aide, David Jones, rather like Sergeant Wilson, might be forgiven for gently enquiring if Francois’ negotiating tactics – speak loudly and carry a soft stick – had been awfully wise, in the circumstances.

In fact, the Spartans haven’t been the force they were back in 2017 to 2019 for some time. Some, such as Steve Baker, have been seduced by power. Some old soldiers may have wearied of the constant in-fighting. One, Andrew Bridgen, has defected to Reclaim and spends his time campaigning against the Covid-19 vaccines. One or two have found themselves in trouble with the authorities. New, often overlapping, right-wing splinter groups modelled on the ERG have multiplied with bewildering fecundity – the Common Sense Group; the New Conservatives; the Conservative Democratic Organisation; the Northern Research Group; the Growth Group (a Liz Truss cover organisation); the China Research Group and the (now defunct) Covid Recovery Group. This is not how the tight-knit Spartans used to work. Indeed, planned joint meetings of the various families designed to put on a common front failed to materialise.

Most of all, though, the ERG have split over what they actually want, as such factions tend to. This time they couldn’t agree about ether they wanted to kill the bill, because it wasn’t capable of useful amendment, or let it through so they could destroy it later. Seems an odd tactic.

Without wading through the tedious detail of internal Spartan politics, they’ve fallen apart and let themselves down over a few questions since their heyday when backing Boris and Brexit were all they needed to know about. Last year, for example, they actually split three ways over whether to support Liz Truss, Suella Braverman or, funnily enough, Rishi Sunak for the leadership; and earlier this year their threats to bring down the Windsor Framework were rendered useless when Labour agreed to vote for it.

Indeed, beyond being a part of a malign effort to push their party to the extreme right, it’s hard to think of anything where the ERG, or the other factions, actually made any practical difference. These days the right can’t even decide whether it wants to install Braverman or Kemi Badenoch as the next leader, bring back Boris, or Liz, or draft Nigel Farage to “save” the party he’s spent so much time destroying.

It seems, just like the Conservatives as a whole, the ERG and the other “families” have had their day. Yet, if any survive the coming Labour landslide, they’ll surely be back again, back to plotting and scheming to no great purpose. Churchill would not approve.