Nothing, not even the world’s oldest and most successful political party, lasts forever. So could the current crisis convulsing the Conservative party mean its extinction as a significant force in British life?
Only three years ago simply posing this question would have seemed ridiculous. Back in December 2019, it was not the Tories who were staring down the barrel of a gun, but Labour. Boris Johnson, promising to get Brexit done, delivered an 80-seat majority for the triumphant Tories, hoovering up working-class votes and seizing seats that had never elected a Conservative before. After suffering their worst defeat since 1935, it was Labour who looked as though they were on their way to the political graveyard.
What a difference three years can make. Today Labour is some 28 points ahead in the polls, the Tories are about to choose their third prime minister in as many years. If an election were held tomorrow, some projections have them losing an extraordinary 300 seats, reduced to a laughable rump of just 22 MPs, and leaving the SNP as the official opposition to all-conquering Labour. It would be an unprecedented rout making even Tony Blair’s New Labour landslide of 1997 look puny. So what happened, and what, if anything, can the party do to repair the damage of their self-inflicted wounds?
The first thing to make clear is that the Tories have no one to blame but themselves
The first thing to make clear is that the Tories have no one to blame but themselves. Labour, though successfully sidelining their madder Marxist wing and freezing out Jeremy Corbyn, has no coherent plan to rescue the country from the cost of living crisis. Their charisma-free leader Sir Keir Starmer remains a deeply uninspiring alternative to the Tory chaos. Borrowing billions and pushing taxation up to the skies, as Labour would do, is not an attractive option; giving succour to strikers, while being unable to define a woman, does not amount to a dynamic programme for government.
Where then lies the rot? I would point to three factors that have undone them, and that can be conveniently characterised as the ABC problem.
A stands for ability, or rather the lack of such a quality in the upper reaches of the Tory party. The conspicuous lack of Tory politicians with the knack of reaching ordinary people is what propelled Boris Johnson into Downing Street in the first place. For all his flaws, Johnson’s colourful personality, unusual private life and happy-go-lucky flouting of the rules appealed to as many people as they repelled. The Tories without Boris seem a greyer, duller bunch and have proved even less competent than his enemies accused him of being.
B stands for Brexit and the consequences thereof. Europe has been a fault line dividing the Tory party since the premiership of Margaret Thatcher. The europhile wing of the party, which still comprises a majority of their MPs, never took kindly to their defeat in the 2016 referendum. They resented the man they blamed for bringing it about before successfully plotting his downfall – that Boris again.
C stands for Covid and the malign results of the pandemic which struck the Johnson government almost as soon as it took office. The massive borrowing required for furloughing, along with the draconian lockdowns, blew the government off course and into uncharted but distinctly un-conservative stormy seas. It has never corrected its course since and the bills left in its wake still have to be paid.
A population worrying about the cost of food, fuel and heating, as we move into the winter, is unlikely to forgive a party that appears to resemble rats struggling to take command of a sinking ship. Unless the Tories can stabilise the ship in short order – even by, if necessary, returning its command to the captain they so foolishly set adrift last month – their centuries-long reign as Britain’s premier political party may well be approaching its end.
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