The Establishment wins again

There is something a little spooky about writing off one’s car and wrecking one’s shoulder by driving into a tree and then, suffused with codeine and alcohol, watching incredulously as the government does kinda the same thing a week later, except faster and with a bigger and more intransigent tree. Metaphorically, I should add, for the more literal-minded of you.

On Monday morning I had been asked by TalkTV to guffaw at Rishi Sunak’s decision to sack Suella Braverman and disinter David Cameron from whatever shiny morgue he has been resting in and make him Foreign Secretary. I duly guffawed and suggested that nobody north of Letchworth would vote Conservative in 2024, given that the party had retreated to its pro-Remainer, public-school, patrician base. Following me on the programme was a sack of meat with mittens called Tobias Ellwood MP. Tobes took exception to the sneering and said that the Conservative party never won elections when it was perceived as being right-wing.

My Zoom call had been disconnected so I didn’t have the chance to say Tobes, how very, very right you are. Except of course for 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992 and 2019. In fact, only twice in the past 53 years have the Tories won with a non-right-wing leader-ship: in 1970, when the public made a dreadful mistake and elected Ted Heath, and in 2015 when they elected Cameron. On both occasions these were very surprising victories, against the drift of the opinion polls and counter to what everyone predicted.

I suppose we could argue about the 2017 election: Theresa May did indeed win with a platform which was leftish in tone if not substance. But she did so by the skin of her teeth and lost the Tories their majority against someone who might reasonably be described as a lunatic.