Spare us from feeble, timid Tories. At times, the party’s MPs are so afraid of what the Guardian or their daft teenage kids might say they forget they are supposed to be conservative. Take the party’s laggard attitude to months of protests; or the total disaster of the Channel migrant boats crisis; or mimsying about with the universities freedom of speech bill. Do they really think this approach is going to win them the next election?
Remarkably, there’s something even worse than mere squirming incompetence and conflict avoidance: the airy nonchalance of a certain strain of Tory MP. Even MPs touted as future leadership hopefuls are guilty.
Rishi Sunak is falling into the trap too
Alicia Kearns, the leader of the Foreign Affairs committee, has tabled an amendment on ‘LGBTQ+’ rights to the Online Safety Bill (I long to see a legal definition of that +). Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, was exposed as breathtakingly lightly informed when she Jim Hackered her way through a recent committee hearing. Then there’s the incoherent Caroline Nokes, who says working in Westminster made her a feminist, but confidently asserted on the latest Laura Kuenssberg show that some people are ‘born in the wrong body’. Who expected millennia of speculation on the nature of the human essence to be ended one wet Sunday morning on the BBC by the MP for Romsey?
The thought process for many of the party’s representatives seems to go like this: ‘I am a Tory. High status, upper middle class people think Tories are nasty. I must not be seen to be on the low-status side of the culture war. So I must cunningly confound people’s expectations by adopting certain cost-free elite beliefs. Then, when Tory voters accuse me of talking nonsense, I can say ‘So, I’m being accused of being nice then, am I?’ This will impress the high status people and I will get their votes, and possibly a biscuit.’
This is delusional, for two reasons. Firstly, it never seems to get through to Nokes and her colleagues that the ideology they are entertaining is not twee, cuddly liberalism of the old kind, but is in fact an authoritarian, pre-modern and particularly unpleasant kind of budget Salem. I’m considering hiring a van and a projector to emblazon this distinction on their constituency office windows, block booking advertising in the Zoffany catalogue, and House Beautiful etc. until they finally get it.
Secondly, which voters do they imagine they are appealing to? Caroline, Alicia, Gillian, I hate to tell you, but these people aren’t going to vote for you. Never, ever. They despise you simply because you are a Tory; you can literally hand them billions of pounds to stay home and do nothing and they will say you are the sisters of Pol Pot. Waving a trans flag isn’t going to cut much mustard.
But still they don’t learn. Rishi Sunak is falling into the trap too: it’s been reported that the PM is planning to outlaw ‘transgender conversion therapy’. Explaining the dangers of such a ban to the Tories is rather like Bart Simpson explaining Sideshow Bob’s plan to kill Aunt Selma to Homer. They just don’t seem to have the capacity to retain the information, no matter how many patient, detailed submissions are laid before them. Boris Johnson seemed to finally get it, but he’s gone and now it’s lost again. I remember when, once, for about five seconds, I grasped the basics of quantum physics before they slipped away forever. I think it’s a bit like that.
But make no mistake: this is a transparent ploy to embed gender ideology in law. There is a real danger that this could forbid someone from disagreeing with a child’s claims about his or her sex. If this comes to pass, it will likely have grim consequences for kids who would, if left alone, grow up simply to be same-sex attracted.
The Tories were apparently surprised at the enthusiasm for this approach within the party; I’m not, because if you just glance at it without thinking it looks like an easy win. For plenty of MPs, this is standard thinking. ‘Give me a nice slogan and pass me the selfie stick,’ the logic goes. It’s telling that Kemi Badenoch, who fully understands the issue, has apparently been sidelined; this is a government where knowing your brief – and having some common sense – is a disadvantage.
‘Conversion therapy’ always comes tagged with the mournful words ‘this abhorrent practice’. This wording gives politicians the chance to pull their ‘I really am terribly appalled’ faces, as if there were reams of conversion therapists in the Yellow Pages. In fact, it is a rare practice. This is catnip to politicians, who love huffing and puffing about something that isn’t happening often, and how they’re damn well going to stop it happening.
If they could, some MPs would take to a balcony tonight and make a blood and thunder speech saying they’ve had it up to the neck with the abhorrent practice of barbecuing hedgehogs. All those hedgehog barbecuers out there should watch out, they’ll say, because there’ll be no more hedgehog barbecuing on their watch. Hell no. It would be a lot less effort – and a lot more fun – than the hard graft required on the actually existent problems facing the country during a cost-of-living crisis when many people can’t afford to heat their homes or put food on the table.
Joined-up government might be too much to ask for, but let’s stop to consider this: the Tories might be about to appoint an official to clamp down on the bizarre excesses of academia and simultaneously might crack down on those telling children they should think twice about changing their gender. Are we far from the day when parents who don’t want their child mutilated end up in the dock, thanks to the Conservative party?
The next election will likely lead to the Tories’ parliamentary obliteration. Some of them very much deserve it.
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