The Telegraph reported at the weekend that the Conservative party appears to be attempting, in its selection process for parliamentary candidates, to weed out anybody who might just possibly be a conservative. This strategy – with all its ineptitude and wilful blindness – is a perfect capsule of the parliamentary party and its upper echelons.
A party can leap over disappointment and rage; contempt is a much higher hurdle to clear
It’s hard to find the right word to describe what the Tories have done since their incredible election win in 2019. ‘Disappointment’ is polite, but too mild. ‘Rage’ is too hyperbolic. I think ‘contempt’ hits the mark best. And this is significant I think. A party can leap over disappointment and rage; contempt is a much higher hurdle to clear.
It’s sobering to reflect on the relief of election night 2019. At last the threat of Corbyn was over and done with. The ancient electoral system had worked, responding to the realignment of the country. After years of inertia and tiny majority fug, it felt like there might now be a chance of a fresh start. And the Tories threw it all away.
This won’t be an encomium for Boris Johnson, who was one of the principal architects of the betrayal. He has the remarkable quality of being a totemic figure, a focus for other people’s dreams and nightmares. He was viewed as either a jovial Old King Cole or a callous idiot. But neither of these characterisations are remotely accurate. Take away the trappings and it turned out he was just another mediocre Blairite. Still, to have people wanting to believe in you is the greatest advantage a politician can have. They’ll overlook your obvious failings, for a while anyway.
Covid trashed all of the early glow, within weeks. The grand schemes of the 2019 Tory campaign were crushed by it. Worse, it exposed the ineptitude and the limitations of our state machinery before anything could be done about it. (Not that anything has been done about it since – the Tories managed to frame the terms of the resultant inquiry so narrowly and so badly that it will only rebound in their own faces.)
It soon became apparent that, Brexit aside, the big problem remained. The Tory cabinet and parliamentary party was still stuffed with supposedly ‘sensible’ people who are, in fact, like their Labour and Lib Dem counterparts, the true extremists. But these are extremists with nice ties, shiny shoes and acceptably mad opinions.
Because it is extremist to derail the already moribund economy even further for the bizarre goal of net zero. It is extremist to have millions of people out of work and continue to import hundreds of thousands of extra people every year. It is extremist to tax and spend and quantitively ease like there’s no tomorrow. So yes, the Tories deserve very much to be punished.
After nearly 30 years of Blairite drift, the country’s problems are huge, possibly insurmountable. A flagging economy, a fragmented and fractious society, appalling imported anti-Semitism, unaccountable state bodies riddled with insane Californian ideologies, everything hobbled by Blair ‘reforms’.
Fighting back effectively against this decline would require intelligence, adaptability, strategy, unity, courage and iron nerve (not a Truss-style berserker spree). An appalling silly broadcast media and every other establishment institution and corporate would oppose it at every turn. It would make delivering Brexit or Mrs Thatcher’s early 80s reforms (which, tellingly, were resisted by many in her own party at the time) look like a stroll in the park. The Tories, with a few exceptions, are as much a facilitator of this degringolade as anybody else. They are part of it.
The threat of Labour doesn’t seem so bad after 14 years of a Tory government that has governed almost indistinguishably – barring a few blips – from the Blair and Brown administrations. And I have to confess to a perhaps ghoulish fascination to see what the Starmer government will bring. Because a lot of things are going to smack Labour square in the face, and quickly. Very soon David Lammy, who can’t hold a coherent thought in his head for longer than five seconds, will be Foreign Secretary. There’s an imp of the perverse that makes you really want to see that.
I’ve heard some people say we’ll have to wait for a total shuddering collapse before anything is done, but that may not happen. A country can decline for centuries. My hope would be that following the destruction of the Tories in 2024, Labour will be similarly destroyed in 2029. Meanwhile we can laugh at Starmer – who is even more comically ill-equipped than the Tories to deal with, or even notice, the rottenness that pervades the nation.
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