The Conservative party leadership contest (sometimes referred to as a ‘race’, which is pushing it) is nearing its end. It’ll be hard getting used to the world without it. We’re all such different people now, 900 years on. At least we’ll always have the misty water-coloured memories.
One thing that both candidates agree on is that things have come to a pretty pass, and something, possibly even lots of somethings, must be done, and done urgently. This has been very strange to behold, as if the Tories have just woken up in a parallel universe where some other mysterious and nefarious political party has been in power for the last 12 years.
It was that foggy entity which whacked up taxes, sold nuclear power stations to China, banned fracking because a munchkin was all cross at them, and sat back not-fussed while wokery gulped up the public sector. The most peculiar part of the spectacle has been Rishi Sunak urging Tory members to vote for Rishi Sunak to stop what Rishi Sunak has been doing – pledging to make a fresh start with Rishi Sunak after the disastrous policies of Rishi Sunak.
People join or vote for – or against – a Platonic ideal of a party that can be very different from the physical truth
Such contests throw into sharp relief the difference between the tiny electorates of party memberships and – well, the remaining 100 per cent of the population. Truss and Sunak have been rabbiting on during the hustings about Mrs Thatcher, taxes and annoying social justice activism. These topics were hardly mentioned in public, for better or worse depending on taste, for the previous decade.
Similarly, Keir Starmer’s deep red pledges to the Corbynite left of Labour during his election in 2020 were the most transparent, contemptuous soft sell since Harry Enfield’s turn as owner of the posh junk shop ‘I Saw You Coming’. To the surprise and shock of nobody but the people taken in by them they were recently quietly dropped, at a moment barely as swiftly as was decently possible, with a filmy film flam – ‘because something mutter mutter something rhubarb covid rhubarb something’. At least Boris has the capacity for guilty squirming when caught out; Starmer appears simply to edit his memory every time he gets a software update and is thus unembarrassable.
What we see here, I think, is the difference between the mythic versions (pro and anti) of political parties and the realities. People join or vote for – or against – a Platonic ideal of a party that can be very different from the physical truth. They come to love or hate not that reality but the mythic version. A large minority of the Labour electorate firmly believes the Tories are almost literally Hitler. Many right wingers believe Labour are almost literally Stalin. They idealise their own faction as an opposition to their enemies. In fact both parties, when actually in government, are almost always plodding Whiggish can-kickers, bloated and complacent, not very bright, and indistinguishable on many issues. Using their own foundational myths or their opponents’ derogatory memes to think about them is like consulting a map that does not match the territory.
This is a world of shadows and reflections, and it doesn’t stop at party politics.
Taking people at their own estimation of themselves can lead you way off true. Decades of self-examination may not lead to a corresponding wealth of self-knowledge. Just think of the lorry loads of Matt Haig books sold to a hungry public. The streets should be packed with well-adjusted model citizens, bursting with self-understanding. Yet somehow we are all worrywarts.
People often convince themselves, and others, that they are one thing when in fact they are another. This erroneous self-identification has reached pandemic proportions of late, such that many descriptors should be in quote marks.
‘Anti-racist’ now means pro-segregation, ‘feminism’ is about not upsetting men’s delicate feelings, ‘anti-war’ means pro-whoever the British are fighting, ‘gay rights’ are for kinky straight people, and ‘anti-fascism’ is thuggish intimidation.
Is it any wonder we find it hard to make sense of things? Words and concepts are at odds, and on top of that people are often wildly inaccurate about their enemies and themselves. We need to look with fresh eyes at what people actually do in the world, what they are, rather than what they think they are or what they claim to be.
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