Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
Earlier this month, Dominic Cummings unveiled a project to kill off the Conservative Party. He’s looking forward to a catastrophic result at the next general election and thinks this may be the best chance since the 1850s to “replace the Tories.”
He might just be right about that – and coming from the man who pulled off the Leave victory, it would be complacent to dismiss his chances now.
So halving made his intention clear, what was the reaction from the political and media establishment? Crickets.
Perhaps the timing was off. We’re still months away from the next election, which for most journalists is an eternity. They won’t properly engage with the aftermath of a 1997-style landslide defeat unless – or until – it happens.
Also, there’s been plenty of political hoo-hah this summer. There was, for instance, the fevered reaction to the Uxbridge by-election result; this was followed by the raging controversies of Small Boats Week. Ministers haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory with this stuff, but Downing Street has rediscovered the lost art of distracting the media.
Editors could have focused on Tory poll ratings (still abysmal) or Rishi Sunak’s position as leader (far from secure), or the coming reshuffle (just weeks away). They might even have given some exposure to the Cummings’ plan for a new political party. But they didn’t.
So is ‘Classic Dom’ now Mr Irrelevant? Absolutely not. The political landscape is pock-marked with the ruined careers of those who underestimated him. Having achieved one political realignment in 2019, I wouldn’t bet my house against another.
Indeed, the purpose of his Substack article wasn’t to garner coverage in tomorrow’s chip paper, but to send up a Bat-Signal to those who share his way of thinking. As for those of us who don’t want the Conservative Party to die, we need to pay attention too.
Reading through the post, the first thing that stands out is what Cummings has to say about Sunak. Clearly, he has a soft spot for the Prime Minister, described as probably having “the highest IQ in parliament” and the “toughest work ethic”. Furthermore, he’s “neither a crook nor a cretin.” Good to know.
That, however, is the end of the positivity. Cummings goes on to observe that the Government has “no governing plan… no serious polling, communication or political machine,” and “no political strategy worth spit.” Furthermore, Downing Street is being “given the run around” by officials because it has “resolutely ignored the core dysfunctions of Whitehall.”
I find it hard to disagree with that analysis. But then comes a glaring disconnect in Cummings’ argument.
The systemic failure that he so vividly describes pertains to this country’s permanent government – i.e. the Civil Service and related institutions. This is where you will find the most calcified devotion to the failed status quo. And yet when we get to the solutions section of the Cummings post, his number one target is the “old Tory party” which he wants to “plough… into the earth with salt.”
Certainly, there’s no end of criticism that could be levelled at successive Tory leaders, the parliamentary party, and CCHQ. But let’s stand back and take in the bigger picture.
Over the last 50 years of British political history, there have been precisely two occasions when the established order was challenged and defeated: the Thatcher revolution, and Brexit.
In both instances, the agent of change was the Conservative Party – one of the few British institutions that is capable of de-calcifying and re-inventing itself. Just look at the speed of the transition from Heath to Thatcher, or from the rule of the Notting Hill Set to getting Brexit done.
Even if Cummings is right to dismiss the Conservative Party as it is now, he is wrong to discount what it could become. The wonks of Tufton Street were able to capture the Conservative Party with Liz Truss, so why couldn’t Cummings and his Vote Leave allies do the same with a candidate of their choice?
It seems a little bit cheems not to give it a go. What’s the point in building a new party, when there’s an old one just begging for fresh ideas and a new lease of life?
The most obvious reply is that the Conservative Party is ungovernable. Rather like Nigel Farage, who felt he had no choice but to quit UKIP, it could be argued that the same applies to us; that even if we had a star as leader, we’d only hold him or her back.
But the Conservative Party is not UKIP writ large. If anything we’re too easily led, following this way and that with dog-like devotion. From the “big society” to the “global race“, George Osborne’s austerity to Trussonomics, the Coalition to the culture wars, we’ve accepted every change in direction.
Admittedly, we’ve got through a lot of leaders since 1997; starting with John Major, there have been nine to date. But that’s not for lack of loyalty.
For the most part, our leaders either stepped-down after losing a general election (i.e. Major, William Hague, and Michael Howard) or because they’d committed some irreparable act of self-sabotage (i.e. David Cameron, Boris Johnson, and Truss). Only in two cases (Iain Duncan Smith and Theresa May) was a leader’s life made impossible by unruly colleagues.
In short, the idea that the Conservative Party is an automatic obstacle to reform does not add up. A new leader could be as transformational as Thatcher, Winston Churchill or Benjamin Disraeli. In seeking change within today’s party, a reformist movement only has to be lucky once.
However, if it wants to succeed as an independent electoral force, everything has to go right for it. Since Labour, not a single new party has even come close to winning a general election. They’ve literally all failed.
But let me end on a note of caution. Looking ahead, there are circumstances in which a replacement party wouldn’t just be viable, but downright essential.
For instance, if Downing Street continues down the path of no vision and minimal competence, the resulting electoral meltdown could leave the Conservative Party so broken as to be unsalvageable. In which case, there’d be a race to replace it, with success for Cummings’ new party being the least-worst outcome.
The second doom-laden (or Dom-laden) scenario is if we survive electoral defeat, but fail to find a new leader who isn’t mad, bad, or dangerous to know. Some gruesome possibilities already present themselves. I’ve based my argument on the ability of Conservative leaders to lead the party down new paths – but one of those is the path to destruction.
Finally, there’s a scenario in which we survive the election, find a promising new leader, but refuse to move on from the upheavals of the last few years. Instead of using opposition to have a serious debate about the dysfunctions of government, the danger is that we’ll indulge in a rematch between the supporters of Johnson, Truss and Sunak.
This would be worse than the post-1997 war between the ‘Mods’ and ‘Rockers’, because at least that was about the future of the Conservatism. If this time we react to our next electoral defeat with a never-ending, score-settling brawl about the past, then Dominic Cummings might as well stick a fork in us, because we’d be done.