After the local elections, I compared the Conservative position to the final scenes of Blackadder Goes Forth. If anything, my suggestion that the general election would resemble a doomed charge across No Man’s Land – resulting in the entire cast being mowed down by machine gun fire – now seems almost too optimistic about Tory prospects. Such, such were the joys…
Reflecting on an election that launched in the rain and went downhill from there, I can’t help but feel that Keir Starmer should have stayed at home planning for government and just left us to punch ourselves in the face (with Nigel Farage holding the towel). National Service, D-Day, Sky TV: every moment that has been noticed by voters only seems to have further put them off.
So too with this week’s episode of the Tory tele-novella: ‘betgate’, a stupid name for a stupid scandal. For those wise enough not to have paid any attention, various Conservative candidates and party officials have been accused of betting on when Rishi Sunak would go over the top. The two are now under investigation by the Gambling Commission – alongside our chief data officer.
Saunders is the wife of Tony Lee. Until a couple of days ago, he was CCHQ’s campaign director. He is now on a leave of absence as he too is being investigated. Two weeks out from July 4th, this is not tremendous news. Pax Michael Gove, the revelations are unacceptable, reprehensible, and downright moronic. Were they really that worried about their post-election incomes?
Sunak has been quick to distance himself. He told the Question Time audience that the allegations make him “incredibly angry” and that anyone who has “broken the rules” must “face the full force of the law”. He is more used to financial than betting markets, even if the principle is the same. These stories only distract from his Napoleonic retreat into ever-‘safer’ Tory seats.
Here’s hoping that the media herd moves on. Farage has helped by breaking the national omertà over Ukraine. But even if ‘betgate’ sinks behind the next gaffe, MRP horrorshow, or close-up of Taylor Swift’s legs, it leaves an undeniable stench. It confirms all the public’s worst assumptions about the Tories: that we are incompetent, morally bankrupt, and utterly indefensible.
We have a traditional compact with voters. They might suspect that we are self-promoting posh boys and money-grabbing wotsits, in politics for no good reasons. But if we are b*stards, at least we have been competent b*stards, ritually elected to clean up after Labour’s habitually profligate compassion. The last few years have ruined that. Without competency, we are just b*stards.
We cycled through three Prime Ministers in as many months, and none proved up to the job. Johnson thought regional inequalities could be solved through a few new park benches. Liz Truss’s enthusiasm for markets wasn’t matched by their enthusiasm for her. Sunak set five pledges to be judged on and called an election after barely matching one of them. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
We have been accused of being the most right-wing government in history whilst hiking taxation to Clement Attlee levels, promoting insane levels of immigration, and building a gerontocracy. We have failed to turn the clock back a single second. We have made Baxter Basics look like a model of probity. Scandal has followed scandal: sexual misconduct, lobbying, money, and cake.
Most gallingly, we betrayed those voters who delivered us our 2019 majority. We promised them that we weren’t their father’s Tory Party. Johnson posed as a “Brexity Hezza”, here to care about those bits of Britain we’d hitherto ignored. Austerity binned – we’ve changed, honest! Looking back, who but cringe? At least your father’s Tories had a modicum of shame and self-awareness.
The last five years can be described as one big act of self-indulgence. We allowed a government to break up because of petty personal rows. We partied as the Queen sat alone, and held a leadership election during a war and cost-of-living crisis. We spaffed a hard-earned reputation for economic management in a single mini-budget. We broke all our immigration promises. Cue Farage.
It reminds me of another trench-based comedy classic. Readers may well be familiar with the That Mitchell and Webb Look sketch where David Mitchell and Robert Webb, playing two SS officers, realise they might have backed the wrong side. Pointing to the skull on his cap, a perturbed Mitchell asks his colleague the immortal question: “Hans…are we the baddies?” They soon skedaddle.
The ‘betgate’ farrago should prompt a feeling amongst Tories comparable to Mitchell’s moment of clarity. We are wilfully blind as to just how much we are hated. For those safely ensconced in our few remaining rural redoubts, the general assumption that Conservatives are lower than vermin may not have filtered through. Wake up! 46 per cent of voters want us wiped out.
Some might argue it was forever thus. We can date our history back to the Exclusion Crisis. We’ve been defeated before and always bounced back. But this time it’s different. In 1997, we still won 27 per cent of the 18-24 year old vote. We’re currently on 4 per cent. The party is fifth amongst 25-49 year olds. Our base is over 70. We are terminally ill. To voters my age, ‘Tory’ is just an insult.
As I’ve argued, this is for a wider range of generational cultural shifts than are often acknowledged. YIMBYism is not enough when you are a pagan in a Christian world. 2019 might be a victory from which we might never recover, based on the unique combination of Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn’s awfulness. Even Carol Voderman can’t blame us for Covid. We were not dealt an easy hand.
But we can be held accountable for how we handled it and our actions since. ‘Partygate’ was a breach with voters from which we have never recovered. We followed it by sending the worst Prime Minister in history to Number 10. But those of us who backed Sunak over Truss must also be honest about our disappointment. Having not yet failed in life, he doesn’t see what ails Britain.
Of course, a Conservative government remains preferable to the alternative (Mandy Rice-Davies rules, etc). A Starmer uber-landslide would empower the Whitehall-Blob-court axis and blackouts. With a global conflict looming, we’d have a Foreign Secretary who received a record-low score on Celebrity Mastermind. If you think we were incompetent, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Many right-wingers – especially my age – would point out a new alternative exists: Reform. But Farage is a false prophet. He has disappointed anyone who has ever allied with him. For all his warm words, he lacks any serious interest in governing. Where is his Stepping Stones? If he ever entered Number 10, Whitehall would have him drowning his sorrows in The Red Lion in a week.
Lee Kuan Yew did not come third on I’m a Celeb. Farage is a negative force, capable of facilitating a Tory wipeout but unable to replace it with anything worthwhile. He will not do the hard work of mapping the causes of Britain’s decline and attracting the people required to solve it. He will enter Parliament, sound off, get bored, and fall out with any other Reform MPs.
We know what a coherent right-wing agenda would look like: Net Zero immigration, energy sanity, a massive programme of planning reform, and housebuilding. We also know how to get there: identify, train, and promote talented people, primarily from the private sector, and smash the barriers to governing. We have examples, contemporary and historical: look to El Salvador.
Once Farage implodes, like the proverbial dog, the right will turn back to the Tories. But we face the greatest existential challenge in our history. July 4th will be a battering to make 1997 look like a lightly bruised knee. Sunak losing his seat now looks likely. A good result is not coming third. Expect double figures, a parliamentary party denuded of talent, and a nervous breakdown.
The challenges we face? Not only recovery, but working out how to govern even a smidge more effectively than we’ve managed, and convincing a disillusioned electorate to give us one last chance. Britain is crying out for a Conservative revolution that makes Margaret Thatcher’s look titchy. Can we deliver? Saying yes is a struggle, amid the dumpster fire. Everything has its time.
It’s hard to think we will ever have a Conservative government again. The odds are long. But hope springs eternal. Within fifteen years of Labour being reduced to 52 seats in 1931, Attlee had a landslide majority, and the ability to reshape post-war Britain in his admirably miserable image. It did, alas, take a war to get there. But the next few years are unlikely to be short of those.
Things will get very much worse before they even have a hope of getting better. Labour will implode in government. We will indulge in a long uncivil war, as 70 or so remaining MPs spend years pointing fingers at each other through the helpful medium of the right-wing entertainment industry. It’ll be a boom time for us commentators, but miserable for all involved, and for a country I love.
But if any good is to come of this defeat, it must start with the collective acknowledgment that we are responsible for our plight. Until we understand just why the electorate is so desperate to bring an end to #FourteenWastedYears, all our posturing and postulating will be for naught. Until we understand why voters think we’re the baddies, we can do no good. Politics is pointless.
Still. If we can’t do anything worthwhile, we may as well have some fun. Anyone offering 7-1 on double figures?