The coroner’s inquest is already underway, although the patient’s heart has not yet stopped beating. Did the Conservatives lose because they were too Right-wing, or because they were not Right-wing enough?
Both sides are rehearsing their arguments in anticipation of a post-election scrabble for control. Was the mistake to raise taxes, ignore the opportunities of Brexit, engorge the public sector, let in too many immigrants, and fail to deregulate?
Or was it the other way around? My friend David Gauke argued on this site a couple of weeks ago that the Tories’ problems come from the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss premierships and that, if Right-wingers don’t like how things have turned out, they have only themselves to blame: “David Frost negotiated his Brexit deal; Priti Patel was Home Secretary”.
Neither side is saying anything surprising. I mean, there might be a Spartan out there who thinks, in retrospect, that we banged on too much about Europe. There might be a One Nationer who believes that we would be winning if only we had cut taxes and spending. But, if so, I have yet to hear from them. What we have had so far is the usual response to a dramatic event (and they don’t come more dramatic than what is forecast to happen tomorrow), namely “This vindicates what I was already saying!”
One side points to the rise of Reform, the other to the fact that, even if the Conservative and Reform votes were combined, the total would still fall short of what the Left-wing parties are set to win. Neither is entirely wrong.
But neither is exactly right. The coming Götterdämmerung would not have been averted by a jump to the Left or a step to the Right. There are larger explanations.
As this column keeps pointing out, getting a fifth consecutive victory is almost unprecedented. The last time it happened was in 1830 – and, two years after that, the Tory Party was so pulverised that it had to close down and relaunch itself in 1834 as the Conservative Party.
Being elected for a fifth term was always a hell of an ask. But the lockdown put it beyond reach. Around the world, parties that were in office when the bills came have suffered. Center-right parties get an extra kick when prices and taxes rise. And, after 14 years, the Tories are in for the toughest kicking of all.
Never mind that Labour wanted an even harsher lockdown. Never mind that, when Johnson lifted restrictions in 2021 (earlier than in most countries because of a speedier vaccine rollout), Keir Starmer predicted 100,000 cases per day because of what he babyishly called “the Johnson variant”. Never mind that Starmer would mistakenly have kept us locked up for months more. In politics, Oppositions never carry the can.
By the laws of mathematics, many of those now complaining about the effects of lockdown must have been in the 71 per cent who opposed its end, let alone the 93 per cent who backed it at the start. But none of that matters. Who said politics was fair?
The ultimate cause of the government’s unpopularity is its failure to get on top of the administrative state. Canvassing over the past month, I have been struck again and again by how many of the complaints one hears on the doorstep have to do with bodies that are beyond ministerial control – from wokery in the National Trust to long waits for the GP.
The lockdown was, in a sense, another victory for the quangocracy – although, in fairness, it is hard to see any democratic government openly defying the official medical bodies during a pandemic. Sweden happened to have a chief scientific adviser brave enough to stick to the plan and not be bounced by hysterical commentators. Britain did not. In all the leaked WhatsApps, and all the inquiry evidence, Johnson comes across as the sanest person in the room, constantly asking whether we were over-reacting.
But, by 2020, a pattern had already been set. In any clash between the administrative state and an elected minister, the bureaucracy would get its way. Our media are not interested in the failings of non-politicians, and the public will always cheer for what it imagines to be the disinterested experts.
I have written many times on ConHome about how power has shifted from Hacker to Humphrey. After the 2019 election, the former Conservative and UKIP MP Douglas Carswell was commissioned to look at the problem and draw up some genuinely radical solutions. But the pandemic hit, and the moment was lost.
If the Conservatives are to come back, whether alone or as part of some reconfigured party of the Right, the first item on their agenda must be to make the state machine answerable so that politicians can deliver on their promises.
To complain that the courts keep overturning measures against illegal immigration, or that the civil servants keep striking down policies that are deemed incompatible with climate targets, or that “RNHS” is failing to deliver on the unprecedented chunks of money it keeps getting, will only ever come across as whining.
Until we restore power to the act of casting a ballot, we will keep ending up where we are now.