The Death of British Conservatism
It's an animal twitching in the desert, consumed by a parasite, being eaten from the inside out.
We're in the final days now. The sky is blood-dimmed. Strange insects with impossible biology are carried in by the famine-breeze. The Conservative party is on the verge of extinction.
The most successful democratic political party in the Western world seems ready to expire. It's below 20% in the latest YouGov. We never thought that was possible. We believed there was a base level to its support underneath which it could not sink. But now it is entering subterranean zones whose existence was until now merely theoretical. It has stumbled into a cave system to which there are no maps. It's now at 19% - 25 points behind Labour and, perhaps more pertinently, just four points above Reform. And this is not really anomalous. The average of the last few polls puts Labour on 44.3% to the Tories 22.9%.
Of course, things might change. We all dimly expect them to, out of a conviction, which has been repeatedly disproved in recent years, that extraordinary things do not happen. On the basis of the data that we have right now, and that we have had for some time, the Tories are facing annihilation. We're talking double-digit number of MPs, Labour gains so vast that they would have to fill up half of the other side of the Chamber. Impossible outcomes that challenge the basic architectural assumptions of the building they operate in. Will it definitely happen? No. Can it happen? Yes. Is it the current course of events? Also yes.
Electoral death is merely the death of the body. It was preceded by the death of the Tory soul. One of the Lords amendments to the Rwanda bill this week illustrated it vividly. It simply sought to add the following words to the legislation: "while maintaining full compliance with domestic and international law". That was it. A request that the government abide by the rule of law. In the past such an amendment would not have been necessary. It would have been ludicrous to propose it and if it was proposed it would have been readily accepted. Now, it must be proposed and having been proposed it must be vociferously rejected.
Where is the Tory soul? Who was there on the government benches prepared to state that they still believe in the rule of law? Who was prepared to speak out loud the most foundational values upon which their movement exists? Only one MP - Robert Buckland. Where were the others? The great massed ranks of the One Nation caucus who are so fond of briefing the press about their strength in the parliamentary party? Voting with the government. Suddenly silent, cowed in submission as things collapse around them.
The Tory party's soul did not wither with the polling. Its corrosion began long ago, on October 2nd 2016, when Theresa May told the party conference that "we are not leaving the European Union only to give up control of immigration again and we are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European court of justice". It was the unveiling of a hard Brexit policy: the first moment that the party had taken up a knowingly harmful economic posture in order to placate the siren voices opposed to Europe, immigration and international law.
Everything flows from that moment. It marked the start of a process in which the Conservatives stopped being a centre-right party and became a populist right party. What followed? The purge of the One Nation moderates. The unlawful prorogation of parliament. The entrenchment of a conspiracist mindset in which their own failures were redefined as the fault of the 'establishment' or the 'blob'. The promotion of belligerent mascots like Lee Anderson or Nadine Dorries. The assault on independent scrutiny, including the permanent secretary at the Treasury, the Office of Budget Responsibility and the judiciary. Repeated efforts to break the law and then a Rwanda bill which allowed parliament to dictate reality itself. Prime ministers who lacked the conviction or the basic moral capacity to call racism by its name when they saw it.
British conservatism became British populism. It gave up the ghost. And for a while, when Johnson was planting his flag in the Red Wall, it all seemed like a terribly jolly idea. What a wonderful ruse. Britain's most successful political party had discovered another way to win. But now, in the cold light of day, it doesn’t look so clever. They've hollowed out their ideological centre. They've jettisoned their core belief system. And their support has collapsed around them.
What will happen when they finally fall from power? In all likelihood, an insane squabbling puritanism: lost in a hall of broken mirrors, startled at their own reflection. Who will replace Sunak? Suella Braverman? The most vindictive and brain-dead frontbencher we've seen among a field of strong contenders? Penny Mordaunt? A woman whose rhetoric is so absent of content that it is literally indecipherable? Kemi Badenoch? Who can barely conceal the sense of peevishness and contempt which bubbles underneath her surface? Robert Jenrick? A man so forgettable that you can only remember he exists when your eyes are laid upon him?
I'm not going to pretend that I'm not enjoying this, because I am. I have never seen a government in my lifetime that more richly deserves what they have coming. And that is not merely on the basis of spite and disdain, but it does include them.
And yet there is a loss here. It's a profound one.
At its best, conservatism warns us of the danger of change. It is therefore a force which encourages scrutiny - not because it believes in it on its own terms, but because it searches for ways to disqualify whatever your proposal is for progress. For political radicals, that is a constant source of frustration. But unless you plan carefully and pass law wisely, you can worsen the situation you want to ameliorate. Conservatism encourages that planning. It provides the incentive for wisdom in others, even when it does not supply it itself.
Decent conservatism is the stuff of small ideas: an aversion to utopianism, a wariness of structural explanations, a preference for small-scale practical change over large-scale system substitution. An instinctive caution about the policy making process and the real world impact that it has.
It also offers us a reminder: that sometimes things should not change. Or that during a process of change, some elements might sensibly stay the same. It speaks to a psychological instinct which modernisers struggle with: that many people want things to be stable, to alter slowly if at all, that change can be frightening as well as hopeful. That deep inside institutions we do not admire, like the church or the royal family, there may be some function which does the nation good, which provides stability or solidarity, even though that was not the aim which it started with. It reminds us of things like the landscape of the country, the soil of it, which most progressives find either irrelevant or reactionary, but have an indefinable importance to others.
This is the conservatism of Edmund Burke, or Samuel Coleridge. Of an old and proud tradition which is respectable on its own terms but also provides nourishment to those who oppose it. It's part of the balance which a healthy political society needs. Without progress, there is decay. Without conservatism, there is mania.
These aspects of conservatism are gone now, or at least so unpopular that they might as well be. The modern conservative party is not interested in scrutiny. It is not sceptical. It is messianic, bordering on millennialist. It is not concerned with small ideas, but big religious ones - grand notions of forces undermining the people's will which are more akin to totalitarian thought than those of liberal democracy. It does not admire stability, but constantly agitates for ever-greater change. Its instinct is not to preserve, but to burn it down. To rampage rather than protect. A kind of Tory Trotskyism
The Reform party is within touching distance of the Conservative party now. It's quite possible that in the next few months, there'll be a poll in which they place higher and then all hell will break loose. But this is really just the superficial demonstration of a much more seismic ideological change which took place since Brexit: The replacement of traditional conservatism with populist conservatism. The name of the party is immaterial. The principles operating on the right are what matters.
After the election, the Tories will be an afterthought. Unless something dramatic happens, Labour will be everything - dominating parliament, seemingly unassailable, set for a decade in power. But one of the most important issues will be what happens to British Conservatism. Are there enough true conservatives left to regain control of their movement?
I am glad that Rory Stewart has a successful podcast, but I am incensed that Rory Stewart is a podcaster. That is not what this man should be doing in a sane country. He should be one of the leading figures of the right - operating in politics, not the media. His presence in this capacity is a sign that something has gone terribly wrong.
Who will be the next Ken Clarke? The next Dominic Grieve? The next Norman St John-Stevas? What space is there in the Conservative party for someone of that heritage? We look at those Rwanda amendments and we see nothing, barely a hint of a Tory soul, barely a trace element of a belief system that is prepared to fight for its core assumptions. The body of an animal twitching in the desert, consumed by a parasite, being eaten from the inside out.
We urgently need the people who represent an older, better form of conservatism to fight for their values in an internal struggle of the right. And we need them to win. But by God there is precious little sign of that happening any time soon.
Yes to all of this. As satisfying as it will be to see those bastards get the public humiliation they deserve at the ballot box - and rest assured I'll be celebrating it with the rest of you - I do still have that nagging worry in the back of my mind about what happens afterwards. Even when "our" side, or "the good guys" are in charge, we still need an opposition of sensible adults. I'm not arrogant enough to claim that "my" side are right 100% of the time, and I'm not naive enough to believe that the "good" ones will always be the best option (or even stay "good" indefinitely).
I desperately hope that there will be some new Rory Stewarts and Michael Heseltines to replace the current crop of useless deluded cranks. It's also important to remember that here's a lot of people out there who will soon be politically homeless, and just because I respectfully disagree with a lot of what they believe in, I still want to see them fairly represented.
I think people need to be careful what they wish for. The eradication of the Conservative Party at the next General Election might seem fun. But at best Labour will poll in the mid-40s and yet from that get perhaps anything up to 80% of the seats. It will be insanely dominant. Some seat projections have the Lib Dems(!) in opposition, with under 50 seats. So that removes consensus politics entirely, unless Labour is smart and decides to bring in others for a wider remit. More likely we’d see 1997 again, with ‘big beasts’ throwing toys out of prams for the barest hint that cooperation might be a nice idea.
So Labour would therefore need to do a lot of stuff very quickly, which has a massive positive impact on the country. But positive in what way? The economics are one thing. But Labour also has an authoritarian bent. So does it continue to appease the social conservatives and ignore liberal voters? Or does it tear down some of the more draconian policies the Tories put in place and risk annoying the right-wing press and nativist voters? Either way, you can imagine Labour might in fact get its Boris Johnson moment, in the sense of having an awful lot of power, and yet that power being more precarious than anyone might have realised.
That’s why I’m unsure about the decade in power comment. Although Ian here at least moderates that compared to other commentators, who seem to – as they did in 1997 and again in 2019 – argue that the dominant party will forever rule. With a relentless right-wing press and remaining Tories no longer having to back up their headlines with something concrete, Labour will be subject to a constant stream of negativity. And although its majority will be huge, its lead in the vote is far smaller. We could feasibly see a backlash where Labour ends up out in its arse after one term, and the Tories back in on a lowish vote share. Or perhaps Reform learns quickly and does the unthinkable.
My hope is that Labour won’t be arrogant and that it won’t be conservative. My hope is it will recognise that even a massive win in a general election isn’t forever, and that it can lay the groundwork for a better future in a number of ways, including being much more progressive and inclusive than it’s sounding right now. It would need to blaze out of the gates and do things quickly. But in the background, it could also work with others to further the notion of consensus politics in the UK. A sensible Labour Party would then – within this first term – from its position of strength shift the Commons to a representative one. But I’m fully prepared to be disappointed on all fronts.