Britain’s blues
It might be tempting to have sympathy with the Conservative Party membership but such sympathy would be entirely unearned.
During the winter of 2007-08, it became clear that more than a couple of banks needed saving, more than a few hedge funds were at risk of insolvency, and more than one badly run insurance company was in trouble. The entire global financial system, we were portentously informed, was on the brink of collapse, and if governments did not step in to clear up the mess, even the few remaining healthy financial institutions would be brought down – and the rest of the economy with them. The problems lay in the financial system; the crisis was therefore systemic.
The British state itself now faces a systemic crisis – or, more accurately, a systemic crisis of systemic crises. The next prime minister will not simply have problems to address; he or she will be faced with an omnicrisis that requires the bailout and rewiring of the administrative, social, cultural, public service and economic systems that organise and characterise our country.
But before that small task, the next person in Number 10 will have to immediately deal with: (i) the worst cost of living crisis in memory, (ii) an NHS that is still reeling from Covid lockdowns but will likely enter flu season as yet another strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus gains traction in the country; (iii) fractious and intellectually and politically challenging negotiations with the EU over the degree to which it holds economic suzerainty over a quarter of the United Kingdom; (iv) a migration crisis that can probably only be solved by the legal abrogation of, or withdrawal from, the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Refugee Convention of 1954; (v) an already horrendous but slowly escalating war in Eastern Europe in which Britain is increasingly close to co-belligerency against a nuclear armed power; (vi) Russia's inevitable counter sanctions on the west, which could well plunge Central Europe into darkness (and with it the European economy into depression); (vii) an expanding number of crucial public services in which workers are taking highly disruptive strike action; (viii) global hunger and famine; (ix) related political instability and revolutions in the Third World, and perhaps in Europe; (x) a potential eurozone debt crisis; (xi) a parliamentary Conservative Party that is nakedly riven by division and spite; (xii) a twelve point deficit in the opinion polls with only two years until an election that could bring into power a Labour-SNP-LibDem coalition which would seek a new referendum on Scottish secession, much closer alignment with the EU, and to cement the progressive elite consensus into law and society forever.
Conservative Party MPs, therefore, have narrowed the leadership contenders down to two equally unsuitable and unelectable candidates.
Rishi Sunak is obviously a disciplined and intelligent man; he is just as clearly a Davos Man. His fashionably narrow-lapelled suits and slick, FTSE100 grooming make him look as though he might be profiled in The Telegraph’s business pages as the new CEO of Centrica or Barclays. Sunak also speaks in a well grooved neoteric patois more commonplace at G7 meetings and Jackson Hole Fed Symposia than on the stump in Workington or Teesside. As a dedicated follower of Treasury orthodoxy, he seems to adhere to Osbornomics, that ever-popular, vote winning policy of pro-cyclical austerity into the teeth of recessions. Quite how the electorate would receive a high tax burden and cuts to public services from a man whose household wealth is the thick end of a billion quid, whose wife ‘optimised’ her tax arrangements by taking advantage of non-dom status, and who himself possessed a US Green Card while Chancellor, should seem obvious to anybody with a brain. Labour is certain to cudgel him with it every single day, and there are bound to be offshore trusts, tax returns, undisclosed assets, and company management practices for Labour and The Guardian to unearth. Truffle hogs will be snuffling through the Panama Papers and HMRC archives even now. No doubt Labour would also highlight that Sunak, too, was fined over his participation in Partygate. It seems unlikely, therefore, that Mr Sunak can make the further inroads into the Red Wall the Tories need to win the next election. Beyond economic policy, he is almost a black box. Who knows, exactly, what he thinks about the migrant crisis? How would he reform Britain’s increasingly Third World education system? What is his policy for knife crime? What are his solutions for the increasingly unfit for purpose NHS? Does anyone know? He claims to have voted for Brexit, but nobody can quite seem to remember him doing any actual campaigning for it.
Liz Truss started her career as a Liberal Democrat anti-monarchist, and has since shown no sign whatsoever of having rethought her positions beyond that which was necessary for career advancement. For instance, she voted Remain, but then became a fervent supporter of Brexit when it was necessary to secure a cabinet position. In this sense, she fits the recent May-Johnson lineage of Prime Ministers who were entirely unencumbered by political principles beyond an instinctive adherence to received-wisdom neoliberalism. Would she really be out of place among the Orange Book Liberal Democrats or the Blairite wing of the Labour Party? There is also the whiff of gormless incompetence about Truss. She did not make a single interesting, well-considered or original speech or policy announcement as foreign secretary, and her preference for Thatcher tribute Instagram snaps over learning her brief led to one humiliation after another on the world stage. Rather like a British tourist who thinks communicating with Johnny Foreigner involves speaking English loudly and slowly, Ms Truss appears to believe that diplomacy means talking tough to the Frogs and Russians. Just that little bit too bonkers for it to go unnoticed, and every bit as uncomfortably wooden as Theresa May, her preferred policies are a muddled retread of an ideology that, whatever its utility in the 1980s, is entirely unsuitable for Britain’s current predicament. She is so talentless that, until the very final round, she could not even scrape together 25% of the MP vote as foreign secretary, after a full year of leadership campaigning, and with the ERG whipping for her.
Both Sunak and Truss were major figures during the debacle of the Johnson Ministry. Neither has much charisma or ability to connect with voters. Neither is conservative.
It might be tempting to have sympathy with the Conservative Party membership, who must now choose a prime minister from this hideous pair, but such sympathy would be entirely unearned. They maintain a bovine loyalty to their tribe, no matter what humiliations are heaped upon them. They wilfully kid themselves that the party name means its leadership is still conservative. They are dupes for a conference speech and suckers for an election slogan. They refuse to see the truth and lack the wit to find the alternative. Thus, with their votes, time and money, they prop up a party of liberalism, incompetence and indifference, and support Prime Ministers who shout ‘steady as she goes’ jubilantly from the helm of a slowly sinking ship. Conservative Party members will in a few weeks select a barely electable leader they liked much less than the alternatives that were denied them, and then rally their support behind that person. In doing so, they will continue to facilitate the Conservative Party’s role as an immovable bulwark against the emergence of a resonant voice for social conservatism and competence in British politics.
The UK is like an alcoholic far along the path to self-destruction, and the Conservative Party and its membership are its biggest enablers.
A D M Collingwood is the writer and editor of BritanniQ, a weekly newsletter for intelligent Britons. To enjoy this high quality collection of polemics, essays and chicken soup for the patriot's soul every Monday, sign up, free of charge, here.
