Tories must learn to face their demons, not pretend they don’t exist

These thoughts passed (of course) and I imagine are fairly standard for the adolescent. But surely Florence had a similar… experience. Her genius allowed her to transmute the fear (“I can see it coming from the edge of the room”) into a song of great beauty. 

You know the famous scene in Six Degrees of Separation, when Stockard Channing flips the double-sided canvas round and round: chaos/control. Chaos/control. The grip we have on the one depends on our ability to spin the other. 

And that “other”, that creature… “creeping in the streetlight”, as Florence sees it, or manifest as a demon, as Iris Murdoch might suggest, or “just” a psychic artefact, as a psychiatrist would put it, or even a sociological construct of structural inequality: of whatever matter it consists, it is, regardless, quite, quite real. We all have our demons, and spend our lives casting around for angels to save us. 

But some of us turn our back on the very concept (I can quite easily imagine a reader harrumphing at this piece). I would always argue that it’s psychologically unhealthy to ignore the creatures that live at the edge of your consciousness. But the political consequences disturb me as much. 

Whether you notice the demons that stalk your wellbeing is quite independent of how you vote, of course. Demons don’t care whether their targets are Tories or socialists (yes, I give the demons agency. So what?). But perhaps the manner in which we respond to the movement at the corner of our vision, the flicker that’s never quite in focus… perhaps this is Conservatism’s greatest failure. 

I mean our failure to provide an artistic response to the difficulty of being human. Is there — I’m making a theory here, not attempting to prove it — is there some element in the Tory disposition which shies away from any lyrical expression of fear, something which renders our approach to life — including politics — too literal, anti-artistic? Which is to say: inauthentic? 

That we are heartless is our critics’ greatest lie, but it’s a lie which has stuck. Why? My theory is that our empiricism has become too strong, our distrust of imagination too great. That we have prioritised “common sense” over the terrors which haunt human existence. If we insist on the lack of an inner life, how to fight opponents who claim we don’t have one?

Consider the standard Tory response to food banks — what a shame people have to use them; of course there are many reasons for their growth, not all of them negative; the important role for government is to grow the economy and create more jobs. All of that is true, of course, but it’s almost inhuman in its incompleteness. 

But imagine a minister who said this:

“When I was a child, a neighbour died alone and lay, unnoticed, for a fortnight. I’ve never forgotten the guilt I felt when he was finally buried, though I was in no way at fault; my parents couldn’t meet one another’s eyes. In an odd way — forgive me, I know the reasoning isn’t obvious — it’s because of that neighbour that I understand the terror of joblessness. We are all so close to oblivion.” 

That our perceived lack of empathy is a problem for the movement seems incontrovertible. Tories have lost control of the upstream to the extent that there’s barely an artist, an academic, an actor, a playwright, a television producer, a singer, a musician, a novelist who would be willing to stand up and say “I am frightened of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. The Conservatives have a vision for the country that is not only practical, it’s human-shaped.” 

For decades we’ve acted as though this doesn’t matter, that somehow artistic vision and socialism are related expressions of the same subconscious instinct. “Of course, she [an actor or writer of genius] is a terrible lefty.” An infantilising indulgence that can no longer be afforded, not when that entire “terrible lefty” culture is the principal medium in which our fellow citizens swim, breathe, love, and talk about their fear of demons. 

Impossible to push against the tide of an entire culture… and when that culture is intent on promoting, normalising and empowering characters as sinister as John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, then the lack of Conservative cultural traction is electorally dangerous. Remember Stockard Channing and the chaos/control canvas: every suburban bourgeois norm we hold dear is now at risk, because you don’t get (support for) stability without admitting the (fear and presence of) chaos. 

Think about what Corbyn wants to do to the country. There is danger lurking, still just out of view, but it’s close. The armour of efficient “common sense”, fervently strapped on in youth, dismissive of the terror that jolts you awake at night, won’t protect you for an instant. The danger creeps closer, closer, closer by the day: can you see it coming now?

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Graeme Archer is a statistician and writer.

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