An identity politician? (Photo by Peter Nicholls - Pool/Getty Images)
Sometimes, when overwhelmed by morbid curiosity, I find myself reading the Wikipedia pages of plane crashes. Thanks to the data recovered from black boxes, especially of cockpit voice recordings, the last moments of a flight can be recreated with vivid accuracy. The most arresting are those caused largely by human error.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point Of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
The current Conservative leadership election has a similar atmosphere. Every day in this interminably long contest, the final two candidates fire out press releases and half-formed policy proposals, only to wind them back in — flailing around the controls they want to wield in a month’s time. Meanwhile, the country slides towards crisis.
Neither Rishi Sunak nor Liz Truss appears to recognise the serious problems Britain faces, both in the short and the long term. Analysts predict that the energy price cap will hit £4,400 this winter. As an isolated threat, that would mean deep discomfort for many. Combined with other price rises and increasing interest rates, it will mean destitution. Government will have to step in to prevent this. And yet it is offering only piecemeal solutions.
This might be forgivable if it were the sole issue to which the candidates seem oblivious. But everywhere you look, the country faces massive challenges that the governing party has no answer to. On housing, for instance, Rishi Sunak has swung behind defending the greenbelt, while Liz Truss has prevaricated and developed an obsession with “Soviet style targets”. But as anyone who has managed KPIs will tell you, if there is no target for something, the target is zero.
Beyond this, Britain looks forward to running out of water and electricity. Infrastructure projects that could have alleviated this have been bandied around and frustrated for decades, and little can be done to turn it around on short notice. They say the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, and the second-best time is today. In Britain, the second-best time to begin is after three preliminary reports, two judicial reviews and a general election. The best time is never.
Even in foreign and military policy, the natural home of the Conservative politician, the reality is bleak. While the country has performed well in arming Ukraine, its own defence commitments have been mealy mouthed. Promised rises are undermined by inflation and clever accounting, while procurement remains scandalously wasteful. With beautiful bureaucracy, a chunk of our defence spending goes on consultants planning the next round of cuts and another chunk on how to cope with the last ones.
But this catalogue of woes just serves to highlight the most pervasive and surprising problem the Tory Party faces: it doesn’t care about politics. This is not to say that the party doesn’t care about winning elections. It remains ruthlessly committed to that and its record is clear. Even after the crashing scandals of the Johnson era, the incoming PM has a fighting chance of securing the next election, giving the Tories nearly 20 years in power. The problem is they no longer understand why or to what end they wield such power.
Those on the Left must be shocked by how apolitical most of the Conservative Party is. I suspect no more than a handful of Tory MPs have ever read Burke or Hayek, unless they cropped up on a PPE reading list. They will be far more familiar with Isabel Oakeshott than Michael.
Factionalism within the party is therefore driven far more by aesthetics than by ideology. One former MP once told me that when he asked his association why they had picked him for the safe seat, he was told: “It was the lovely way you spoke about your wife at the selection.” In more than a decade as a party activist, I’ve met fewer than half a dozen mainstream Tories who could be classed as ideologues. At its best, this makes the party flexible and pragmatic, able to pivot around the issues of the day. At its worst — and it really seems to be falling into the worst now — it becomes listless, incapable and slightly baffled by the power it holds. It’s the cat that has finally caught the laser pointer.
The track record of the current government is testament to this. Despite coming to power with a majority of 80, the government has failed to push forward on any of its purported objectives. The government which claimed to be hard-line on immigration did nothing to reduce it. The government that seeks to be tough on crime has seen petty crime become almost legal. The government that complains about “woke culture” has done nothing at a legislative level to prevent it.
Even on its beloved Brexit, the party tries to stoke an ongoing threat that it might be undone or revoked or strangled at birth rather than engage with the realities of leaving the EU. It has no clue whether Britain’s future is Singapore-on-Thames or shoring up the dying embers of Red Wall industries. Instead, it jumps to silly-season headlines on imperial measures and crowns on pint glasses. The party once sought to campaign in poetry and govern in prose; now it campaigns in shitposts and governs in tweets.
All of which reflects an emptiness at the heart of the current Conservative Party. Its politics and principles are skin-deep and conflicted. It is apparent in almost everything it does, from Remainer Liz Truss becoming the “Brexit candidate” for leadership, to the pious Catholic Jacob Rees-Mogg defending the serial liar and philanderer Boris Johnson to the hilt. In place of policy innovation, the party grasps around for yesterday’s answers to yesterday’s problems, copying the homework of a leader who has been out of power for 30 years and dead for ten.
In the place of politics, all the party can do is say things that appeal to the voters who keep returning it to power — the generally older, wealthier suburban dwellers. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the leadership contest. Last weekend, Rishi Sunak’s suggestion that he would cut degrees that don’t lead to good jobs was viewed by many on the Left as an attack on the university sector, or even part of a grand plan to exclude the working classes from the humanities. In truth, it is neither. It is Sunak appealing to an electorate who came of age when 10% of the population went to university and economic growth carried them to prosperity, and who now see their grandchildren laden with debt, unable to buy a home. It’s the “common sense” of the bloke at the end of the Conservative Club bar — not something that will ever seriously happen.
Equally tenuous is Liz Truss’s insistence that the cost-of-living crisis can be solved by tax cuts rather than handouts. Those facing the most acute pain pay no income tax and minimal national insurance, while much of their spending is likely concentrated on low-rated or VAT exempt items, such food. It’s preaching to the Tory choir, with a plan that won’t survive a collision with reality once she is in Number 10.
I could go on through a dozen such announcements — the theme remains the same: Tory MPs and Tory leaders, saying what they think the person in front of them wants to hear. No plan for implementation, no plan for adverse consequences, no underpinning logic or principle. They are bricks thrown through windows with no notes attached.
Which takes me back to those panic-filled cockpits. With an impending crisis, they have lost sight of what levers they hold and what they can do, instead debating whether they want the chicken or lamb as the altitude warnings flash. The Conservative Party has fallen into a fundamental problem — it is unwilling and unable to address the needs of the day.
So when I look at my own party, I feel not fealty but disappointment. From the housing crisis, to the stagnating economy, to law and order, to the health service, there are solutions out there. Yet the party has given up on seeking them, seduced instead by the 24-hour news cycle, the focus group and the Twitter grifters. Neither leadership candidate offers much hope. Sunak looks like he will run the country like a private equity project, cutting any expense he can and damn the consequences, while Truss will run it like a village fete, harking back with boundless enthusiasm to the old hits.
Whoever wins in September, Britain will remain stuck. The Conservative Party is failing to adapt, failing to plan. The sirens are ringing. The ground is coming.
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A version of this article first appeared on the Joxley Writes Substack
John Oxley is a corporate strategist and political commentator. His Substack is Joxley Writes.
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SubscribeI haven’t fully worked this out yet, but it seems to me that the political/media complex got markedly worse under New Labour. Before Blair, governments had tried to get favourable media coverage in a fairly amateurish way, but policymaking came first. The New Labour obsession with the Message, focus groups, and controlling the news cycle, led to a reversal of this: media impact and focus group reaction drove policy. The media was happy to join in this game, and gave up any real attempt to challenge policy, choosing instead to chase scoops from insider gossip, or from misspeaking by ministers “off message” or caught out by “gotcha” questions. So we have the current symbiotic dance, where a major political broadcaster can simperingly ask the candidates for PM, “what is the naughtiest thing you have ever done?”
The Conservatives have been in power now for almost as long as the Blair/Brown years and during that time they have done next to nothing to reverse this, which is why they are now a spent force. Their only saviour is the fact that Labour are in a worse state, even after (or because of) twelve years in opposition.
The problem is that the necessary reforms to tackle the sclerotic nature of many of our institutions runs up against the vast army of entrenched interests. The path through to greater efficiency is not one paved with popularity and some reasonable level of popularity is needed to win the necessary electoral mandate.
Hence the timidity of the Conservatives to actually do anything to achieve any of their promises. The Johnson government has been a deep disappointment to any conservative but the alternative on offer is even worse.
You’re banging on about Tony Blair? In 2022?
Yes – because the comments made are entirely accurate and still corrupting government behaviour.
No, you’re right. Its all Blair’s fault and there’s precious little the last four prime ministers could have done to improve things.
Yes, because by the time he left office, his policies had completed the domination of almost all institutions by a certain mindset, which considers itself virtuous in all it does (and thinks), while treating the opposition as liars, devoid of compassion, and always motivated by self-interest.
This is serious, because once the media (BBC, ITV, Sky, for a start) all support this model, along with civil servants, universities, charities, thinktanks, lawyers, doctors etc. (not necessarily individuals, of course), it becomes difficult to govern except with their approval. Listen dispassionately to interviews on, say BBC Today. And do you notice that on the one hand, a motive is described as ‘anger’ (compassionate, of course), whereas on the other, the motive is put forward by the ‘impartial’ newsman to be scheming, cynical, ‘briefing against’ etc..
“You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
The Blair years coincided with the advent of 24 hour news. Knowing that there would be more news coverage of his government, Blair decided to fill that coverage with stories putting a positive spin on his government. The aim of politics became news management and not policy.
The main problem is that we have a number of core systems which are inelastic and cannot respond quickly enough to increased demand – house building and planning, nationalised healthcare and education, subsidised care homes, policing, trains and roads – but we have an immigration system which constantly ramps up demand.
So we have houses no one can afford and hospitals with no beds available, streets with no police, trains with no free seats etc. We keep taxing and spending but it is never enough. The tax burden creeps ever higher, the services crumble.
We can either increase supply by massively relaxing planning, sacrificing the green belt, and privatising and deregulating health care and education. Or we can reduce demand by limiting immigration (my idea is that the net immigration should be half the number of new build homes completed in the previous year). Demand reduction might lead to persistently higher prices for some commercial services but it will deflate pressure on house prices and public sector waiting lists etc.
Given that there is no hope in hell of privatising the NHS or paving over the green belt (any gov that tried would be ejected by the voters), immigration control is the only possible response.
“Immigration control is the only possible response”.
Too late I’m afraid, they already have critical mass, and all that is needed now is something or someone to “light the blue touch paper”.
Perhaps the French will lead they way as they did in 1789.
I hope not Charles. Having maximum annual limits on immigration is quite common – the USA and Australia both do it. No reason why we shouldn’t.
Over time, our ability to supply enough houses and GPs will more closely match demand from our own citizens.
It would be a wildly popular policy that has a chance of actually working.
Immigration in USA is completely disconnected from the (already very lax) laws meant to control it, as illegal immigration is now at record levels with the southern border out of control. Immigration is the critical issue facing the West and elites unwilling to face it.
Yes that is the other part of it Michael. We need to stamp out illegal immigration. Anyone entering the country illegally needs to be detained and then transferred to a third country for processing and, if they still want it, resettlement there.
Any asylum seekers coming through official routes should count toward the total annual allowance of immigrants.Any illegal immigrants whose deportation is prevented by dubious human rights lawyers should also count towards that year’s total.
Sure – but that would require the maturity of mind to suggest “actual numbers” for acceptable population growth – something which the Blob refuses to do.
While arguing that it’s a benefit to us, using selective statistics.
It’s interesting that the two countries you mention both have vast areas, utterly different to our own country. Even then, logic says that the state cannot accept a situation in which the numbers and identities of immigrants are uncontrolled, and what is more, in the modern state, resources are finite, whatever the area available.
The NHS budget divided by the population would give each family of 4 £13,000 per year for private health insurance.
I am used to private Health Insurance in many different countries. Waiting times are non existent and yearly health checkups are all part of the plan.
A good system. Competition again providing better options.
We need to free the market for healthcare and education ( in the case of education we also need to remove much of the Soviet style regulations) and we need to do this now.
Which country and system are you talking about? Some details would help. The US notoriously spends a larger fraction of GPD on health than almost any other country, while still having disastrous problems for lots of people. But it might well work better elsewhere, of course.
Switzerland.
You’re preaching to the converted, James.
I have long argued this and continue to think it would be the best solution: a personal grant for health, another for a school, allow individuals to top up with their own money and let the market provide. You could have any number of immigrants then – as long as they paid the full cost of these services for the first few years. If you combined it with a pretty radical loosening of planning controls for new housing, the economy would be blisteringly hot.
Problem is, it has zero chance of being proposed by the Tories and if they did, there is zero chance of them being elected.
Whereas controlling excess demand and allowing our sluggish public services to catch up is doable tomorrow.
We missed a chance when we were in the EU and enthusiasm for European solutions was reasonably high among “progressive” thinkers to abolish the NHS model and adopt the French, German, Spanish or any other efficient insurance based health system and indeed social welfare systems. Had we done so the effects of immigration would have been ameliorated.
Now that we are out of the EU any attempt to move to a continental insurance based system will be lambasted by the left as a move to the hated US system and by the right as abandoning our historic solution for a hated EU solution and would in any case be resisted by the entrenched bureaucracy of the NHS and their media boosters.
Sensible immigration limits linked to clear capacity criteria, as you have suggested, now seems the only politically viable solution with illegal immigration counting towards the immigration limit coupled with vigorous Australian type methods of stemming the illegal element.
True, we missed the boat there. Though thinking about it, I can’t imagine a time when Labour wouldn’t have objected. Maybe Blair in his pomp could have forced it through.
Government is an infinite game, politics is a daily game. The disjoint between politics and government has never been bigger. Energy prices won’t come down. Which will put food prices up a lot further. Labour will get ever shorter and more expensive as the boomers get too old to work. Chronic stagflation will be the price for five decades of unbridled consumerism.
This is a time for serious government by true statesmen, and we are governed by sound bite pigmies.
Our state, despite the highest tax take in the history of this nation, has become so sclerotic and weak that it’s functionally not much better than a 1950s colonial administration in Africa. I don’t know how much of the blame can be laid at the feet of the incompetent, visionless Tories that have reigned for 12 years, or the Whitehall blob which despite the apparent savagery of austerity-driven budget cuts for half a decade seems to be more effective at protecting itself than ever.
Good article. Truss, in particular, is a policy-free zone. She’ll say whatever needs to be said to curry favour with those she most admires, who tend to be people richer and posher than she is.
This is so, so true. Alas.
One would have to day that Labour is not exactly brilliant either, but at least Starmers lot seem to understand that they are there to solve problems and not just to get headlines.
Yes, and we are being left in free fall for another month.
Excellent article graphically exposing the situation.
Parliament should be recalled, emergency measures should be considered, bring MP’s back from the beaches! The extent of denial and buck passing is shameful. And will go down in history as such
Since Blair made so much money in retirement, the aim of many politicians is to hold office, fill up their contacts book and then to reap their rewards after leaving office. What they do in office no longer matters.
The range of accepted topics for political discussion has been so reduced and for so long that the politicians themselves are now incapable of looking beyond these narrow topics.
So many of our politicians have had no experience of working outside politics. It is little wonder that they have no interest in changing what they don’t know.
Is it any wonder the strong men in Russia and China decided this was a good time to test the faltering West? The author could be describing the US, Germany, France, Italy (as usual),and every other country except the hard-nosed ones like Poland and Hungary.
Why do you say that the party is “seduced instead by the 24-hour news cycle”? It is the whole country, or so it seems to me. I have no time for television, which lacks the will or ability to discuss things in depth, but my wife watches, and I hear the topic of the day discussed endlessly and with a lot of ‘passion’ or hate, and yet which always scratches the surface, or appeals to sentiment. It’s totally predictable and without conclusion.
I was amused that a candidate for MP was chosen because “It was the lovely way you spoke about your wife at the selection”, although it doesn’t say whether the person thought this good enough, or that it would play well with voters, not that it matters, but it does sum up the lack of intellectual ambition.
Personally, I’m sick of every policy being judged on, or justified by, its effect upon ‘ the vulnerable’, or, slightly better, ‘the hard-working’, or increasingly, its achievement of ‘diversity’. Of course these things should matter, but not to the exclusion of effectiveness, efficiency, value for money, without which we can’t afford them anyway. I’m sure that even people who earn well deem their own family’s well-being to be important, and not just that of less well-off strangers.
Spot on!
The change will come when Joe Public is in such dire straits (this autumn and winter) that he starts taking politics seriously and insists on much better human beings – intelligent, competent, courageous, sensible; wholly unlike the present crews which fill the House of Commons benches – becoming his representatives in Parliament.
Economic torture and grim shortages of basics, will concentrate his mind.
Voting for the umpteenth time for the same old, same old, utterly played out parties – combinations which have long since become mere job-creation vehicles for 4th-rate jobsworths – will no longer appear the least bit viable.
Sunak and Truss: less heirs of Thatcher, more imitators of Callaghan.
Blame Labour? It’s 2022, mate