Commentators spent the early part of this week picking over the pigeon entrails in the wake of the Conservative Party conference, in the hope of divining what it told us about Theresa May, the Brexit process and the future direction of the Government. That is a futile activity since party conferences are cosmetic events designed to deceive the party faithful and the public, making them notably unreliable sources of political insight.
A party conference is a talking shop, an alternative to what the electorate most wants: action that reflects its aspirations. The embarrassing thing about talk is that it remains on record to confront the speaker long after he or she has moved on to new insincerities.
Take the biggest beast in the political jungle, the Prime Minister. In her conference speech Theresa May said:
“In 1979 the bonds of state dependency were obvious. They tied down our economy and made us a laughing stock. Today, the bonds of state control are often invisible. But they are there – and they are tightening… I want us to reject BIG government…”
That, of course, was her 2005 conference speech. Last week she was outlining a:
“plan that will mean government stepping up. Righting wrongs. Challenging vested interests. Taking big decisions. Doing what we believe to be right. Getting the job done. Because that’s the good that government can do.”
Oh, we get it! She’s from the Government, she’s here to help us. Like Stafford Cripps and all those other righters of wrongs from the Fabian Society. Mrs May’s speech reflected the complete lack of direction of the post-Cameron Conservative Party. The Tories no longer know what they believe, which is understandable since they are not Tories. That tribe departed long ago.
And who began that stampede? Who initiated the elitist culture of contempt for patriotic, Eurosceptic, socially conservative British people so trenchantly condemned by Mrs May? In her words: “They find your patriotism distasteful, your concerns about immigration parochial, your views about crime illiberal…” So, who started that elitist witch-hunt in the Conservative Party?
Er – actually – it was Theresa May, in yet another conference speech, in 2002, when she bestrode the platform in kitten heels and told a hall full of such people: “There is no place for you in our [sic] Conservative party.” That arrogant proscription, intimating that the Tory Party was the private property of those on the platform, not of the membership, began the demonization of the mythical golf club bores in blazers – years before David Cameron was even known to the public – that lost the Conservative Party part of its core vote and gave UKIP lift-off.
But now Theresa loves the patriots in blazers and regimental ties, wants to shame instead companies employing excessive foreign labour and is trying to reinvent herself as the scourge of immigration, after an exceptionally long tenure as Home Secretary that saw unrestricted immigration soar to the astronomic levels that provoked the Peasants’ Revolt on 23 June.
Why her Damascene conversion? Simply because the despised patriots struck back against the Entitled Ones – and won. To reference Cripps again, they are the masters now. So Mrs May, like the rest of the deservedly rattled elite, is fawning upon them as only whipped-cur politicians can do when they have lost the ascendancy.
There is no tribalism in politics now, no party loyalty, no devotion to leaders. In the wake of the parliamentary expenses scandal, the 2008 financial and the EU referendum all politicians are assumed to be guilty until the unlikely eventuality they are proved innocent. The public has no affection for Theresa May as it did for Margaret Thatcher. Those days are gone. Politicians are again the servants of the people, in reality not just in rhetoric. The electorate has given May a job to do: severance of UK membership of the European Union. If she fails to deliver she will be toast. That is the new political contract.
“I want to set our party and our country on the path towards the new centre ground of British politics…” That illustrates the crisis of ideas in the post-Cameron Tory Party. The obsession with the centre ground produced the consensus politics that, more than any other factor, provoked the revolt of the electorate on 23 June. The perception that the public will was being neutered by all the main political parties coalescing into one social democratic party – pro-immigration, pro-EU, socially liberal, metropolitan – led to the toppling of the political class.
Toryism was formerly an instinct. Every Tory knew what should be done (or, more often, not done); the only debate was about the mechanics. Today the Conservative Party has become philosophically deracinated. That is David Cameron’s legacy. If Theresa May wants to re-embrace consensus politics she and her party will deserve their fate.
Who said the burnt child fears the fire? The recently chastened establishment is recovering its arrogance, encouraged by the spectacle of levels of meltdown in UKIP that make Corbyn’s Labour look like Alastair Campbell’s pager-disciplined New Labour. They mistake the situation. There is no more affection for UKIP than for any other political party; but there is a difference in function.
UKIP is not a political party but a nuclear option. If Theresa May fails to deliver total Brexit the anti-EU part of the electorate knows, regardless whether UKIP has no leader or three, is fighting like stoats in a sack or has moronic candidates, a cross on a ballot paper opposite the pound sign can blow the establishment out of the water. If the Tories think the travails of Labour and the chaos of UKIP give them a blank cheque they may be disastrously miscalculating.
Theresa May should forget the so-called centre ground, get onto sound conservative ground, stop making a meal of Byzantine Brexit negotiations, make sure there is a sunset clause in the Great Repeal Bill or we shall be living under Brussels laws a century from now, and trigger Article 50 as soon as possible. Yes, it is a startlingly revolutionary idea, but how about, just once, giving the country what it voted for?
