Tory turmoil reveals a party badly adrift on the economy

At least George Osborne is having fun. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was fired by Theresa May last year when she became Prime Minister, is reborn as editor of the London Evening Standard and is getting his revenge in early. On a daily basis, he lands fresh blows in the leaders and in news stories on the Tory election campaign. It is enthralling to watch.‎ Pow! Take that, Theresa, for scrapping free school lunches. Bam! That’s for the social care mess in the Tory manifesto. Zap! That’s not how you make u-turns (Osborne is quite an expert in this field.)

Osborne’s friends always used to say that he had missed his vocation as a journalist. He certainly thinks like a good journalist. He likes mischief‎ and he is causing plenty of it as the Tory poll lead shrinks.

This has not escaped the notice of the wider Conservative family. When Tories are done off the record criticising the party’s campaign, squabbling about who is to blame, thoughts frequently turn swiftly to the glee with which Osborne has set about May in a crisis. They can unite around this. If he harbours any aspirations to ‎return – as a hero – to the Commons at some later date to become Prime Minister he can forget it this century.

“Osborne wouldn’t even get on the candidates list after this,” says a minister, who points out that Tory selection rules forbid anyone who has caused damage to the Conservative party accidentally or otherwise. Although those rules would, if applied evenly, see several of the Prime Minister’s advisers and some members of the cabinet flung out of parliament. ‎The anger goes beyond the rulebook though. Osborne has transgressed against the unwritten conventions of the Tory tribe. He has shown disloyalty to the tribal elder mid-battle. He has pissed on the party’s chips during an election. “****ing George,” says one of his former colleagues.

Of course, this is tremendous sport, for journalists and party hacks, but in under a week the voters go to the polls and what should have been a walkover for the Tories has been turned, by a series of campaign missteps and by a far better than expected Labour effort, into a weird experiment in which it is no longer impossible to imagine Jeremy Corbyn – Jeremy Corbyn! – on the steps of Number 10.

Still, for all the excitement and panic, the most likely outcome according to most of the polls remains a Conservative victory in which the party increases its majority substantially. It is important to put this in context. The last time the Conservatives scored a majority in excess of 20 seats was ‎in 1987, thirty years ago. Anything above 40 or so would be a strikingly healthy win. Remember that during the New Labour era the Tory party was talked of as though it would never govern again.

Yet, the Mayites – a small group getting smaller – will have difficulties even if the victory is big, meaning a landslide or close to it. During this campaign, the curtain has been pulled back, Wizard of Oz style, and the audience can see the Prime Minister’s shortcomings. What has been seen can never again be unseen.

Worse than that, the campaign has revealed that there is a hole at the heart of modern Conservatism. It is a hole where there should be a proper argument about the economy, wealth creation and aspiration across the classes.‎ Such an omission might have seemed fine when the campaign was supposed to be a boring but simple assault on Corbyn’s uselessness, with the “strong and stable” Tories in the high 40s and Labour down in the depths of the low-20s and the Lib Dems coming back to split the progressive vote.

Instead, this election has sealed the comeback of proper two-party politics (apart from in Scotland where the situation is different and both the Tories and Labour have surged against the hitherto dominant SNP.)

What almost no-one anticipated elsewhere, other than perhaps a few Corbynistas,‎ is that this shift changes the dynamic. Labour is competitive again (and can be more so without Corbyn). In a much punchier environment the Tories cannot rely on it being self-evident that the economy just happens. The Tories were so lazy in their assumptions that they even flirted – and more in their manifesto – with a lot of left-wing policies that will only hamper economic dynamism.

Wealth creation does not just happen. Money does not grow on trees, magical or otherwise. Whatever happens, and with Brexit coming, the Tories need after the election to re-engage their brains on the economy. Perhaps George Osborne can help… or perhaps not.

As for Labour, the implications of a better than expected performance by Corbyn are clear. ‎Stuff the idea of creating a new party after June 8th. The non-Tory portion of notionally elite opinion is wasting its time holding dinner parties in which assorted celebrities muse on building a brand new force around getting back into the EU. The voters have moved on from the referendum and the residual Labour brand is still strong. So, reclaim and reinvent Labour and out organise the Corbynite extremists. To do that, recruit moderate Labour voters as members by the thousand.

And to think this election was supposed to be boring. On the contrary, it has revealed a Tory party badly adrift on the economy and a Labour party that – without Corbyn – can be rebuilt.‎ If May wins well on Thursday next week it will not be the end of any of this. Both main parties need a reckoning, a rethink and a reboot.