Stunning. But, as one beast heading for the abattoir or one Tory heading for a general election might remark to another, it’s possible to be stunned but not surprised. The Tories had this coming. A former Tory lady voter told a canvasser friend of mine in North Shropshire last Sunday that “it’s the lying. We just can’t have that”. The matronly lament puts me in mind of Lady Wishfort in William Congreve’s The Way of the World, after Sir Wilfull Witwoud has bellowed “Ahey! Wenches? Where are the wenches?” Lady Wishfort: “This will never do.”
On Thursday North Shropshire echoed her. Analysts will pick through particular policies that might have proved unpopular with particular Shropshire voters, but unless I mistake my countrymen, this isn’t about one policy or another, but about probity, dignity, consistency, rootedness. There’s something almost inexpressibly fly about the government to whom these voters have just delivered a massive kick.
And, no, there does not follow another column about Boris Johnson. He’s finished, and we can chin-stroke about the when but not the whether. He’ll be gone before too long.
Yet the party that elevated him will still be in government, and Johnson has been in many ways not so much cause as consequence of a Westminster tribe that appears to have lost its head. What possessed the parliamentary Conservative Party, like a drunk reaching for the stabilising arm of another drunk, to place their future in his hands? Such an inquiry is more interesting than the question of which particular opportunist was able to take their fancy.
The Tories have lost their keel, their ballast, their balance: lost the centre of gravity that keeps a political movement from capsizing in the face of any sudden gust. And it didn’t start with Johnson. It started when David Cameron called a referendum on Europe.
I personally believed a sane case could just about be made for leaving the EU, and an even saner one for letting well enough alone. Seeing some peril and no great benefit in leaving, I inclined to the status quo and still would.
Many fellow citizens, however — and they included a clear majority in (for instance) North Shropshire — inclined to leaving the EU. So be it. But for the country’s interests to be protected, the terms of Britain’s departure mattered tremendously. And at this point a large part of the Conservative Party seemed to become inhabited by some kind of lunacy. A hard core among these distracted souls were native to the party: fierce and famously long-standing opponents of our association with the European Union; but their number was soon swelled by new and younger recruits and, energised by the referendum result, the grouping gathered force, supported by much of an ageing generation of Tory “activists” in the country at large. These were the Brexiteers within. Unnerving though, to both the left, centre and even some on the right of the party were the Brexiteers without.
Ukip, led with a showman’s genius by Nigel Farage, began championing the idea of a complete and if necessary antagonistic break with the EU.
The xenophobia grew in strength, and fed into a wider sort of populism that began, if flickeringly, to prosper at the ballot box. It was embraced by some Tories with an enthusiasm — an almost lip-smacking relish — that seemed so untypical of the party I thought I knew.
At this point the great, pragmatic, unideological blob that forms the centre and probably the majority of the parliamentary Tory party seems to have lost its nerve.
I can understand this. As a one-time Tory backbencher myself I’m familiar with the panic that can grip colleagues if they feel their own majority (and career, and livelihood) may be threatened.
A theory that Conservatism needed to move sharply Ukip’s way to forestall the defection of our own voters (and even a few of our MPs) attracted many.
On this page I argued that in the longer run, moderation, and our mildly centrist personality as a party, were the greater assets. Ukip (I argued) could soak up some of the toxic impulses of the electorate: the Tory party would be well rid of its sometimes xenophobic right or we’d be in danger of losing the moderate ground. Let Ukip drain the poison, I argued.
Instead, the party swallowed it. The theory that we should accommodate and absorb populism prevailed. People like Johnson, unencumbered by principle, pandered to it and prospered. The Tories grew more Ukippy in their nativist rhetoric and headline-catching initiatives. Priti Patel’s Home Office became an exemplar of the vulgarity.
And in a way, it worked — at first. Ukip haemorrhaged support, indeed their successors barely registered in Thursday’s by-election results. Columnists started to write about the Tories’ wonderfully shape-shifting genius for moving to where the voters are. Johnson clowned around; Patel doubled down and attacked judges; second-raters recruited to cabinet solely for their Brexit credentials shuffled along behind; distinguished Tory centrists were expelled for being Remainers; and for a while the shift seemed productive — electorally at least.
But something was being lost, an asset leaking almost imperceptibly away. For want of a better term I characterise it as solidity. I’m even tempted to use the word “conservative”.
Take the adjectives those who dislike Conservative governments might use — “heartless”, “uncaring”, “philistine”, “snobby”, “reactionary” — and pit against these the adjectives supporters might prefer: “pragmatic”, “careful with money”, “sound on crime”, “business-minded”.
Then put the vocabularies both of praise and of blame aside, and ask what both fans and critics might at least agree on. You’ll get a sort of Venn diagram convergence over what has distinguished the Conservative Party in the national imagination; a family of words that has an almost stodgy ring: stodgy but in its way reassuring. “Boring”, “stable”, “conventional”, “firm”, “anchored”, “dull”. The party had what gents of a certain class like to call “bottom”, which doesn’t mean clever or even necessarily right, but denotes an almost suet-like steadiness. “Solid” captures it.
The party has lost its bottom. Helen Morgan, the Lib Dem by-election candidate, will have hit the right nerve among rueful Tory supporters when, in her victory speech in the small hours of yesterday morning, she called recent Conservative governance “a nightly soap opera of calamity and chaos”. Populism will always yield that result because tummy-tickling can never be a recipe for sound government.
Since the European referendum campaign began, the Conservative Party has been poisoning itself, and the toxin is called populism. At first the experience was intoxicating, heady. Now the party’s getting the shakes. The cure will require more than the removal of one man.
Seriously? They’ve only just figured this out?
However, it does create a challenge for Labour. The populist dog whistle does appeal to some traditional working class Labour voting people. FFS in 2019 a working class mate of mine who’d never voted Tory in his entire life was planning on voting for Bozo, in the end he didn’t but he didn’t vote Labour either as he disliked Corbyn.
Another trouble for Labour is that there are traditional Tories who dislike Bozo’s lies and populism who will never vote Labour. Of course I’ve seen redditors telling other redditors that this is rubbish. They were probably the ones who thought Labour was the party that stood a chance of winning N. Shropshire, not even Tony Blair managed that in 1997.
To stand any chance of unseating the Tories in 2024 Labour and in particular certain elements of the activist/supporter base needs to realise it needs to stop attacking the LibDems and focus 100% on the Tories. It’s pretty clear to me now that Swinson (and the LibDems) had just had so much shit from Labour activists that they just decided “fuck it lets have a general election”.
> A former Tory lady voter told a canvasser friend of mine in North Shropshire last Sunday that “it’s the lying. We just can’t have that”.
Curious. She, along with the majority of North Shropshire voters, was apparently fine with it in 2017 and 2019.
You know what I think is populism? Keeping taxes low on high income earners in spite underspending damaging our economy, because columnists and TV presenters are paid so much that any high end bracket changes will likely impact them. Making managed decline the populist choice for the class category reports on it.
Lol Parris is saying this. The guys articles have sometimes been what the populists are loving and pushing atm
I will never vote for a mainstream party again. All of them need to go.
The absolute nerve of Matthew Parris at Rupert Murdoch’s The Times crying about this like it’s some unforeseeable tragedy that came out of nowhere. Fuck you!
The problem with populism, is you have to be willing to follow through all the way and see a country burn while doubling and tripling down.
Trump was fine with this, Boris not so much, so he hypes up populist ideas then does a u-turn when he isn’t actually willing to go through with it, pleasing noone.
The only thing that’s actually changed is that the press have started promoting that this is *bad*. The Times was fine with it until a little over a week ago.
You knew he was a snake when you let him in.
Flag shaggers who have somehow managed to make criticism and opposition unpatriotic.
I wonder how other people feel when they have to go out and mingle with the great British public?
Mea culpa, my default now is to believe I’m amongst selfish, vicious arseholes without an ounce of tolerance or compassion.
Oh no god forbid the governments ever do something popular with their population
Welcome to democracy. It breeds populism like communism breeds dictators. That’s what happens when you give the vote to people who aren’t educated in policy. It’s an argument as old as democracy itself.
Britain tories copy paste of usa republicans. That was clear since steve bannon came touring the continent and was welcome by politicians. Fortunately these dictators in the making will all go to jail. Just wait for fucking trump the loser the corrupt to start the move and all dominos will fall in line. From bolsonaro to the turkish sultan, etc.
Yeah they swallowed it decades ago. They’ve always been the party of populism. It’s the only way to get ignorant people to vote for them.
The corruption, lies, scandals and sleaze – it’s never been so overt and extensive. At a time of crisis, the electorate has been so blatantly abused.
16 comments
Stunning. But, as one beast heading for the abattoir or one Tory heading for a general election might remark to another, it’s possible to be stunned but not surprised. The Tories had this coming. A former Tory lady voter told a canvasser friend of mine in North Shropshire last Sunday that “it’s the lying. We just can’t have that”. The matronly lament puts me in mind of Lady Wishfort in William Congreve’s The Way of the World, after Sir Wilfull Witwoud has bellowed “Ahey! Wenches? Where are the wenches?” Lady Wishfort: “This will never do.”
On Thursday North Shropshire echoed her. Analysts will pick through particular policies that might have proved unpopular with particular Shropshire voters, but unless I mistake my countrymen, this isn’t about one policy or another, but about probity, dignity, consistency, rootedness. There’s something almost inexpressibly fly about the government to whom these voters have just delivered a massive kick.
And, no, there does not follow another column about Boris Johnson. He’s finished, and we can chin-stroke about the when but not the whether. He’ll be gone before too long.
Yet the party that elevated him will still be in government, and Johnson has been in many ways not so much cause as consequence of a Westminster tribe that appears to have lost its head. What possessed the parliamentary Conservative Party, like a drunk reaching for the stabilising arm of another drunk, to place their future in his hands? Such an inquiry is more interesting than the question of which particular opportunist was able to take their fancy.
The Tories have lost their keel, their ballast, their balance: lost the centre of gravity that keeps a political movement from capsizing in the face of any sudden gust. And it didn’t start with Johnson. It started when David Cameron called a referendum on Europe.
I personally believed a sane case could just about be made for leaving the EU, and an even saner one for letting well enough alone. Seeing some peril and no great benefit in leaving, I inclined to the status quo and still would.
Many fellow citizens, however — and they included a clear majority in (for instance) North Shropshire — inclined to leaving the EU. So be it. But for the country’s interests to be protected, the terms of Britain’s departure mattered tremendously. And at this point a large part of the Conservative Party seemed to become inhabited by some kind of lunacy. A hard core among these distracted souls were native to the party: fierce and famously long-standing opponents of our association with the European Union; but their number was soon swelled by new and younger recruits and, energised by the referendum result, the grouping gathered force, supported by much of an ageing generation of Tory “activists” in the country at large. These were the Brexiteers within. Unnerving though, to both the left, centre and even some on the right of the party were the Brexiteers without.
Ukip, led with a showman’s genius by Nigel Farage, began championing the idea of a complete and if necessary antagonistic break with the EU.
The xenophobia grew in strength, and fed into a wider sort of populism that began, if flickeringly, to prosper at the ballot box. It was embraced by some Tories with an enthusiasm — an almost lip-smacking relish — that seemed so untypical of the party I thought I knew.
At this point the great, pragmatic, unideological blob that forms the centre and probably the majority of the parliamentary Tory party seems to have lost its nerve.
I can understand this. As a one-time Tory backbencher myself I’m familiar with the panic that can grip colleagues if they feel their own majority (and career, and livelihood) may be threatened.
A theory that Conservatism needed to move sharply Ukip’s way to forestall the defection of our own voters (and even a few of our MPs) attracted many.
On this page I argued that in the longer run, moderation, and our mildly centrist personality as a party, were the greater assets. Ukip (I argued) could soak up some of the toxic impulses of the electorate: the Tory party would be well rid of its sometimes xenophobic right or we’d be in danger of losing the moderate ground. Let Ukip drain the poison, I argued.
Instead, the party swallowed it. The theory that we should accommodate and absorb populism prevailed. People like Johnson, unencumbered by principle, pandered to it and prospered. The Tories grew more Ukippy in their nativist rhetoric and headline-catching initiatives. Priti Patel’s Home Office became an exemplar of the vulgarity.
And in a way, it worked — at first. Ukip haemorrhaged support, indeed their successors barely registered in Thursday’s by-election results. Columnists started to write about the Tories’ wonderfully shape-shifting genius for moving to where the voters are. Johnson clowned around; Patel doubled down and attacked judges; second-raters recruited to cabinet solely for their Brexit credentials shuffled along behind; distinguished Tory centrists were expelled for being Remainers; and for a while the shift seemed productive — electorally at least.
But something was being lost, an asset leaking almost imperceptibly away. For want of a better term I characterise it as solidity. I’m even tempted to use the word “conservative”.
Take the adjectives those who dislike Conservative governments might use — “heartless”, “uncaring”, “philistine”, “snobby”, “reactionary” — and pit against these the adjectives supporters might prefer: “pragmatic”, “careful with money”, “sound on crime”, “business-minded”.
Then put the vocabularies both of praise and of blame aside, and ask what both fans and critics might at least agree on. You’ll get a sort of Venn diagram convergence over what has distinguished the Conservative Party in the national imagination; a family of words that has an almost stodgy ring: stodgy but in its way reassuring. “Boring”, “stable”, “conventional”, “firm”, “anchored”, “dull”. The party had what gents of a certain class like to call “bottom”, which doesn’t mean clever or even necessarily right, but denotes an almost suet-like steadiness. “Solid” captures it.
The party has lost its bottom. Helen Morgan, the Lib Dem by-election candidate, will have hit the right nerve among rueful Tory supporters when, in her victory speech in the small hours of yesterday morning, she called recent Conservative governance “a nightly soap opera of calamity and chaos”. Populism will always yield that result because tummy-tickling can never be a recipe for sound government.
Since the European referendum campaign began, the Conservative Party has been poisoning itself, and the toxin is called populism. At first the experience was intoxicating, heady. Now the party’s getting the shakes. The cure will require more than the removal of one man.
Seriously? They’ve only just figured this out?
However, it does create a challenge for Labour. The populist dog whistle does appeal to some traditional working class Labour voting people. FFS in 2019 a working class mate of mine who’d never voted Tory in his entire life was planning on voting for Bozo, in the end he didn’t but he didn’t vote Labour either as he disliked Corbyn.
Another trouble for Labour is that there are traditional Tories who dislike Bozo’s lies and populism who will never vote Labour. Of course I’ve seen redditors telling other redditors that this is rubbish. They were probably the ones who thought Labour was the party that stood a chance of winning N. Shropshire, not even Tony Blair managed that in 1997.
To stand any chance of unseating the Tories in 2024 Labour and in particular certain elements of the activist/supporter base needs to realise it needs to stop attacking the LibDems and focus 100% on the Tories. It’s pretty clear to me now that Swinson (and the LibDems) had just had so much shit from Labour activists that they just decided “fuck it lets have a general election”.
> A former Tory lady voter told a canvasser friend of mine in North Shropshire last Sunday that “it’s the lying. We just can’t have that”.
Curious. She, along with the majority of North Shropshire voters, was apparently fine with it in 2017 and 2019.
You know what I think is populism? Keeping taxes low on high income earners in spite underspending damaging our economy, because columnists and TV presenters are paid so much that any high end bracket changes will likely impact them. Making managed decline the populist choice for the class category reports on it.
Lol Parris is saying this. The guys articles have sometimes been what the populists are loving and pushing atm
I will never vote for a mainstream party again. All of them need to go.
The absolute nerve of Matthew Parris at Rupert Murdoch’s The Times crying about this like it’s some unforeseeable tragedy that came out of nowhere. Fuck you!
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CXirzPpo5iT/?utm_medium=share_sheet
This sums the whole thing up nicely.
The problem with populism, is you have to be willing to follow through all the way and see a country burn while doubling and tripling down.
Trump was fine with this, Boris not so much, so he hypes up populist ideas then does a u-turn when he isn’t actually willing to go through with it, pleasing noone.
The only thing that’s actually changed is that the press have started promoting that this is *bad*. The Times was fine with it until a little over a week ago.
You knew he was a snake when you let him in.
Flag shaggers who have somehow managed to make criticism and opposition unpatriotic.
I wonder how other people feel when they have to go out and mingle with the great British public?
Mea culpa, my default now is to believe I’m amongst selfish, vicious arseholes without an ounce of tolerance or compassion.
Oh no god forbid the governments ever do something popular with their population
Welcome to democracy. It breeds populism like communism breeds dictators. That’s what happens when you give the vote to people who aren’t educated in policy. It’s an argument as old as democracy itself.
Britain tories copy paste of usa republicans. That was clear since steve bannon came touring the continent and was welcome by politicians. Fortunately these dictators in the making will all go to jail. Just wait for fucking trump the loser the corrupt to start the move and all dominos will fall in line. From bolsonaro to the turkish sultan, etc.
Yeah they swallowed it decades ago. They’ve always been the party of populism. It’s the only way to get ignorant people to vote for them.
The corruption, lies, scandals and sleaze – it’s never been so overt and extensive. At a time of crisis, the electorate has been so blatantly abused.