Never mind the tens-of-thousands who died while Number 10 politicians and staff boozed it up in Downing Street – thanks to the intervention of the Metropolitan Police and a soft report from Sue Gray, the Tories are hanging on to their leader. Boris Johnson’s position is far from secure, but he is helped by the fact that his closest rivals have suffered too – their reputations badly damaged – leaving the party’s rival factions with little to gain from a leadership contest.
As for the Tory Party itself, the scale of the damage was on view at the local elections in May. Damned by its contemptuous response to the cost-of-living catastrophe, the party shed 400 seats, losing control of 12 councils. Forecasters say the Tories would lose 100 seats at a general election based on current polling. Little wonder their MPs are seeking comfort in cocaine (allegedly) and blue movies (naturally): David Warburton MP had the whip removed while Neil Parish MP was busy seeking it out. Things were bad enough for his party already when Parish rose in the Commons without leaving his seat. Cue more embarrassing headlines. Investigations concluded that the honourable member had failed to discharge his parliamentary function on the floor of the House. So it could’ve been worse. His resignation left the Conservatives facing another by-election – two within a month of being pummelled at the local elections. Just what the PM didn’t need.
Luckily for Mr Johnson, his would-be challengers are now as lost as he is. Liz Truss, minister for war, went East in earnest and left in haste. What she lacked in relevant geography – she thought the Baltic states were on the Black Sea and didn’t realise Rostov was in Russia – she made up for with a willingness to speak her mind. No wonder Johnson was so eager to send her to the front. If anyone thought she was leadership material before, well, now they know.
Back home, Rich Rishi and his non-dom darling Akshata Murthy were making headlines too. Until recently he was the frontrunner to replace Johnson; pollsters called him the nation’s favourite with a 31% approval rating at the turn of the year. Now even Keir Starmer polls higher. Married to a foreign heiress and carrying a US Green Card has made Sunak look decidedly ‘international’ – not what Red Wall constituents are looking for.
As two million adults in Britain found they can no longer afford to eat every day, the Chancellor told us we must make sacrifices. Not him though. Sunak and his wife made an appearance on the Sunday Times 2022 Rich List with their £730m fortune. To try and fix his image, the Treasury squanders hundreds of thousands on weekly polling and focus groups.
Personal ambitions are contributing to the disarray in the ruling party, but they didn’t cause it – Tory turmoil is rooted in a serious political division in English conservatism. A shift has taken place within that peculiar class of Englishmen – the voters – and the Conservative Party is split on how to respond.
That shift was illustrated again at the local elections: Brexit has produced a Tory Party that can lose Mayfair but win Hull – and can do so in the midst of a major crisis engulfing most of the country. Sixteen years ago the Tories controlled about half of London – now the city is effectively lost to its youthful, Labour-voting professional class. Neither the Prime Minister’s ‘net-zero’ pledge nor Michael Gove’s pronouncements on housing reform could halt that trend. For years, Tory strategists said the party’s future lay outside the capital, they just struggled to envisage what that future might be – until the 2019 general election that is.
But the political environment has changed in some important respects since the Tory election bonanza two and a half years ago. A mixture of Brexit-enthusiasm, Brexit-fatigue and Corbynism allowed the Tories to pull off their great trick: breach the Red Wall while hanging on to swing-voters in the southern Shires. Now though, Britain’s withdrawal from the EU is complete and the spectre of Corbynism exorcised – leaving little to maintain the 2019 consensus.
To keep the townsmen of the north and midlands onside, Conservatives have to convince them that they’re putting Britain first, taking care of the economy and levelling-up in England and Wales. On the other hand, voters in the south of the country will keep voting Lib Dem unless the Tories start to behave themselves, act conservative, cut taxes and stop promising to spend money.
Thus, the various Tory factions are coalescing around two poles: the first argue that the historic shift in the Red Wall can be made a permanent basis of electoral success – holding seats at Labour’s direct expense makes the Conservatives invulnerable, they say, so little matter if some southern seats are lost to the liberals. The opposing group views the Red Wall as unstable and wants a return to the Shires. They realise this is impossible now with Johnson as party leader.
While neither faction has had the brain, brawn or wherewithal to trigger a leadership contest, Johnson has been forced into another overhaul of his Downing Street staff – the third in two years. The appointment of Steve Barclay MP as chief of staff calmed Tory nerves along the Red Wall – they think he’s one of them. With the policy announcements that followed, those Red Wall MPs were sure they’d come up trumps: privatisation of Channel 4 and the Rwanda accord, music to their ears. But they’re being sold a pup. Keeping tabs on Barclay is David Canzini, his newly appointed deputy. Andrew Griffith MP takes over as director of policy. These are real conservatives – ‘levelling-up’ isn’t on their agenda. They intend the Prime Minister to keep a rein on public spending – not least because doing so undermines the Treasury and deprives Rishi Sunak of the only public appeal he ever had: a top priority at 10 Downing Street.
Britain’s ruling party is in disarray, those at the helm blinded by self-interest and contempt for the working class, fighting among themselves, oblivious to the real situation of the country.
Patrick Casey
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 288, June/July 2022
