The Tory Playbook (Part I)
5 MINUTE READ
My ongoing look at UK politics, and the Conservative Party specifically.
It’s an easy trap to fall into: to confuse what sounds good and appealing, with what is good and appealing. There’s two layers to this. The first is about placing more importance on winning the argument than taking people with you. Any exchange is a confrontation, a show-down, a battle to the death. This thinking is dominated by one golden rule: however you do it, always ensure you dominate the ideas exchange. This is fundamental to the modern day “Right”: “Own the libs”.
But this trivialises the exchange, to such an extent that it reduces it to a game in which the debate is meaningless. Politics can’t just be about winning and losing.
The second element is about how you measure success. In politics you want to take people with you, get them to vote for you, so that you have a mandate. This transfer of power is almost sacred: an endowment based on trust, and to be entered into reverently. You are a representative (in the simplest sense of the term) of your constituency (or district, or council, or city, or whatever…) and you exercise power in concert with your electoral group. That is the theory.
But somewhere along the way, the Conservative Party lost sight of this. Because many Tories take this a lot further. They say, and earnestly believe, that they are the voice of the people. They claim to represent what middle England “thinks, but cannot say”. Or say, but lacking the means and the platform, cannot broadcast. The measurement for success, once based on a simple vote count, is now based on some mythical barometer, which only they can read. And this elevates them over and above everyone else.
It’s like opening up the bonnet of a gleaming sports car and realising there’s a rusted-out engine under the hood.
When Immigration Minister and Conservative MP Robert Jenrick said it was a shame that “Gary Lineker was so out of step with British public opinion” (for the sports presenter’s recent comments on the Home Secretary’s language on immigrants and asylum seekers), he was, in effect claiming the Government reserves a right to police opinions, and moreover that the BBC should reflect the Government’s opinion. Similarly, Suella Braverman claimed to speak for the “law-abiding, often silent, majority” when interviewed by Sophie Ridge recently. That she did not get any push-back on this is probably the subject of another blogpost.
You get the impression that the Conservative Party, the UK’s governing party, is learning how to master authoritarianism. It’s saying to itself, we were elected, and so we speak for the country and its people. It proclaims itself and its policies to be “world-leading”. It puffs its chest and blows kisses to its own reflection. It does so in the face of all evidence. It’s like opening up the bonnet of a gleaming sports car and realising there’s a rusted-out engine under the hood.
This is a Government that likes to cloak itself in democracy, but is annoyed that the cloak gets a little itchy. This is a Government that has a good scratch when no-one’s looking. This is a Government that is beginning to love the smell of its leather jackboots.
And now this is a Government that likes to let slip how nasty it could be, if only those “lefty lawyers” weren’t looking. This is a Government that is “ding-dang sure”, when it hasn’t got a clue. This is a Government that thinks, “He was a bully, but I’ll reward him with a cabinet post anyway”. It’s seems so slapdash, but what’s beginning to emerge is that it’s all part of the plan. It’s on purpose and rehearsed. It’s all part of the Tory Playbook.
Coming soon: The Tory Playbook (Part II) drops on 31 March...