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IIf there were some mechanism to move Election Day to next Thursday, I wonder how many conservative candidates would pull the trigger, taking an electoral beating now that they otherwise have to fear for another two weeks.
Plan A failed and there is no other. The prime minister had hoped the polls would narrow in the campaign, as has often happened in the past. Labor will be scared. A Conservative comeback will gather momentum in the Fleet Street Thanksgiving frenzy for a narrative twist and a competitive race. But hope is not a strategy.
The ministers have resorted to a plea with voters not giving Keir Starmer too big of a majority. There is a dearth of drama in the prime ministerial race. The void has been filled with speculation about the size and nature of Britain’s next opposition.
The Convention dictates that this be interpreted as a civil war. On one side is the remnant of the traditional Tory party that David Cameron led until 2016. These are MPs who most voted to remain and backed Theresa May’s Brexit deal. They revere fiscal discipline and managerial sobriety. They are moderates, at least in behavior and compared to the other side – a confused coalition of nationalist demagogues, social reactionaries, libertarian ultras and Brexit puritans yearning for congress with Nigel Farage’s Reform Party.
In reality, the lines are blurred. Sentiments matter more than rules. Rishi Sunak was the moderates’ choice in the 2022 leadership race against Liz Truss, who is running as a successor to Boris Johnson. Trot was left in 2016. Sunak didn’t get credit for his superb Brexit credentials.
In many ways, Johnson’s instincts were to the left of both. He had no qualms about government intervention when it came to leveling, building infrastructure and accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy. Sunak rejected these goals.
The current prime minister’s record does not match his designation as a moderate. His first choice for Secretary of the Interior was Suella Braverman. The immigration policy they co-authored took the hardline template designed by Priti Patel and solidified it.
Sunak has benefited from a sheen of competence carried over from his handling of the pandemic as chancellor. He took on an aura of pragmatism due to not being a Truss, even though the two were more alike than either wanted to admit.
Both are Thatcher fetishists. Both believe in cutting taxes to generate prosperity and reject the idea that government should create a fair distribution of income. The main difference is that Truss provoked a retreat in the world market by refusing to say how the revenue shortfall would be made up. Sunak has that angle tentatively covered with a plan for sustained, eye-watering budget cuts.
Ideological alignment is explicit in a recording of comments made recently by Jeremy Hunt to a conservative audience. He said he “set out to achieve some of the same things” as Trot, but on a more gradual trajectory.
He also praised the former prime minister for “accepting the mistakes she made with grace.” If so, she must have done so in private, because her public account of what went wrong is an unrepentant, self-pitying conspiracy theory for deep state sabotage.
The chancellor is no stranger to concocting moderate excuses for wild notions. In the 2019 leadership race, Hunt was tentatively the reasonable alternative to Johnson in the final round. On the big question of the moment, he took in the view that Britain could break away from the EU without a deal and then pick up the pieces. Johnson denied there would be a break to repair and won easily.
It was the Rubicon for old-school realist Tories. They knew a no-deal Brexit would be a disaster. They knew Johnson was a compulsive liar. The few who resisted – voting to allow the House of Commons to take control of the Brexit timetable – were purged. The party of Ken Clarke, Philip Hammond, David Hawke, Dominic Grieve, Rory Stewart and others was driven into exile.
To remain a Conservative was to join the Boris fans and the cult of Brexit euphoria. Some were driven by conviction, others by ambition and momentum. The ensuing landslide election victory confirmed Johnson’s method: a campaign against economic gravity; smother uncomfortable choices in an ideological comfort blanket.
Now gravity has its revenge, and many Tory candidates yearn for the old giddy weightlessness. They forget the public revulsion at Partygate. They want Johnson’s endorsement as if he were the missing fuel to get their grassroots campaigns into the air. They refer to the old ‘Boris effect’ as the only force capable of rivaling Farage in electoral magnetism. But the voters they have in mind are not the ones who can keep the Tories in power.
From 2019 about 1.7 million people switched their allegiance from the Conservatives to Labour. This is a huge electoral swing, one of the biggest in history. Downing Street gave up even trying to reverse it. These are people who tell pollsters their biggest concerns are the cost of living and crumbling public services. Tax breaks are at the bottom of the list.
Some have voted Tory in every election since 2005. Johnson’s crimes in office alienated many; A trot provokes an exodus. Sunak has nothing to say that can win them back. He preys on voters who say they won’t vote at all or lean toward reform. But he also doesn’t want to humiliate himself by actively denying Farage’s agenda. He started the fight, but now it won’t come down to the argument.
It’s not even clear what this will sound like. The Prime Minister, who has made “stopping the boats” his mantra, will not condemn the reform’s sinister fixation on turning back migrants. Nor can Sunak scoff at Farage’s bogus budget figures which pretend that huge tax cuts can be delivered by scrapping parts of the state. This doubles as a caricature of his own manifesto. Then, of course, there is the ultimate taboo – beware of the charlatan who prescribed Brexit as a national tonic and now comes to sell the old poison in new bottles.
No Tory can say that now and no one will after the election. Even moderates who think so. They know they cannot regain control of their party by declaring their heresies out loud. But because they are heretics at heart, they can never sound authentic in professing a post-Brexit creed.
After the election, there will be some bitter arguments and an ugly blame game. But it won’t really amount to a Tory civil war or anything as grand as a battle for the party’s soul. Civil wars need two armies equally committed to the battle. When one side accepts all the terms dictated by the other, it is called capitulation. And if there were enough moderates capable of winning a battle for the conservative soul, it might not be sold in the first place.
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Raphael Ber is a columnist for the Guardian
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