Geoffrey Wheatcroft: The Tories are suffering from 'long Boris'

Embed from Getty Images

Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes in today's Guardian:

For a century and a half the Tories had a plausible claim to be “the natural party of government”. Today, they barely look capable of governing at all. Forty years ago Thatcher brimmed with ideas, some of them right and some of them demonstrably wrong, but the Tories now have no idea at all. They have run out of time, run out of excuses - and maybe run out of purpose.

Well, that's encouraging.

Wheatcroft locates the reason for this malaise in the party's recent history:

If the fall of Thatcher, or the way it was done, poisoned the party for years, the recent poison was inflicted by the cynicism behind the rise of Johnson. As Dominic Lawson, an intelligent Brexiter, has said, "Boris Johnson was never in favour of Brexit, until he found it necessary to further his ambition to become Conservative leader."

Since the Tories knew that, their relationship with him was always transactional. He was useful for a time, but he was dumped as soon as he became more liability than asset. And yet the Tories are suffering from 'long Boris', a grievous affliction that could still prove terminal.

More good news. And as he goes on to say, the continuing civil wars in their party have left the Tories with one of the most unimpressive cabinets in history.

I am less convinced by another chapter of his history:

In 2002 Theresa May told the party conference they were in danger of becoming “the nasty party”, but this was a misunderstanding. They have always been that, and as Lee “fuck off back to France” Anderson shows, they still are. 

But nobody ever voted for the Tories because they were "nice". Their success was founded not on amiability but on competence, and that’s what has been destroyed by the farcical recent turbulence, with five prime ministers in the past seven years.

But a lot of people who vote Conservative like to see themselves as nice. Thatcher's nastiness was accompanied by a promise of national renewal, but today's Tory nastiness is nastiness for its own sake. It's now as much part of their identity as self-pity or a belief in conspiracy theories.

That's putting off habitual Tory voters - the sort we might call Amersham Woman following canvassers' reports from the Chesham and Amersham by-election.

We can though rejoice when Wheatcroft writes:

After a torrent of scandals and a string of byelection defeats, this August finds polls in which the Tories are looking at a wipeout in next year’s election. Eighteen years ago I published a book called The Strange Death of Tory England, and was later mocked in the rightwing press when the Tories staged a revival. But maybe that title was only premature.