30 Britain The Economist May 7th 2022
BuckethatBoris
B
ucket hatsare back. The 1990s fashion staple that used to
grace the head of Liam Gallagher, a singer, is enjoying a renais
sance. Dior sells one for £560 ($700); Sports Direct flogs an Adidas
one for £13. Across Britain teenagers sport headwear that was last
in vogue before they were born.
If the 1990s are in fashion, then British politics is à la mode.
Westminster has fallen into a timewarp and found itself back in
that decade. That would be no bad thing if it were the second half
of the 1990s, a time of Euro 96, Cool Britannia and sustained eco
nomic growth. Unfortunately, British politics has returned to a
grimmer period, and specifically to 1994. As then, various scan
dals grab the headlines. As then, an unpopular leader leads an ex
hausted Tory government which has little sense of what to do with
power and lacks the nous to push through those ideas it does have.
Sleaze, the preferred Westminster term for financial and sexual
misdeeds, has returned. Neil Parish, an mpwith an interest in ru
ral affairs, has resigned after admitting to twice looking at pornog
raphy in the House of Commons. In the first instance, he said he
was trying to find tractorrelated material. In the second, he was
doing it for fun. At the start of April Imran Ahmed Khan, the mpfor
Wakefield, stepped down after being found guilty of molesting a
15yearold boy. In November Owen Paterson, then the mpfor
North Shropshire, resigned after lobbying on behalf of paid clients
in Parliament. It is a run that rivals the early 1990s, when mps were
accused of accepting cash for posing parliamentary questions and
one minister was eventually jailed for perjury.
An unpopular prime minister again sits in Downing Street. Bo
ris Johnson’s net approval rating bottomed out in January at 46,
the lowest such level since Sir John Major, the prime minister in1994. Conservative mps would probably remove the prime minis
ter if they had the chance, but the lack of alternatives provides a
reason (or, rather, an excuse) not to move against him. Liz Truss,
the foreign secretary, is painted as fundamentally unserious.
Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, is seen as a political ingénu. Critics
say Jeremy Hunt, a moderate Conservative mp, is a deluxe version
of John Redwood, the slightly odd Welsh secretary who unsuc
cessfully challenged Sir John for leadership of the Tories in 1995.
Mr Johnson sits atop a weak government. He has a mighty ma
jorityofover 70 buta punylegislative agenda. Bold plans to reform
Britain’s growththrottling planning laws have been scrapped, as
Conservative mps ran scared of nimbyvoters flocking to the Liber
al Democrats. The government did, however, find time to support
a ban on glue traps. There is no point in having a majority if a gov
ernment does not use it. Yet there are few ideas floating around.
Conservative mps privately wonder whether a stint in opposition
would be restorative. In the early 1990s the Conservative govern
ment lurched between confidence votes in a bid to stay alive. The
pulse of the current government is barely discernible.
Yet there are things to do. Public services are exhausted. Satis
faction with the nhsis at its lowest levels since 1997, as it grinds to
a halt amid a backlog of cases built up through the pandemic.
Waiting lists, the emblematic symbol of the 1990s, are at their
highest levels since records began. Public services fell apart in the
first part of the 1990s, but at least the economy still clipped along.
This time the private sector is in a similar state to the public one,
with growth slowing. Like its counterpart in 1994, the government
has been in power too long to dodge blame. In an interview this
week, Mr Johnson was challenged about a 77yearold woman
forced to ride a bus all day simply to keep warm; his first response
was to boast that he was responsible for giving her a free bus pass.
Two things mean that the return to the mid1990s need not end
as painfully for the Conservatives. The first is the calibre of the op
position. Labour has learned to love the 1990s: the 25th anniversa
ry of its landslide victory in 1997 has just produced a bout of politi
cal onanism. But Labour seems determined to love the wrong
things about it. New Labour was radical, embedding Thatcherism
in Britain’s economy and redistributing the gains (in theory, at
least). It was an ideological project, disguised as a pragmatic one.
Labour’s current management offers little such vision. Tony Blair
was a zealot; Sir Keir Starmer preaches platitudes. Labour appears
allergic to policy ideas, never mind ideology. It is the Labour Par
ty’s stultifying leadership that keeps Conservatives calm and Mr
Johnson in Downing Street.
The second is the size of the government’s majority. Executive
inactivity is a choice. The government could still overhaul Britain,
if it wished. Indeed, this was the fundamental motivation behind
its support for leaving the eu. But whereas Conservative ideas
about freedom used to come in two flavours—freedom from con
straints and freedom to get ahead—Brexit has created a third: the
freedom to do nothing at all. Don’t look back in anger
Mr Johnson, once a consummate political gambler, has become
paranoid about upsetting backbenchers, even with a large major
ity. Levelling Up looks destined to remain a slogan rather than a
policy. Instead, the government will probably produce increas
ingly specific legislation against animal cruelty and ideas de
signed to annoy liberal voters rather than change the country.
Mr Johnson still has a chance to emulate his idol, Michael He
seltine, a former Conservative cabinet minister who straddled the
1980s and 1990s, and who oversaw the regeneration of Liverpool
and London’s East End. Mr Heseltine shaped modern Britain, even
if he never ran it. Mr Johnson has the chance to succeed where
Lord Heseltine failed, by leaving behind a rebalanced and re
formed country. If he flunks it, he will be remembered as the sec
ond coming of Sir John, presidingover an era of sleaze, inertia and
decline. A return to the 1990s couldbeugly. Bucket hats do not suit
everyone, least of all politicians.nBagehot
From sleaze to an unpopular prime minister, British politics is stuck in a 1990s time-warp