60 Britain The Economist June 11th 2022
TheUnconservatives
“S
hy tories”are common. Voting for the Conservative Party is
never chic, so people often keep quiet about it. In the 1992
and 2015 general elections, voters took pollsters by surprise and
handed the Conservative Party unexpected majorities.
It is voters rather than mps who are supposed to be nervous
about this allegiance. But during a vote of no confidence on June
6th in Boris Johnson’s leadership of the Conservative Party, just
under 160 mps—a clear minority of the party—pledged their fealty
to the prime minister publicly. In the end, 211 mps voted for him. It
is this sort of shy Tory mpwho quietly keeps Mr Johnson in power.
They also belie the lore that Conservative mps are coldhearted
killers. The party is often described as an “absolute monarchy
tempered by regicide”. The continued failure to remove Mr John
son, after months of plunging approval ratings, government drift
and a steady stream of scandals, reveals it to be anything but.
That the Conservatives are ruthlessly regicidal is only the latest
myth surrounding the Conservatives to be crushed during Mr
Johnson’s leadership. This is a party of government that cannot
govern. It is the party of business that hates business. It is dedicat
ed to staying in power, yet refuses to take the steps necessary to
keep itself there. Even more recent folklore is misleading: this is a
populist party with an unpopular agenda.
Take each myth in turn. After a vote in which 41% of Conserva
tive mps revealed they had no confidence in the prime minister,
the party is not able to govern. Once an ideological project is as
cendant within the party, mps usually fall in behind it. In a radical
experiment Margaret Thatcher dismantled the One Nation Con
servatism that had dominated in the postwar era and let the free
market rip; Conservative mps were willing foot soldiers. David
Cameron’s project of fiscal discipline in 2010s was not to every
one’s taste but it prompted little internal protest.
Mr Johnson offers his followers no such coherence. He cannot
decide whether to be a lowtax, supplyside revolutionary à la
Thatcher in 1979, or to offer bigstate Conservatism in the mould of
Harold Macmillan. As a result, the party is riven. Buying off all his
opponents is nighon impossible. The government’s majority is
78; those who opposed Mr Johnson this week numbered 148. Every
policy that placates a wet One Nation critic will annoy a dry Brexiteerwhowantspreciselythe opposite.
A pervasive lack of seriousness also impedes its ability to gov
ern. Plotters who, remember, are competing to remove the leader
of a nuclear power were so disorganised that they could not trigger
the vote of confidence at the right moment. The Conservatives are
likely to lose two byelections at the end of this month, denting Mr
Johnson’s reputation as an electoral asset and making his position
more precarious. Instead, the threshold for holding a confidence
vote was reached on a Sunday afternoon while Mr Johnson sat
watching a hologram of the queen in a parade at her Platinum Jubi
lee. In Parliament on Monday evening, plotters giggled alongside
loyalists in the queue to vote. The evening felt less like a ballot that
could defenestrate a prime minister than an election for the head
boy of a public school.
Traditional policy strengths of the Conservatives have been
abandoned. The everquotable Mr Johnson once responded “fuck
business” when told about corporate grumbles over Brexit. Noth
ing has been done to allay firms’ grievances. Instead, even the thin
deal that was agreed with the euis threatened by the government’s
bellicosity over trade arrangements with Northern Ireland. Like
wise, fiscal discipline has been replaced by fiscal incontinence.
Rishi Sunak announced £15bn ($18.9bn) in spending at the end of
May to alleviate the costofliving crisis and to head off political
criticism. Now he faces cries for lower taxes. The government can
either stick to its spending rules or throw around tax cuts. It can
not do both. To govern is to choose, but the Conservatives refuse.
Nor does the Conservatives’ new guise as a populist party really
fit the facts. Mr Johnson has styled himself as the people’s tribune,
in power to do their bidding. Instead, advisers and acolytes project
their own views onto an imagined voter who exists only in their
heads, charging into a culture war that leaves many real voters
nonplussed. And Mr Johnson himself has never been particularly
popular; Theresa May enjoyed far higher approval ratings in 2017.
Populism without the people is a hollow project.
Keeping Labour out of office is still an aim. But even this myth
ological raison d’être seems a bit pointless. In a feat of projection
Jonathan Gullis, the mpfor Stoke North, said the party had to en
sure “we don’t let that shambles Labour get into government”. In
fact, Labour has cleaned up its act. When Conservative mps com
plain about the perils of Corbynism, Sir Keir Starmer can say he
wholeheartedly agrees. He has purged the party of lefties, with the
brutality one used to associate with the Conservatives. What can I do? I’m just a Member of Parliament
In a Gothic palace by the Thames, Conservative mps despair at
their powerlessness. They grumble that the party is sleepwalking
towards 1997, when an exhausted, sleazeridden Conservative gov
ernment received a historic battering in that year’s election. mps
forget that the prime minister serves at their pleasure, no matter
how often Mr Johnson’s supporters reference the prime minister’s
popular support.
They also forget their party’s own history. Ruthlessness works.
After Thatcher was kicked out, the Conservatives won the next
election in 1992 (owing, largely, to shy Tories). Mrs May’s ungainly
departure in 2019 preceded the Conservatives’ biggest majority in
over 30 years. Even the removal of Iain Duncan Smith,leader of the
opposition from 200103, was followed by major gains in an elec
tion for the first time in decades. Luckily for Mr Johnson, theCon
servatives have forgotten this lesson; unluckily for everyoneelse,
they have also trashed the other things they were famous for.nBagehot
A party that was ruthless, pragmatic and efficient is now cowardly, incoherent and inept