The force that once thought itself the natural party of government has become a cult of bitterness and denial, says Guardian columnist John Harris
The UK Conservative Party is on its fourth prime minister since 2019. That's a metric of the volatility and nuttiness which has afflicted it since Brexit and the Brexit aftermath stormed to the forefront of British politics.
Whatever Conservatism’s objections to the big state, when past Tory politicians encountered something they deemed beyond the pale, their first instinct was often to try to simply legislate it out of the way, however absurd their actions. In the 1980s, the infamous section 28 forbade councils from “promoting” homosexuality, as if the size of the gay community rose and fell according to the level of municipal marketing spend. At around the same time, broadcasting restrictions meant the voices of spokespeople from 11 organisations in Northern Ireland – most notably, Sinn Féin – were banned from TV and radio channels, meaning actors were employed to stand in for them. Note also the Criminal Justice Act of 1994 – which, in its ridiculous pursuit of rave culture, contained specific police powers relating to music “wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”.
The stupid Tory culture wars of the Thatcher-Major era usually didn’t constantly overflow into other areas of governance. Right now it’s difficult not to get drenched by endlessly unedifying behavior and bizarre proposals from senior officials. But those are simply a reflection of the party’s grassroots who get news from the UK equivalent of Fox News (GB News) and accept conspiracy theories as reality.
There are increasing indications that younger voters are becoming permanently turned off by Tory antics.
They may be on to their fourth prime minister in less than four years, but the grassroots Tories who are habitual watchers of GB News and less-than-secret admirers of Nigel Farage are still awaiting a leader who is one of them. If – when – the government loses the next election, they may well get their chance.
Conservatives have one enduring behavioural tic: they tend to mistake deep and complex social change for leftwing and liberal conspiracy. The truth the Tories now face is that even England’s shires and suburbs are increasingly liberal, and broadly “woke”. Among millennials, the old Tory certainty that people shift rightwards as they get older has no foundation at all: voting figures suggest that today’s 35-year-olds are the least conservative in history, and may well be like that for the rest of their lives. Before Brexit, such Tories as Cameron and George Osborne sensed those changes and talked of modernisation and “liberal Conservatism”; now, some of the loudest voices on the right seem to have decided that this was a dangerous heresy.
A similar sort of bonkers mindset which has afflicted Republicans in the US has settled upon the Conservative Party. Instead of Trumpism, it’s Brexitism.
Where are the ideas for reviving a party that has run out of inspiration, and is shedding voters of all ages? The force that once considered itself the natural party of government is becoming a cult of bitterness, denial and trivia; the most pitiful aspect of the Tories’ predicament is that so few of them show any signs of doing anything about it.
