After Virtue

A feature of the last 24 hours has been the number of centrists who have expressed sympathy for Theresa May and been disgusted at the "lack of compassion" shown by her critics. This extends well beyond the scolds of the commentariat to include politicians of other parties and various concerned civilians on social media, suggesting that it is characteristic of the centrist worldview rather than just a conventional journalistic trope. It is also more than just tone-policing or performative civility. It is a preference for politics as the struggle for individual self-actualisation, rather than the collective struggle of conflicting class interests, which relegates the social in order to meet the demands of a solipsistic character arc (the Fleabag theory of politics, perhaps). The sympathy for May, a woman who has shown scant sympathy for others, is a form of political fan-fic. That Jess Phillips has been prominent among her sympathisers is no more surprising than May's own trite shout-out to feminism in her resignation speech.

This contrasts with the centrist commitment to the technocratic, depersonalised management of society. The sympathy for May's personal failure is the flip-side of a willingness to treat people as numbers or mere cyphers, such as her own long-standing obsession with "immigration figures" or the centrist pathology of the supposedly uniform working class. The tension between the individual and the collective is at the heart of neoliberalism. One reason why centrists insist that the term is meaningless is that the "neo" element, grafted onto the traditional liberal ideology of private interest and a restrained state, is a positivist approach to the management of society that is fundamentally prescriptive and authoritarian. This can be finessed to a certain extent by presenting the state as an enabler of opportunity or a safety-net for the less fortunate, but the truth is that neoliberalism is totalitarian in its ambitions, specifically in using the state to convert all social life to market relationships.

This was blindingly obvious during the New Labour years, and it is no coincidence that the era also saw a marked shift towards mawkishness in political spectacle, from Blair's creepy language to the cult of Mo Mowlam. Though New Labour as a "progressive" political force was ostensibly consequentialist in ethical terms - hence the festishisation of "evidence-based policy-making" - its conservative instincts meant that it was equally subject to the deontological (notably the rights entail responsibilities schtick). As it became intellectually exhausted with the eclipse of the Third Way and damp squibs like "stakeholding", its ethics shifted towards the "virtuous" in the sense that policy was justified not only on utilitarian grounds but on its intrinsic moral quality. The result was an aggressively judgemental approach to social welfare and a delusional foreign policy excused by appeals to "sincere belief" and "good faith".

Though May is obviously a very different person to Cameron, and her style of political management chalk to his cheese, there has been a consistency between their administrations when viewed in ethical terms. After the tensions of the New Labour years, in which the Blair and Brown contest was as much about the deontological and the consequential as it was about personality, the Coalition years marked a turn away from both the consequential (e.g. the self-defeating nature of austerity) and the virtuous (e.g. the "betrayal" on tuition fees). Since 2015, the government has been solidly deontological in its ethical stance, hence both Cameron and May's unreflective ease with the idea of duty and their disregard for both the consequences of policy and such incidental matters as the truth. This should remind us that Conservatism is ultimately a disposition rather than a philosophy.

These different ethical strands were evident in May's statement at the lectern in front of Number 10. There were plenty of explicit and implicit references to duty, but what really stood out was her self-regarding emphasis on her own virtues: loyalty, perseverance, service to country etc. Her attempts at a consequential audit, listing issues such as climate change and Grenfell as if she'd achieved something of substance, fell predictably flat. Tory MPs and commentators have since picked up on and emphasised her sense of duty (she'll presumably get a peerage in due course), while centrists have apparently had their heartstrings tugged by her sad denouement at the end of series two. Like Blair before her, albeit over a much shorter time, she has gone from dominant to despised. Similarly, her decline has also been marked by an increasing emphasis on virtue, despite her obvious shortcomings in areas such as courage and honesty.

One reason for this shift is that when doctrine has become irrelevant and pragmatism impossible, virtue is all that you have left. May has been hoist by the petard of her "No deal is better than a bad deal", while her strategic miscalculations, notably in trying to use Brexit for partisan gain, have left her with no room for manoeuvre. Her pathetic "I did my best" is both an admission of defeat and the whine of a child who thinks "It's not fair". Her simpering about compromise was hypocritical chutzpah. Another reason why her appeal to virtue has been well received by centrists is their expectation that the next Conservative Party leader, and therefore Prime Minister, will be notable for his lack of virtue. The result has been a greater show of sympathy for May than Cameron in the aftermath of their respective resignations, despite her history of authoritarianism and his social liberalism. The different reception is not because one ended with a choking sob and the other with the blithe humming of a tune, but because of the fear of what's next.

The irony is that Boris Johnson's lack of virtue is probably what the Tories now need. Assuming he is elected party leader and thus enters Number 10, it seems likely that we will leave the EU on the 31st of October without a deal (though there may well be an emergency agreement on a transitional period to avoid a cliff-edge). However, if there is to be any chance of that outcome being avoided, it will require either a reverse ferret of truly gargantuan proportions, and Johnson is perhaps the only Tory politician with both the popularity and insouciance to pull it off, or the gamble of a snap general election, and Johnson is the only leadership candidate conceited enough to believe that he could personally shift the polls with immediate effect. That he is untrustworthy (though arguably no worse than May) and opportunistic (though arguably no more than Cameron) may turn out to be useful vices.