Of Time and Tide

Polly Toynbee in the Guardian assures us that the Tories are heading for oblivion. That's obviously hyperbole. Even if you think they've already blown the next election through their recent fiscal mismanagement, there's no reason to believe they won't recover, much as the ignominious defeat in 1974 ("Who governs Britain?") led to the victory of 1979. Indeed, the media-wide grooming of possible successors to Liz Truss, notably Michael Gove in both the Murdoch press and the Guardian, suggests they may have an outside chance of turning things around before we next go to the polls. Personally, I doubt it, if only because Gove simply offers a rehash of the past (stupid policies and back-stabbing included). The Conservative Party's problem is that they have no diagnosis of the current situation that is likely to attract new voters - 2019 was the limit of their expansion - hence the rhetorical return to the heady days of Thatcher. But it's also the case that the Labour Party is in no better position analytically, suggesting that its current poll lead is not built on solid foundations. Both are trying to resuscitate an electoral bloc from the past: the one from the 1980s, the other from the 1990s.

This has led media supporters of Labour to suggest we are witnessing a natural turn in political fortunes, which in turn allows them to skim over the void of the party's policy offer. For example, Toynbee quotes Jim Callaghan: "There are times, perhaps once every 30 years, when there is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of." Just to make sure we understand the point, she then quotes Shakespeare: "There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." And then she hammers the point home by reaching for the Bible: "For everything there is a season." Finally, in her own words, in case you really didn't get her drift, she turns the dial up to eleven: "Metaphors of tectonic plates, earthquakes, tsunamis and tornadoes blow through political commentary, because this is that moment. It’s all over for the hegemony of a wild Conservative party flown so far right it has taken leave of its senses and abandoned most supporters." 

This is obviously a misuse of the term "hegemony", which becomes all too apparent when she claims "Tory donors shifting to Labour are just a straw in the wind". That is actually evidence for the continuing hegemony of the conservative dispensation established after 1983 in which our political parties seek the approval of high finance and major corporations. Polly's reading of the polls suggests a wider moral shift within the polity. Thus "Covid brought out a communitarian impulse in people to protect one another", while "a majority now think immigration is good for the country". This leads to the inevitable, clunking encomium: "That is a changing Britain, kinder and fairer, of which the Truss, Kwarteng, Rees-Mogg, Braverman wing of the Tory party are wholly oblivious. As a result they are all destined for a long oblivion." Her upbeat prognosis cannot hide that the opposition is offering the same old recipe of fiscal responsibility and a social justice that looks remarkably like social conservatism, but all delivered with a kinder face. Not the least of the reasons for doubting the efficacy of this offer is the association of "kinder and fairer" with the likes of Starmer and Reeves.

Toynbee, like much of the rest of the press - both conservative and liberal - is engaged in constructing a strawman Toryism made up of equal parts "libertarianism" (with its subtle overtones of not-invented-here) and a rightwing "extremism" (with its subtle overtones of foreignness), all marked by cruelty and stupidity, as if these were characteristics historically alien to the Conservative Party. The narrative of the sea-change depends in large part on the idea of a sudden shift in sentiment, so inevitably the focus is shortened. Thus Toynbee notes that "69% think ordinary working people don’t get their fair share of national wealth (which is up 10 percentage points since 2019)", as if the aftermath of the last election was the moment when the switch was flicked, ignoring that the turn against inequality was well underway by 2015 and was indicated both by Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour Party leader in that year and the strong performance in the 2017 general election when, absent the Brexit effect, Labour might well have ended up as the largest party.

"The real value of benefits has now been cut in seven of the last 10 years – but voters no longer back such callousness." But why did they once back it and now don't? What exactly has changed, Polly? As ever, the role of polling companies and the media in manufacturing consent is obscured. Instead we are asked to believe that the electorate, unlike the Tory party, has suddenly "come to its senses", first in rejecting Corbynism and then in deciding that actually its supports the Corbyn platform of public investment and higher taxes on wealth. Naturally, Toynbee isn't going to explore the substance of this for fear of highlighting the differences between that emergent public opinion and the present Labour leadership, notably over public ownership and support for striking workers. Nor is she going to ask why the liberal press put so much effort into blackballing Corbyn if the virtues of mild social democracy were always apparent. Better to attribute the ideological gyrations of an increasingly tired Conservative Party to mental debility and present Labour's offer as akin to a glorious revolution.

In a similar vein, Andrew Rawnsley talked at the weekend of Tory "maniacs" and a Labour Party of "sensible people", but he rather gave the game away when he claimed "The appearance of the conference told its own story. The number of delegates sporting badges, lanyards and T-shirts bearing shouty slogans was sharply down. The number wearing suits and neat haircuts was significantly up. They sang the national anthem. The backdrop to the platform was a huge union flag. The sums allocated to new policies were relatively and cautiously modest." He also pointed to the post-2024 reality: "If anything haunted Labour in Liverpool, it was the thought of the awful financial mess and eviscerated public realm that they may inherit. “Really frightening,” said one member of the shadow cabinet." In other words, there will be the usual hard choices to be made to get the public finances back into order, and you can be pretty sure the burden of that will disproportionately fall on places like Liverpool.

The more calculating advocates of Brexit always knew there would be short-term pain, and that such a major reconfiguration of the UK's trading relationships and domestic economic regime meant that "short" would have to be measured in years. While the Tories could hope to benefit from a "Very well - alone" spirit, they must have considered that plan B would be a period out of office while another government struggled with the consequences before a triumphant return based on a critique of the failure to take advantage. You could already hear this in the rhetoric of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, notably the attacks on the "anti-growth coalition", as much as in the "haunting" of Labour shadow cabinet members in Liverpool. Despite the media's insistence that the next general election will be a Manichean choice, the cartel shares a remarkably similar analysis of the challenges facing the UK (low growth) and doesn't fundamentally differ on the policy response this requires (belt-tightening, pump-priming, cosying-up to business).

While the anti-growth coalition has quickly expanded to encompass everyone from the CBI to David Attenborough, a point made with relish by both conservatives and liberals, we shouldn't assume that this doesn't resonate with voters, particularly the "red wallers" that both main parties remain obsessed with. As Matthew Lynn put it in the Telegraph, "it is possible that the average person grasps that a country where it has become too difficult to do anything is slowly dying". Of course the sense of frustration and termination is more likely to be a reflection of that electoral bloc's age and sense of their own mortality, but that ressentiment is still a powerful motive. What stands out in all this metaphorical blather is the absence of the young, either in rhetoric (except as an implicit component of the anti-growth coalition) or on the conference stage. If there really is a lasting political shift underway, it is the gradual alienation of voters under 40 from the Tories that first became apparent in 2017. In 1979 the Conservatives won the youth vote, and they won it for a reason. Callaghan's belief in a sea-change was just the bewilderment and resignation of an old man.