The past couple of weeks have been dominated by the 2023 Conservative Party Conference (CPC23) and the Prime Minister’s decision to cancel the remaining stages of the High Speed 2 (HS2) rail project. Both events may provide glimpses into the future of our country – and it is not pretty. The CPC23 was indeed filled with all the monsters and horrors of an early Halloween Party.
The CPC23 horror show
The CPC23 has provided various speeches and events that have left me – and visibly other commentators – with a sense of horror and disbelief. To mention just the most egregious things that happened during the conference: A Home Secretary’s openly nasty and hateful speech drawing on conspiracy theories and stirring up displacement fears; A former Prime Minister (PM) who just a year ago nearly wrecked the UK’s financial system and inflicted massive financial hardship on thousands of home owners is given a platform to continue to spread her nefarious libertarian economic ideas; the former UKIP leader – the party that caused Brexit and pushed the Conservative Party over the edge into National Conservative territory – getting more media coverage at the conference than the PM himself; a former Cabinet minister who had to resign from cabinet posts twice (here and here) using her speech to praise a rentier-financed fake news channel that claims to speak truth to the people and then being filmed singing and dancing merrily with the former UKIP leader; and a PM using the possibly last conference speech before the next General Election to announce the hugely controversial cancellation of the largest infrastructure project the country has seen in decades while trying to make us believe that – just like reducing Britain’s commitment to Net Zero – somehow that shows a commitment to “long-term decisions for a brighter future” (What that gaslighting slogan also implies, of course, is that tee PM admits that things currently are not bright and that in the short-term the government cannot fix that). One particularly bizarre moment – and the bar is very high here – was Penny Mordaunt’s cringeworthy pseudo-Shakespearian monologue about ‘standing up and fighting.’ While Penny Mordaunt urges her fellow party members to ‘stand up and fight’ for the ‘freedoms we’ve won’, a few doors down the hall a heckler was being booted out of the hall for daring to vocally disagree with something Suella said in her speech. Equally schizophrenic is the Tory’s rampant crusade against the nanny state and the absurd fearmongering around the ’15-minute city’ which no other than the UK’s Transport Secretary sees as a plot by local councils to monitor people and prescribe them when they can go to the shops; while the very same anti-nanny state party will ban smoking.
If you take a step back and try to forget for a moment what has happened to the UK in the past 13 years, the CPC23 will seem nothing short of surreal. What we are witnessing is what Chris Grey calls the ‘UKIPisation’ of the Tory Party, which means the UK’s governing party is increasingly occupying the territory of what back in 2006 still seemed to leading Tories the home turf of ‘fruitcakes and loonies.’ It leaves one with a profound sense that this country urgently needs a different government to stop its accelerating descent into madness.
Here a particularly bizarre and horrific phenomenon at the CPC23 was the prominence of ‘zombie politicians,’ which I have written about before. Just like Johnson a few months ago, discredited politicians like Truss and Patel clearly are counting on a comeback. In post-Brexit Britain’s political swamp, committing criminal acts, wrecking the country’s economy, being ousted in the most shameful fashion does not preclude politicians from returning to the spotlight, head held high, pretending that they can solve the problems they themselves to no small extent caused.
The conference also indicated, however, that a period in opposition will not necessarily do the Tory party any good by providing an opportunity for renewal and a new – more reasonable – leadership to get a grip on the party. Rather, it seems increasingly certain that once out of power, few things will stand in the way of the party being completely taken over by a radical right-wing faction copying a US-American style of extremist libertarian, anti-state, nativist, and intolerant national conservatism. Indeed, Braverman, Truss, Patel and in fact possibly even Farage seem to eye a possible takeover of the party. All of them are so far to the right that they make Sunak – himself a right-wing Thatcherite and Brexiter – look like a moderate.
Symbolic FTAs’ real-world impact
In the margins of the CPC23, The News Agents interviewed Farage and asked about the failure of Brexit. In Jon Sopel’s words: ‘Brexit has been a bloody disaster…what have we gained?’ To which Farage’s response was: ‘Our standing in the world is very different.’ Rejecting Sopel’s insistence that it was lower, Farage continued: ‘The AUKUS deal, the pacific trade agreement, our leadership on Ukraine – whether you agree with it or not – are all things we could not have done as EU members. On the global stage – big success. Domestically – well – look at the GDP numbers. We’ve grown more than Germany, about the same as France since we left. However, a lot of Brexit voters [are] very disappointed. Millions of businesses who thought red tape would get lifted – it hasn’t happened. And the idea we got to control our borders has become laughable. So, look I’m disappointed in the delivery of Brexit. Very disappointed. But we’ve still done it. The big constitutional leap has been made and its not gonna get reversed.’
There is some truth in this statement – not the bits about AUKUS, Ukraine (both of which could have happened without Brexit) – or the GDP figures (comparisons only make sense if compared to the counterfactual of the UK not leaving the EU) but the one about the trade deals. They indeed could not have happened inside the EU, which “has exclusive power to legislate on trade matters and to conclude international trade agreements” on behalf of its members.
A brand new report by The UK in a Changing Europe on ‘Bregret’ has shown that the signing of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with non-EU countries is literally the only real ‘Brexit benefit’ Leave voters can come up with (the other Brexit benefit Brexiters can think of is the Covid vaccine role out – but that of course is not a real Brexit benefit, but an often debunked falsehood). On FTAs though, Brexiters are right that these could not have been concluded while an EU member…To what extend are they a ‘benefit’ though?
The recklessness with which a succession of Brexiter governments, in pursuit of their Global Britain fantasy, have entered into ‘world-class’ FTAs starts having real-world effects.
Not only are Britain’s new FTAs not perceived around the world as a sign of Global Britain’s ‘nimbleness’ and ‘strength,’ but rather something that generates disbelief and ridicule. Remember the Australian reaction to the new UK-AUS FTA? Or New Zealand’s media reporting in disbelief about the one-sidedness of their deal with the UK? Indeed, as Chris Grey shows in his blog this week, countries as different as China, India, and the US report on Brexit as a disaster and a fatal folly. Quite contrary to Farage’s assertion that Brexit has raised Britain’s standing in the world, it has quite literally turned the country into a laughingstock.
Worse still, desperate for symbolic victories, the UK government’s sign FTAs in a rush and on disadvantageous terms will do very little to compensate for lost trade with the EU, but still have very material consequences for British consumers and producers. Thus, the UK’s joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) has been lauded as the biggest trade deal the UK has struck since Brexit. Yet, in yet another predictable but probably unintended twist, Canada’s meat and cattle industries has launched a campaign to block UK membership as long as the country prohibits meat imports from Canada on food safety and public health grounds. Brexiters, of course, are unperturbed, since the potential negative health impact of hormone treated meat can be shrugged off as another form of ‘project fear’ driven by ‘snowflakes and concerns about animal cruelty can be rejected as ‘wokery.’ Yet, the fact is that one of the Brexit promises was and remains that food standards and safety would not have to be sacrificed to do trade deals with new partners. Now, Rees-Mogg explicitly promotes the import and consumption of hormone injected beef. Rather than increasing our standing in the world and making us stronger, Brexit is making us desperate and vulnerable.
Common sense v. the truth: Meat tax and 15min cities
Meat was at the centre of another illustration of the Tory party’s descent into post-truth madness: On Sky News, Sophy Ridge challenged Claire Coutinho, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, regarding the latter’s CPC23 speech that suggested Labour was proposing a tax on meat to discourage consumption. Coutinho’s defence seems like something right out of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. It essentially boiled down to her saying: No, the Labour leader did not propose a meat tax, but he very well could have – (except that he has not of course!).
Those who are trying to remain sane amongst the gaslighting, falsehoods, and lies spread at the CPC23 were given a new challenge in the form of Home Secretary Braverman’s newly minted three-word insult/slogan ‘luxury beliefs brigade’ – probably to rival Truss’s ‘anti-growth coalition.’ The phrases was lauded in his Mail column by ‘pound shop Carl Schmitt’ Matthew Goodwin. Braverman accused the ‘luxury beliefs brigade’ of sitting ‘in their ivory towers telling ordinary people that they are morally deficient because they dare to get upset about the impact of illegal migration, net zero, or habitual criminals.’ Goodwin parrots her, blaming the ‘smug ranks of virtue-signallers who, cocooned by affluence, are personally protected from the disastrous consequences of the policies they advocate, such as the abandonment of robust policing in inner-cities.’
There is a lot to be said about these two statements. For instance that the lack of robust policing in inner-cities is much more attributable to the Tories hollowing out of public services and cutting policing resources (while carefully making sure that manifesto pledges are met on paper, albeit not in substance), rather than an alleged policy preferences of liberals for unsafe streets. But more fundamentally, the worrying trend here is that the public is now made to believe that our most basic rights and believes in a liberal and just society are somehow optional add-ons that Britain can no longer afford. That is a declaration of bankruptcy by the Tory government. Had they done a good job over the past 13 years in power, surely everyone in this country should be able to afford ‘luxury beliefs.’ Instead, the right-wing of the Tory party is preparing to rid off us more of the luxuries of civilised society that generations of social activists and reformers have fought for.
To add insult to injury, all this is done under the banner of ‘common sense.’ The Daily Mail for instance just like Tory MP Esther McVey declared the PM’s speech – axing HS2 and declaring ‘a man is a man and a woman is a woman’ – a ‘common sense revolution.’ Declaring the PM’s conference revolutionary tells you everything you need to know about the desperation that is gripping the Tory party a year ahead of the next General Election. ‘Common sense’ seems like the last tiered right-wing trope the Tory party resorts to try and convince voters that somehow they speak for the ‘common man’.
Nastiness as manifesto pledge
What shocks me most about the decline of the conservative party is the sheer nastiness of most of the speeches and policies that were presented at CPC23. The various CPC23 speeches did not set out any grand plan to get the country back on track. The Tories under Sunak, Mordaunt, Patel, Truss but especially Braverman promise the country only one thing: nastiness. Nasty to immigrants, nasty to the woke, nasty to civil servants, nasty to academics, nasty to ‘non-aligned’ journalists... As such, CPC23 has made very clear a trend I have written about months, ago, namely that the Tories have turned into the ‘deliberately nasty party.’
How did we end up with a political culture where nastiness is not perceived as a liability anymore, but as an electoral asset?
I think there are (at least) two parts to the answer: Firstly, right-wing populism that brought us Brexit needs divisiveness – us versus them-thinking. To achieve this, people in this country have been fed populist nonsense about the existence of a detached ‘liberal elite’ (which Goodwin now tries to turn into a scientific theory – see my take on his ‘theory’ here). This populist ideology – that Chris Grey calls ‘Brexitism’ – relies on a reversal of ‘virtue and sin’ – what used to be considered democratic virtues is becoming ‘luxury belief’ that only privileged people in good jobs and living in metropolitan areas can afford to hold. This reversal of values advocates for the superiority of ‘common sense’ over expertise; of gut feeling over reason; of your personal opinions over society’s norms. This has led to a situation where people feel they have a right ‘to be themselves,’ i.e., to disregard any rules of morality, self-restraint, and human decency that are so crucial to peaceful societies. This ‘right to transgression’ means people claim the right to broadcast their opinions – however badly informed – unfiltered to the world. The right to think, say, do whatever you want without regard for anyone else. The right to be nasty is part of that and has hence become a selling point not a liability for the Tories in their current shape.
The second part to the answer is that the Tories believe that this ‘right to transgression’ is what working class people – who they consider crucial to electoral victory next year – want. The ‘Red Wall’ has become a key battle ground between Labour and Conservatives; and nastiness is how the Tories think it can be won. Lee Anderson plays a crucial role in that strategy. He is the Tories most mediatised claim to a connection with the working classes. A former coalminer who now is deputy chairman of the conservative party seems the perfect public figure to show the relevance of the Tories for Red Wall voters. I have written this before: To me Lee Anderson is the ultimate Tory insult to working class people. The fact that the Tories believe Anderson can win them the Red Wall votes implies that Tories think working class voters are like Lee Anderson: Crude, cruel, and contrarian.
Of course, there are working class people that think and behave like Anderson – but they certainly are not the majority. He does not represent what working class people stand for, but rather what Tories think working class people are like. Appointing Anderson as deputy chairman of the conservative party and now GB News presenter does not mean working class people are being given a voice. Rather, it means the caricature of an insulting stereotype of working-class people is being given a platform, which may very well reinforce that stereotype and enable those working-class people who are like Anderson – again not the majority – to loudly claim their right to transgression. Anderson may become a self-fulfilling prophecy reinforcing enabling and encouraging the nasty far-right part of the working classes. GB News is key to that prophecy becoming a reality.
GB News says in its mission statement that they ‘want to give a voice to the real Britain.’ Ironically, if you take that statement seriously and look at who is being given a voice on GB News – including not just Anderson but other sitting Conservative MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg, Philip Davies and Esther McVey – not exactly ‘salt of the earth’ type of people –, the ‘real Britain’ apparently is that part of the establishment that most vocally denies reality. Meanwhile, the ‘unreal Britain’ is being drawn into the mud of debased British politics and forced to fight a ‘culture war’ with reality denying conspiracy theorists rather than working towards solving the country’s very real problems.
For me, one of the key attractions of horror movies is that you get an adrenaline kick from the fright, but when you switch off the telly you get the reassuring feeling of returning to a perhaps somewhat boring but relatively safe reality without monsters and zombies. Switching of the telly after the CPC23 should not leave anyone under that illusion. The ghosts that the Tories called on their descent into madness are very real and will haunt us for a long time.