I'm going to place a bit of a
caveat on this piece, namely that I'm not a political scientist, have
never held membership of any political party, and due to my
non-resident status find myself politically persona non grata - more
on this later. So the comments and views that follow are certainly
personal, and not influenced by anything except my own experiences
and a contemplation of poilitics in Britain. As I wrote in a previous
blog, politics is top of my list of inventions I can do without -
but has always (and still does) hold an unheallhy fascination for
me.
For
avoidance of doubt, I started voting in the 1970s, when the voting
age was cut to 18, and have always taken it as a serious public duty.
I have always taken note of the policy plans announced by all the
major parties (and some of the minor ones) in the run-up to an
election, and tried to vote for the party that in my view seemed the
best fit for what my personal and, later, family needs were. My
parents and sisters were never overtly political, never watched any
party political broadcasts (they considered them at best boring and
at worst just another pack of lies - and were probably accurate in
that) nor political discussion programs like the BBC's once excellent
Question Time, for the same reasons. So they never tried to
influence my vote, and frankly I'm not sure they even cared who I
voted for. In all honesty, my vote was generally meaningless anyway:
through an accident of birth I always lived in constituencies that
invariably voted for the same party, safe seats all. My vote simply
increased or decreased the Member's majority by one.
Taking
that methodology (and sorry, I can't think of a better word - it's
not a favourite of mine as it reminds me of work...) at least gave me
the chance to understand a bit more than most about what the parties
stood for at any given election. It also meant that, over the years,
until moving abroad and losing my voting rights, I dutifully put a
cross against the names of candidates representing the Conservative
Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Party, the Social Democratic
Party, and the Liberal Democrats. I also voted for the Green Party
once in a local election. I never met a candidate, was never
door-stepped or stopped in the street, and only once met my MP.
But
today, I'm only writing about one party: the Conservative and
Unionist Party.
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The
Tories have always considered themselves the only party fit to
govern. Every time there is an election, be it local or general, one
of their major selling points is still that they are "the
natural party of Government". They also brag about being "the
biggest and the best, most successful political Party in the history
of the world". Clearly, then, they are quite happy to blow
their own trumpet. The first boast seems to me hubristic in the
extreme and is no longer anywhere near true, while the second may
contain a grain of truth (although frankly I can't be bothered to
trawl through a couple of hundred years' worth of electoral results
to prove it one way or the other). Even if it is a statistically
accurate statement, in my view it has little value now, and indeed
has not been the case for most of my voting lifetime.
In
my childhood, the party certainly seemed that way. The leaders, at
least in my memory, MacMillan and Home, certainly carried a gravitas
that Harold Wilson could never match. When they said something, in
their clipped public school accents, people tended to listen, but
that may simply be a distortion of the truth due to my then young age
and my working class upbringing. My parents were both born during
World War One, working class country people who met while employed as
a gardener and a housemaid in service to the de L'Isle family at
Chiddingstone Castle in Kent. So they insisted that, like it or not
(and I think mostly not) people of our stock should defer to people
of MacMillan's and Home's stock: the class system they had grown up
through, though damaged by the two Wars, was still prevalent. At
least MacMillan and Home and their various senior Ministers looked
like statesmen, in their pinstriped suits, bowler hats and so
forth, and gave the impression of knowing what they were doing and
caring for the entire electorate. Going back through the history
books now, that clearly was not always the case.
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But
to me, they seem to have been a bit of a Last Hurrah. Look at the
line of succession.
Ted
Heath presided over a sliding economy and months of industrial strife
that led to power cuts, train cuts and postal strikes: I can remember
in my first job, at a venerable old stockbrokerage in the City,
working by candlelight in positively Dickensian conditions as a
result, and spending days cycling around my home town in the cold and
rain delivering company mail to our clients in the area. He also
presided over the "once in lifetime referendum" - now,
where have I heard THAT before? - that took Britain into the European
Economic Community, thereby releasing forces that have been ripping
apart both the party and the country ever since.
Margaret
Thatcher took on the unions and won, destroying the coal, steel and
car manufacturing industries, much of northern England, Wales and
Scotland in the process. In a bid to create a "share and house
owning democracy" - the ancestor of Levelling Up? - she
de-regulated the Financial Services industry thus unleashing a
vicious winner-take-all City culture of Get Rich Quick chicanery that
changed the face of banking and finance forever, and broke up
state-run service industries like the railways, post office,
telecommunications, gas and electric provision to provide the service
choices she championed but at the cost of a much less efficient and
worse value for money proposition. Finally, she led a nationwide
sell-off of council houses - and my mum benefitted from that, buying
a big, three bed end of terrace for virtually nothing as a tenant of
40 years - but failed to guarantee their replacement by new-builds
that is at the heart of the current housing crisis. In foreign
policy, she managed to upset most of the other EU nations (the EEC
had grown a lot by the time she took it on) by demanding and getting
a rebate on Britain's share of the bloc's funding that still failed
to please the increasingly vocal Eurosceptics within the Party, and
successfully waged war against Argentina, who had had the temerity to
invade the British dependency of the Falkland Islands. Over the
period of her premiership, thousands of lives were lost or ruined,
physically and financially, as a direct result of her actions. The
Tory Party loved her. And still do.
John
Major, her replacement as party leader and Prime Minister, led them
to a fourth successive election victory in 1992, but remained a
disappointing premier. As both a Foreign Secretary and Chancellor
under Thatcher, much had been expected of him, and although enjoying
some limited success in healing some of the societal divisions she
bequeathed him, he failed to satisfy either the party or, ultimately,
the country. The Citizens Charter he introduced was a partially
successful attempt to create a fairer society by providing more open
and accountable, results driven public services. It lasted through
to 2010 before being quietly dropped. He abolished the much hated
Thatcherite Poll Tax with a (quite similar) Community Charge, and
managed to commit troops to the First Gulf war that followed Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait. He also withdrew sterling from the EU's Exchange
Rate Mechanism (that was meant to stabilise currency rates in
preparation for the euro single currency introduction) after
speculators including George Soros made billions of pounds by
shorting sterling and causing its value to crash on Black Wednesday
in September 1992. He also led our negotiations of the Maastricht
Treaty that defined the governing structures of today's European
Union, succeeding in agreeing some opt-out provisions for Britain,
including its non-membership of the Single Currency. It was still
not enough for the Eurosceptics, whose continued agitation
eventually led, indirectly, to his resignation after losing the 1997
election to Tony Blair's Labour Party.
----------------------------------------------------
In
Opposition, Michael Howard, William Hague and Iain Duncan-Smith all
tried to bring some sense and cohesion to an increasingly fractured
Conservative Party and provide a strong opponent to a Labour Party
that at times struggled to delivers on its own promises - especially
after the second Gulf War, in the wake of the WTC atrocity in New
York in 2001, that led to the downfall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and
the ill-fated Arab Spring (a complete misnomer since the series of
uprisings in various Gulf States ran for two years between 2010 and
2012) in search of democracy that instead has led to civil war,
failed states and much bloodshed at the hands of a global Islamic
terrorist movement.
None
of them made much of an impression, and the party continued to
fragment, with opposition to EU membership continuing to gnaw away,
and strengthen its hold. Not a single leader, whether in government
or opposition, seemed able or willing to confront and resolve the
problem. All complained bitterly about it, but no-one did anything.
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David
Cameron, Old Etonian, Oxford educated, son of a leading stockbroker
and the recipient of an impressive income from the type of Panamanian
offshore trust fund - perfectly legally set up and administered -
that in his term of office suddenly became a political Hot Potato
that prompted public outrage and EU-wide legislation took over
leadership in 2005 and led them to power in 2010 in coalition with the
LibDems. It never really worked, for the simple reason that British
politics in general, and the Conservative Party in particular, do not
understand coalition government because it inevitably undermines
their own authority. It's all me, me, me, and this effort was no
different, with the major cabinet positions taken by Tories and
LibDem policies generally watered down or dropped. It limped along
through its term to 2015, hamstrung somewhat by the global recession
after the failure of Lehman Bros that forced a rigid austerity economy
to keep government spending under control and taxes higher than any
Tory likes. Bits of legislation came through, including legalizing
gay marriage, cuts to the defence budget that have harmed Britain's
defence capability ever since, and measures that intended (but
failed) to reduce net immigration. He also held a referendum on
Scottish independence that he won and Scotland remains part of the UK
despite a hefty (and growing) proportion of Scots wanting to break
away. For the 2015 election he promised an "advisory
referendum" on Britain's EU membership and duly won a
significant majority and all but wiped out the pro-EU LibDems in
parliament.
The
Brexit referendum was a brutal affair, with Cameron's Remain campaign
pitiful in comparison to the Leave campaign and allowed the
Eurosceptics in the Party to have their day.. It resulted in a shock
defeat, a narrow vote in favour of leaving the Union that split the
Party. Cameron did the cowardly thing and resigned within a couple
of hours of the result being announced. Everything that has gone
wrong in both the party and country can be laid squarely at his door.
He faced the same Eurosceptic agitation as every other Tory leader
since Heath, and like every other Tory leader since Heath failed to
deal with it.
Theresa
May reluctantly took over as leader and PM, and struggled to deliver
a Brexit that would not be too damaging, but, as usual, was dogged
throughout her premiership by the increasingly influential Eurosceptics. She came to power with a decent majority, and
squandered it in an unnecessary snap election. government business
was dominated by the tangled negotiations and ultimately came up with
a package that would have done the job but was voted down. With it
went her premiership as she resigned.
Boris
Johnson, arch-Brexiteer, another Old Etonian and contemporary of
Cameron and Oxford, ex-Mayor of London and formerly employed by the
Daily Telegraph (then the Conservative Party's newspaper of choice)
as their Brussels correspondent where he spent his time making up
stories (mostly untrue) about the EU and EU regulations, was
overwhelmingly elected as party leader on the promise of having an
"oven baked exit deal ready" that could bring the country
out immediately, When put to the vote, in a very truncated debate to
force it through, the Opposition parties demanded more time to go
through it and ask questions. Johnson's answer was prorogue
parliament (i.e. terminate the session), an action widely considered
illegal, and hold yet another General Election. He won a record
breaking 80 seat majority that allowed him to basically do as he
pleased. The deal was signed and Britain left the EU - but within
weeks it became clear that parts of the Treaty were not working so
Johnson unilaterally decided to ignore them and re-negotiate: the
clear inference being that he had failed to understand big chunks of
his own agreement. The arguments continue to this day.
Along
came Covid. Johnson's government created a massive program of public
spending, essentially unfunded, to support the economy and save
people's jobs, and spent further billions in a vaccine rollout that
over a two year period did indeed save millions of jobs, and vaccinate
and boost most of the population to bring the pandemic under control
- but at the cost of spiralling government debt. Then the shit hit
the fan, and stories, illustrated of course, came out showing that he
and many of his close associates, fellow Member and office staff had
frequently broken their onw lockdown rules. Reports emerged of he
and his staff drinking beer and wine and scoffing sausage rolls in
garden parties at a time when the rest of the public were not allowed
to meet together in more than direct family groups, nor make hospital
visits to relatives in ICUs suffering from Covid, and worst of all
attending the funerals of parents and children who had died. Johnson
denied doing anything wrong, denied knowing about the parties - until
photos of him standing on a chair raising a toast while surrounded by
his acolytes - and was investigated by the Metropolitan Police.
Confidence in him evaporated amongst his own MPs (though oddly not
within the party itself) and he was forced from office, kicking and
screaming and crowing about his own (often questionable)
achievements.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Incredibly,
it got worse. A drawn our election process that limped through this
summer brought in Liz Truss as the new Leader. She was of course a
Johnson ally and a fervent Brexiteer, and tried to bury her past as a
LibDem activist and voting Remain in the 2016 Referendum. She went
off to Balmoral and was invited by the Queen to form a Government.
By the time she had filled her Cabinet the next day the Queen had
passed away. The country and government business essentially ground
to a halt while the State Funeral was planned and took place, and
King Charles officially ascended to the throne. Truss and her
incompetent Chancellor then presented a "fiscal event" -
for which read, mini-budget - that pledged another forty-odd billion
pounds of (unfunded) tax cuts and government borrowing that lacked
any kind of validation by the government's own Office of Fiscal
Responsibility. It went down like a lead balloon, outside her inner
circle and perhaps the 80,000 Party Members who had voted her into
the job. The pound crashed. So did the bond markets. There was
criticism from the IMF and the World Bank. The Chancellor was called
back from a meeting in Washington and sacked. Her new Chancellor
reversed the majority of the pledges made in the mini-budget and made
it clear that he would run the economy his way - i.e. professionally.
Finally, the Home Secretary foolishly sent an official document from
her own email address, rather then her office one, and was sacked for
a breach of protocol, and a blazing row with Truss. The confidence
in her premiership evaporated and she resigned on her 45th day in
office - the shortest ever period, and probably the worst PM in
history. She will not be missed. As one wag commented: in 45 days
she has buried the Queen, the economy and the Tory party.
So:
another Leadership contest...... the former Chancellor, who narrowly
lost out to Truss, is as I write well in front and likely to take
over today or tomorrow. The current Leader of the House, who finished
third last time, is lagging way behind but insisting she will still
win. And Incredibly, Boris Johnson managed to cobble together over a
hundred votes amongst his loyalists, without even declaring he would
run for the job. Surprisingly he stood down late last night as it
became clear that a high percentage of his own MPs would not support
him if he regained the job - governing would be too much like hard
work for the lazy git. For perhaps the first time in his life he did
the decent thing and walked away (for now, at least....).
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As
things stand, the Conservative and Unionist party, a.k.a. the Caring
Conservatives or, more popularly these days The Nasty Party, will
remain in government with its third leader and Prime Minister since
the spring, only one of whom had a public mandate via a general
election. No-one within the party is talking about calling another
general election because they would probably get wiped out at the
polls: and rightly so after the incompetence and lack of leadership
stretching back 50 years.
Now
I accept that some of their leaders, notably Thatcher and perhaps
Major did some good stuff that benefitted ordinary people like you
and me, at least temporarily, but they too left chaos and inequality
behind as part of their legacies that should not be ignored. The
last four Tory Prime Ministers have been terrible, each one far worse
than its predecessor, and the pain felt by the electorate is worse
now than it has been since the 1970s when Thatcher was merrily
destroying British industry: it took a generation to recover from
that and all the gains and promises that were there pre-Referendum
have been washed away by the Brexit fiasco. Britain is back to hard
times, facing a health service in crisis (again), rising costs and
unemployment (again), a still fractured transport system, a housing
shortage and High Streets containing more For Sale boards in shop
windows than goods. After 12 years in power, one way or another, it
is impossible to blame it on anyone but themselves - but of course
they try to do that.
The
party is at a crossroads. It HAS to change. It HAS to put the
electorate before personal gain and clinging to power at any cost.
It HAS to govern, prudently and with vision, and forget all about
this "we're better off under the Conservative Party"
nonsense, because that patently is not the case. The new leader, who
will simply be the best of a bad bunch (as an aside, I have never
seen a parliament of so little talent, on all sides, than the current
one: the Tories are not the only Party to suffer from internal crises
and incompetence) rather than a statesman in waiting must first
re-unite a party riven by internal struggles and competing ideologies
around a common agenda and then KEEP it that way. It MUST govern
for everybody, without favour.
It
would be nice if the new government gave a thought to its ex-pat
British citizens too, because we have families, children and
grandchildren, back home and we care about them and our country just
as much, wherever we may live. Right now, we do not count in ny
policy discussion. Some, but not all, of us managed to get a postal
vote for the Brexit Referendum (the mechanics of doing that were
simple but never publicised) so perhaps two million of us were unable
to have our say. That privilege was not extended to subsequent
General Elections. We are disenfranchised. When the Queen died, no
book of condolence was opened at the British Embassy here in Warsaw,
and enquiries to them have remained unanswered nearly three months
later. I have heard from ex-pats elsewhere who have had similar
experiences. This is simply wrong: we are still British Citizens (it
says so on our passports) and still pay tax into the Treasury's
coffers at source from our pension arrangements. It would be
reasonable to have a small say in how they spend the money....
I
don't believe the Party is capable of doing any of that. I can see
it limping on for another couple of years, hoping to turn a corner,
before the next election must be held. Depending on how it performs
in that time, it may not be completely wiped out, as it probably
would be were the poll held this week. The longer it drags on the
more damage will be done to the country, and it may take a
generation or two to repair..
It
makes very sad. And more than a little angry.
