The Tory party has dug its own grave. Nothing will save it now
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In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher led her party to a hat-trick of triumphs over Labour, in which defence played a major part in her appeal.
With a successful defence of the Falklands behind her, the Cold War threatening to get hot, Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan, and the threat of nuclear war ever present in voters’ minds, portraying herself as Britannia against the party of Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock as out-of-touch peaceniks proved a winning formula.
Can Rishi Sunak pull the same trick today? He appears to be willing to give it a try.
The prime minister might find his warnings about international threats don’t fall entirely on deaf ears, given tensions with Russia and China, and a worsening situation in the Middle East. He will struggle, however, to paint Keir Starmer as someone who presents a threat to the security of the nation, as he sought to do in his speech yesterday.
Then again, what other card does he have to play?
That Sunak has focused on national defence as his trump card this close to the general election suggests less of a confidence in his Government’s commitment to Nato than a complete lack of confidence in all the other areas of policy that Conservatives generally want to campaign on.
“The economy, stupid,” should be the central argument being deployed by ministers and MPs at this stage in a parliament. But even improved growth figures last week can’t disperse the profound gloom that the Government seems to harbour over their own performance.
Just as Labour, during Gordon Brown’s government and immediately after the 2010 election, failed to counter the Conservatives’ (dishonest) claims that the financial crash was caused by government profligacy, so the current batch of ministers have failed dreadfully to explain that shutting down the economy for the best part of two years during the pandemic might just have some financial consequences for everyone.
The result has been a recession, sluggish economy and historically high taxes. Perhaps allowing a similarly historic level of immigration might off-set that economic catastrophe? Nope. But it did exacerbate the housing shortage and increase pressure on public services, so well done, boys and girls!
This is the Conservative record after 14 years in government, and five years after winning an 80-seat majority: highest ever taxes, highest ever immigration and a floundering economy.
Remind me: why do people vote Conservative?
Has any government, given a decade and a half in office, ever squandered its opportunity quite so drastically and deliberately? Is there one area of life in the UK where it can honestly and objectively be said that something – anything – has improved since 2010?
Let’s just get past all the non mea culpa excuses. We’ve had it up to here with the SNP in Scotland pulling that trick and it won’t wash at Westminster either. When a political party stands for office and is elected, it takes responsibility for delivery of its promises, or it suffers the consequences for non-delivery. That’s how democracy works.
True, Covid was not this Government’s fault, and I remain unconvinced that Labour, had it been in office at the time, would have handled it any better.
But it was the Conservatives who were in power when the music stopped so they must face the consequences. No party, after all, that used to lecture us on the importance of personal responsibility can claim that the government shouldn’t be blamed for the appalling way the country is being governed.
Having voted Conservative in 2019, I remain of the view that was the right thing to do at the time, for a number of reasons but mainly Jeremy Corbyn and Brexit, in that order. There is no alternative universe in which a Corbyn-led Labour government would not have proved utterly disastrous for Britain and our allies.
Unfortunately for Sunak, Corbyn is no longer the threat he was. Starmer is an entirely different fish. Boring, uninspiring, certainly, but in no way a threat to the national defence, and it is insulting to suggest otherwise.
But my God, what a relief it will be to see an end to this awful, self-indulgent soap opera of a government.
