POLITICS: Where did it all go wrong?
Damn the India Bill!
‘It’s not the conservatism that got unpopular, it’s the Conservatives that did’ — as the fading starlet that is the modern Tory party could scream as the closing credits begin to roll on this black and white melodrama. Are things that bad? Yes. In fact, that answer’s so true, things are even worse than that: party morale is not collapsing, it’s lying in a corner with weeds growing up through the rubble where once self-confidence stood. With few members, fewer principles and no prospects, what has become of the Tory party? Very simply this — it is now what at every stage in the last seventy years it always threatened to be, the preserve of people who thought that the (party political) good times would always last. These fools saw no need to propitiate angry household Gods or husband political capital for three lean parliaments. It didn’t need to be like this (and, indeed, this fate was held off for so long), and it needn’t be like this forever, but as is all too plain to see, this is the sorry state we’re in now.
If it seems unfashionably Calvinist to suggest that we’re presently being punished for having done wrong stuff in the past, can there be any doubt that plenty of that wrong stuff was done? What in particular the party did, but ought not to have done, were it being properly Conservative or Unionist or Tory or even, for that matter, pro-market liberal is a matter for individual fancy. However it’s a long enough list, and these represent just a personal flavour: the abandonment of Southern Ireland to gunmen; the disestablishment of the Church in Wales; the passing of the India Bill; entry into the Common Market; the betrayal of the Hong Kong Chinese; and the introduction of compulsory seatbelts. Really, we shouldn’t have done any of these things, but for an awfully long time we got away with it.
So why be bothered — we had a good run. Well, that doesn’t depend so much on your point of view as it does on your sense of place. For while we were doing all this, hundreds and hundreds of Conservative politicians enjoyed the benefit of being in office, or at least in Parliament. Was that not enough? No. And the fact that it wasn’t then, and never will be, is surely evident by the fact that it doesn’t seem very comforting now, does it? Now that we’re out of office, and there are so few of us in Parliament, is it a cheering thought that even though we didn’t do that much with it when we had them, once upon a time, we had all the riches of the earth? It doesn’t seem to hugely enthuse anyone. The point being that careerism qua careerism is just a form of living death — it’s a political life not worth living. Precisely because it’s not truly being lived. If whether one will get to sit in an office overlooking Whitehall is the journey’s driving question, then life’s early answer should be the civil service entry exam, not the parliamentary selection meeting.
Despite not being overly enthused by gems like the settlement in Rhodesia, or the Anglo-Irish Agreement, or the Single European Act, or the entry into the ERM, for me the reason why the bad overwhelmed the good in the Tory party is that Mrs Thatcher was done in by her enemies within. Most fundamentally, where did the doing of it get us? Regicide’s up there as just about Tory sin #1 — and yet, as a party, and all gathered round in plain view, in we drove that dagger. With no legitimacy to speak of, John Major’s tragi-farcical regime staggered towards its well deserved fate, and there we’ve remained. Are we liable now to be shriven soon of our sorrows? Hardly. For having tolerated inadequate leadership for so long, we’ve suddenly been cursed with an absolutely intolerable one. One year on and its done the unprecedented even in our sorry catalogue: rather than have his followers lose faith in him, Iain Duncan Smith has lost faith in them. And this is it — either the party cleanses itself by getting rid of this leadership, or this leadership is going to finish off the job and get rid of the party.
John Rugby, October 16, 2002 11:13 PM