Tim Bale's Blog

There will not be a UK general election tomorrow, however much political pollsters prod voters to say how they would vote in one. But if there were, even the most optimistic Conservative would have to concede that Labour would win, and win easily. In reality, the contest is unlikely to take place for another year.

By then, this year’s conference season, in which the opposition has had the best of it, will be a distant memory. Indeed, research that compares parties’ “before and after conference” ratings over the course of nearly 70 years suggests that any bounce Liverpool might have given Labour will deflate far sooner than that.

None of this means that Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer shouldn’t have a spring in his step. As far as we can tell what constitutes “the fundamentals” when it comes to how people vote, they seem to point to a Labour victory — or at least a Conservative defeat. Starmer will be doing everything he can to ensure that he ends up at the helm of not just the largest party but a government with a decent majority — that, however, is by no means guaranteed.

On the upside for Labour, snail’s-pace economic growth and the cost of living crisis mean that, (if they ever really went away), bread-and-butter issues are back with a bang. And, on that score, things look dire for the government.

It’s not that Labour has an overwhelming lead when pollsters ask voters which party they think is best equipped to handle key issues. On the economy, for instance, it’s only ever in single figures, and driven mainly by the fact that, while only about a quarter of respondents name Labour, even fewer (generally around a fifth) plump for the Conservatives. 

What helps Labour, however, is that some three-quarters of voters think the government is handling the issue badly. The NHS and even immigration show similar results.

It’s also personal. Starmer’s approval rating may stand at minus 12 but Sunak is on minus 40. In addition, the overwhelming majority of voters believe that the government is tired and at the mercy of events. And while two-thirds see the Tories as divided, fewer than a third say the same of Labour.

And yet, the difference in values between the UK’s graduate and non-graduate voters, a gulf that helped tip the Brexit referendum in 2016 and Boris Johnson to win comfortably in 2019, hasn’t gone away. Indeed, new research by Manchester university professor Rob Ford presented at the conferences suggests the values divide is still important — and presents as much of a challenge for Labour as it does for the Tories.

Voters who left school at 16 are more likely to think immigration is a problem and less likely to share Labour’s priorities on tackling climate change. They’re also more likely to be wary about any move on Starmer’s part to improve Britain’s relationship with the EU. As a result, Labour needs to tread cautiously, not least because those school-leavers make up a significant proportion of voters in the small-town constituencies it needs to take from the Tories to win a majority.

To do that, Labour needs a bigger swing than that achieved by Tony Blair in 1997’s Labour victory. So the party’s relatively unimpressive performance in local elections is also cause for concern. Set against that is Labour’s recent progress in Scotland and increasing evidence of anti-Tory tactical voting south of the border.

Yet the fact that support for independence is still running at 46 per cent suggests that, notwithstanding its big win in Rutherglen and Hamilton West’s by-election this month, Labour would do well to limit its ambitions to winning just 20-25 Scottish seats in the House of Commons.

So while it is hard right now to see how the Conservatives can keep Starmer out of Downing Street altogether, making it there with a comfortable (or even just a workable) majority remains a work in progress.

Originally published at https://www.ft.com/content/ace8b489-2550-4526-91a3-ee439aa33f53

Special expectations

In 2014, on a visit to London, Angela Merkel addressed the Houses of Parliament. The then German Chancellor recognised in her remarks that British political actors seemed to have ‘very special expectations’ regarding her speech. Some people, Merkel said, seemed to be under the impression that she would signal huge reforms perceived to be in the UK’s interests. Others, she said, expected ‘the exact opposite’.

The German Chancellor, however, was not going to do either of those things. Instead, she delivered a state-of-play speech on EU integration, with a focus on the Eurozone.

Chancellor Merkel demonstrated, once again, that her overriding priority was the political and economic integrity of the European Union rather than narrower UK debates. Despite this, her message seemed to have only a limited impact on the British politicians watching – many of whom would go on to play roles in the Brexit referendum over two years later. Far too many of these politicians invested far too much faith in the ability and desire of Angela Merkel (and, by extension, Germany) to help the UK out.

Why? It is this question – and this puzzle – we sought to partly answer in our recent article. To tackle the issue, we employed the concept of political myth.

Political myths (and why we should study them)

What exactly is a myth – and a political myth? The British philosopher Mary Midgley worked throughout her career on comprehending different frameworks of meaning. Consequently, when we talk about myth, we mean much more than something popularly believed but not actually the case. Rather, and following Midgley, myths to us are one kind of tool to help humans to comprehend the world. They are products of our creating and assigning meaning to things. They are imaginative, and they are far more prevalent and important than we often recognise.

Midgley, of course, is not the only philosopher to think deeply about myth and meaning. Chiara Bottici’s recent work on political myth has restated both the importance and usefulness of the concept. Bottici notes the special ‘significance’ that a political myth accrues through the process of creating and bringing together different meanings in a political context. This idea – the ‘significance’ generated through the process – comes from Hans Blumenberg’s philosophical reflections on myth.

One further philosophical influence on our research came from Charles Taylor. In his book The Language Animal, Taylor argued that myths have the effect of combining different meanings. These meanings, in turn, produce a mythical meaning that is fully appreciated as a whole. In other words, myths have different elements, but they are understood together.

The Merkel myth

Our recent article in the Journal of European Integration argues that such a myth existed within British politics. The myth centred around Angela Merkel, and it goes some way to explaining why British politicians could hear one thing from the Chancellor (and indeed hear something similar from other experts on the EU, political, academic or otherwise), yet think quite another.

The ‘Merkel myth’ had several component parts. It featured the belief among UK political actors (a) that the then German Chancellor was the most important decision-maker within the European Union, (b) that she would more than likely deliver on her supposed commitment to smooth UK-EU relations, (c) that German industrial interests (notably carmakers) would insist upon a close and open UK-EU trading relationship, and (d) that Merkel herself was a pragmatist who would persuade her EU partners do a last-minute deal – as was apparently her habit – so the UK should hold its nerve come what may.

In 2013, David Cameron announced his decision to include, in the next Conservative Party manifesto, a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. This, we argue, was the moment the Merkel myth really became a part of British politics. Merkel was considered to be the European politician who could signal what kind of deal Britain might get in a future renegotiation.

Merkel’s opinions on the plausibility of any reform were influential on Cameron’s pre-referendum renegotiation. After Britain voted to leave, her views remained a key consideration. Leave-supporting actors had blind faith that Merkel would ‘see sense’ and give Britain the deal it wanted – seemingly regardless of the EU institutions and the EU team actually empowered to negotiate on behalf of the EU27. Yet it wasn’t only those committed to leaving who bought into the Merkel myth. Those who wanted the ‘softest’ Brexit – or even no Brexit at all – figured an alternative plan could somehow be agreed with (you guessed it!) Angela Merkel.

Why did people believe this?

The often agonising (and seemingly endless) Brexit process never seemed to come close to matching the confident assumptions of British political actors. So why did so many (although not, we should emphasise, all) of them believe that Chancellor Merkel – and the German government as a whole – would ultimately come to the UK’s rescue?

We think this is another reason why ‘myth’ as a concept for understanding certain kinds of meanings is so useful. The meanings around Merkel had heightened significance within British political elites. These beliefs often seemed to paper over the cracks of the UK’s diplomatic strategy, but only ever really provided political reassurance.

That latter point (the reassurance) is, perhaps, part of the reason some British political actors upheld the Merkel myth. It provided meanings to substantiate the preferred political strategy of some actors: to undermine the solidarity of the EU27, and benefit from negotiations with individual member states perceived as sharing the UK’s economic and trade goals.

Many myths

The world is, we suspect, full of political myths. And this is why we believe the concept is very useful for political analysis. But if that’s the case, we will need further theoretical reflection, as well as more empirical case studies. Part of Mary Midgley’s philosophical mission was to unearth myths, to consider their effects, and to engage with them critically. This is the exercise we have tried to play a small part in, too. We hope others will be tempted to join us.

Originally published at https://theloop.ecpr.eu/brexit-and-the-merkel-myth/

If you’re looking for subtlety and sophistication, Harry Hill and Steve Brown’s Tony! The Tony Blair Rock Opera is probably not for you. It starts – literally – with a bang and careens through a hectic hour and a half of high-energy songs and skits.

The committed cast are happy to provide their audience with caricatures, as opposed to characters. John Prescott (Rosie Strobel) is portrayed as a professional northerner, Robin Cook (Sally Cheng) as a priapic ginger gnome, Cherie Blair (Tori Burgess) as a sharp-tongued Scouser – you get the picture.Trailer for The Tony Blair Rock Opera.

Although the occasional joke misfires (blind David Blunkett walking into a door frame, really?) and some of the actors’ accents are as woeful as the deliberately dodgy wigs they whip on and off, it works on its own terms.

The music and the lyrics might not be that memorable, but the songs rhyme well. In the run up to the 1992 election, for example, Neil Kinnock (Martin Johnston) sings: “We’ve been waiting in the valleys, I’ve been storming it at rallies.” And Princess Diana’s fatal accident is neatly, if rather bluntly, summed up as “the chauffeur was smashed, no wonder he crashed”.

And they cohere nicely – perhaps even especially – when they stray beyond the bounds of good taste. Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein’s numbers (the latter done via a Groucho Marx impression) are a case in point.

The occasional cameos are particularly well done (Britpop’s Liam Gallagher was a favourite of mine), the impressively athletic choreography is basic but effective and one or two of the set pieces work particularly well. The momentous Granita deal (at which Brown was persuaded to give Blair a free run at the leadership in the wake of John Smith’s untimely death) is staged as a wrestling match complete with ropes and shiny leotards. Believe it or not, this actually conveyed what was allegedly discussed and agreed during that dinner pretty accurately.

The show’s limitations

So far, so good(ish), then. But there are some downsides. The most obvious is that in order to get most of the rock opera’s jokes, you probably had to be there – “there” being the 1990s and the early 2000s. Those under 50 might struggle to appreciate some of the political and cultural references, unless they’ve done or are doing a politics degree that covered the New Labour years.

Having not only lived through them but taught them, too, I had no trouble. But that didn’t mean I had no problems with the show.

First and foremost, it fell into the trap of inferring that Blair (Jack Whittle) was driven almost entirely by his love of the limelight. As a result, he is portrayed as an amoral airhead throughout – a puppet whose strings were pulled by Peter Mandelson (Howard Samuels).

In reality, I suspect even Blair’s toughest critics wouldn’t deny that his extraordinary powers of communication rested not just on his natural charisma but on a penetrating intelligence, too. Nor would they deny he was animated by a passion to do what – by his own lights anyway – was right.

Whether that sense of moral purpose (misguided or otherwise) deserted Blair once he left Downing Street and entered the shadowy world of high-paid, globetrotting consultancy is another story. But it’s a story that the authors (who were apparently determined not to write something too long) stop short of telling.

Other all too familiar tropes are much in evidence. Mandelson, who is effectively the narrator of the show, is predictably portrayed – albeit with considerable aplomb – as some sort of vampire or Mephistopheles. And by the same token, Cherie, although wonderfully played, is presented (not for the first nor, I suspect, the last time) as Lady Macbeth.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown comes over (very amusingly, as far as the audience were concerned) as a stereotypical angry Scotsman. Alastair Campbell, for good or ill, only gets a brief walk-on part, coming on, complete with kilt and bagpipes, after the ghost of Princess Diana has – bear with me – persuaded Blair to sex up the “dodgy dossier”.

My main gripe, however, was with the supposedly showstopping last number. Blair, not unreasonably, reminds the audience that 9.5 million of us voted him in for a third term, notwithstanding his decision to go to war in Iraq. The song that follows declares that “The whole wide world is led by assholes”, accompanied by pictures of a bunch of strongmen leaders from around the world.

To equate the UK’s prime minister, however little one may think of him, with the likes of Kim Jong Un, Bashar al-Assad and Putin seems, to me at least, a category error. And, even if you disagree, the underlying message merely serves up more of the populist take on politics that, frankly, we could probably do with rather less of these days.

That said, if you happen to be in Liverpool for the Labour Party conference next week, don’t miss the chance to go see it at the city’s Playhouse. You might not love it, but there’s no way it won’t leave you laughing.

Originally published at https://theconversation.com/the-tony-blair-rock-opera-features-bagpipes-lady-macbeth-and-a-wrestling-match-with-gordon-brown-214753

It’s over ten years since American electoral guru Nate Silver reminded us that we need to forget about the stuff that only seems important and focus on what really matters – to distinguish, as the title of his best-selling book put it, between the signal and the noise.

In reality, of course, things are more complicated. Political parties in particular will often make one hell of a noise precisely in order to send a signal. Now and again, however, they’ll do it to obscure one. Sometimes they’ll even do both at the same time. And sometimes, of course, they’d rather there was no noise at all but are simply powerless to prevent it.

So what, in the wake of their roller-coaster of a Conference in Manchester, can we meaningfully say about the Conservatives?

We’ve now got a pretty good idea, if we didn’t have before, of how they’re hoping, under the guidance of their campaign mastermind Isaac Levido, to frame the narrative of the election as polling day draws closer.

OK, the story runs, things may not be perfect right now but they’re getting better by the day. Are you really going to take a punt on a Labour Party that doesn’t share your values? Especially when, if it’s change you’re after, then Rishi is your man. Who do you prefer? A fresh-faced, fortysomething meritocrat who’s prepared to make tough choices and bin politics as usual in order to shore up the nation’s finances and stand up to the wokerati? Or that wrinkly, flip-flopping, lefty-lawyer, Keir Starmer and the LGBTQ+ spendthrifts lined up behind him?

Moreover, we can now pretty much guarantee that this message will be amplified by the party in media – the true-blue newspapers that wasted no time in declaring Sunak’s closing speech a total triumph by the man The Times’s frontpage headline (hoping, perhaps, to render the prime minister reassuringly middle, as opposed to club, class) chose to label ‘Son of a pharmacist’, the alternative, ‘Husband of a billionaire’, presumably not quite fitting the bill.

Yet they’re going to have a tough job persuading an electorate which, if months of polling are anything to go by, already looks to have decided that the Tories are – in no particular order: responsible for a cost of living crisis and a collapsing health service; unable to ‘stop the boats’; out of ideas; at the mercy of events; and led by a guy who’s not only not quite up to the job but so stratospherically wealthy that he can’t possibly understand what life’s actually like for the rest of us.

Now, it would be an exaggeration to suggest that Conservative MPs briefing journalists in Manchester that they’re beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel know full well that it’s actually the light coming from the proverbial oncoming train. But many of them are finding it impossible not to think about who will take over from Sunak should they lose a general election likely to take place this time next year.

Given the Tory party has always been, as one of the party’s many historians memorably put it, ‘an autocracy tempered by assassination’, its annual conference is always a heady combination of beauty-contest and drive-by shooting. But this year especially so – thanks especially to a barnstorming speech by Suella Braverman and a warm-up routine by Penny Mordaunt.

If such a contest does take place, it will only serve to confirm what has been evident to those of us who have spent years studying the Conservatives but became all-too-obvious in Manchester. Namely that, if they continue to play along with the culture war stuff on the grounds that it might not be pretty but could still prove effective, then the party is in severe danger of slipping its moorings as a party of the mainstream centre-right and sailing off into the shark-infested, migrant-bashing, war-on-woke, multiculturalism-has-failed, conspiracy-fuelled waters of national populism.

True, there is a potential market for that – a fairly sizable one if support for Trump in the US and Orbán in Hungary is anything to go by – but, in a country that’s getting ever more diverse, more liberal, and (whisper it softly, less Labour be listening) less Brexity, it’s probably a shrinking one, at least in the long run. And anyway there’s a tricky tension between the radical-right wing populism that some Conservatives are now espousing and the bog-standard Thatcherism that brought most of them into the party in the first place.

Unless the former is simply intended to distract from the latter (and nobody should dismiss that possibility), then eventually it entails splashing a bit more cash.That, after all, is what Boris Johnson’s claim to be ‘levelling up’ on behalf of ‘the left-behind’ was supposed to be about. But, as Manchester made clear, cutting out on supposedly profligate spending so as to make room for tax cuts (the sooner the better, naturally) is what continues to animate an awful lot of Tories. That’s why the predicted row over the cancellation of the northern leg of HS2 – whether or not it was inspired by Dominic Cummings – turned out to be a something of a damp squib, notwithstanding the damaging signal it sends about the country’s ambition and ability to see things through.

On the upside for the party, the fact that the vast majority of its MPs and activists (in public at least) rowed in behind the PM on that and almost everything else suggests that its collective will to power has not yet deserted it. Whether that will be enough to rescue Rishi Sunak from the unfortunate fate of most takeover prime ministers, remains to be seen, although the post-conference loss of the party’s deposit in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election doesn’t exactly bode well.

Originally published at https://ukandeu.ac.uk/signal-vs-noise-at-tory-party-conference/

Liz Truss has been called many things – many of them unprintable. Given what she did to the country’s economy, people’s mortgage repayments and the Tories’ poll ratings, that’s hardly surprising. But it still shouldn’t let her party off the hook.

Obviously, Truss, along with her similarly clever-silly chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng , can’t wholly escape personal responsibility for what happened. After all, it was ultimately her decision to push through a tax-cutting mini-budget that, together with her refusal to let the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) take a look at it first, was almost bound to spook the markets.

Yet to heap all the blame and opprobrium on Truss herself is to understate the extent to which her decisions were a product of a mindset, a curse even, that has afflicted the Conservative Party for well over three decades – namely that the key to solving Britain’s socio-economic problems will always lie in asking – “What would Maggie do?”

In many ways, that reflex is understandable. Margaret Thatcher presided over a profound restructuring of the UK economy that, in some aspects at least, was long overdue and maybe even inevitable. Moreover, she did so against much of the conventional, “establishment” wisdom of the time while winning three general elections on the trot – the first from the opposition and the second and third from the government, and with massive majorities.

Nor, contrary to the arguments of some of Thatcher’s “wet” critics, is it the case that the small-state, deregulatory policies she pursued were somehow out of keeping and kilter with Tory tradition.

Indeed, one can argue – as her supporters frequently did – that she was merely returning to the eternal verities from which her post-war predecessors had either reluctantly (Churchill) or very deliberately (Macmillan) moved away.

There are, of course, more than a few holes in this convenient narrative.

For a start, the party was led for a large part of the pre-war era by Stanley Baldwin – a politician with a decent claim to be the Tories’ first genuinely “one-nation” prime minister.

And then there is the ridiculous idea that the party lost its way after 1990 because it not only dumped Thatcher herself but junked her policies too. Try telling that to anyone who lived through the John Major years – years in which even more of the public sector was privatised while health and welfare were kept chronically short of cash.

Equally, the notion that the tax rises implemented by Ken Clarke , Major’s chancellor (who, by the way, wasn’t seen as half as cuddly and centrist back then as he is now) represented a clear departure from the one true path is nonsense. Thatcher loved to talk about cutting taxes. But she also raised them in order to squeeze out inflation, shift the burden from direct to indirect taxation, and to make it look as if she was balancing the books.

Liz Truss clearly idolised Thatcher – so much so that she attracted plenty of ridicule for supposedly cosplaying the Conservative Party’s first and most successful female leader. Yet her tribute act was even more ideological than it was sartorial. As such, however, it placed her firmly within rather than outside what is now the Tory mainstream – the bog-standard Thatcherism that continues to treat its progenitor as an icon rather than the canny, often cautious and occasionally contradictory politician she really was.

Had the Tories remembered this living, breathing Thatcher instead of placing her on a pedestal, they might still have elected Truss in the summer of 2022. After all, the only realistic alternative to her as a replacement for a broken Boris Johnson was Rishi Sunak – hardly a Mr Charisma with the common touch. But she might have been less likely to have blown up her premiership within a fortnight or so by forgetting that the first woman ever to enter No 10 as prime minister was as much a fiscal conservative as a no-holds-barred state-shrinker.

True, some Tories – most evidently Sunak and those who helped run his leadership campaign – did at least recall (unlike the party in the media to whom the mini-budget initially appeared as manna from heaven) that there was rather more to their icon than simply slashing taxes.

But let’s not rewrite history here. An awful lot of their colleagues turned on Truss and against what she’d done only after it became apparent (admittedly very rapidly) that it had all gone horribly wrong. Had things turned out differently, you can bet they would have hailed her as something like the second coming. But things did go horribly wrong, and Sunak was drafted – not so much a departure from Thatcherism as simply another variant, and, as such, no less of a dead end than Truss. Unless – and until – the Tories finally move on and develop a truly 21st-century, forward-facing conservatism, then not only the party but the country as a whole looks likely to be stuck in that cul-de-sac forever.

Originally published at https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/tories-thatcher-curse-conservatives-b2404459.html

Unless the Conservatives pull off the mother of all comebacks between now and next year, it looks increasingly likely that Keir Starmer will be Britain’s next prime minister.  Whether he’ll move into Number Ten with a working majority, however, is a tricky question.

If an election were called tomorrow, then Labour could feel pretty confident of winning well in excess of 350 seats.  Trouble is it won’t be.  Turkeys, especially Tory turkeys don’t vote for Christmas and Sunak, if he follows the example of most of his predecessors, will hang on for as long as he can, hoping something will turn up.

There’s no guarantee, then, that the double-figures lead over the Tories which Labour currently enjoys will last until autumn 2024.  And don’t forget, either, that it’ll take an unprecedented 13-14 point swing to deliver it even the barest of bare majorities.

True, Starmer is now seen as a better bet by more voters than Sunak.  But his star-power doesn’t come close to matching Tony Blair’s in 1997.  Nor has the party’s recent performance in local elections so far matched what New Labour achieved in the run-up to its landslide victory back then.  So a horribly-narrow win, or even a hung parliament, is still a distinct possibility.

In that case, Labour’s ability to govern confidently may end up resting on some sort of deal with one or more of the UK’s smaller parties – whether it be simply for “confidence and supply” à la Theresa May and the DUP in 2017, or else involves a full-blown coalition à la David Cameron and the Lib Dems back in 2010.

And if those smaller parties have got any sense, then the price Starmer may have to pay for whichever arrangement he plumps for is a promise to, at the very least, look into the possibility of introducing a more proportional voting system for elections to Westminster.  

Cue speculation about the consequences of PR for the UK’s party system and in particular how it might lock in a supposed progressive majority and lock the Conservatives out of power – which is clearly the aim of some of those keenest on the idea.

Re-engineering the voting system in order to do down your opponent is, of course, by no means unusual. But it rarely works out quite as well as those who do the tinkering hope it will. Certainly, as others have noted, anyone who thinks PR will put an end to right-wing government in the UK should be careful what they wish for.

Indeed, anyone who, like me, favours a move to a fairer voting system should probably dial down their expectations of how much things would change.

PR would doubtless boost the number of MPs from Britain’s so-called “minor parties” and would very probably usher in a handful of new ones to boot, one or two of whom might last long-term.  But it is less likely than some of its advocates think to blow up parliament as we know it: rather than rendering the UK’s party system unrecognisable, it will reconfigure it.

To appreciate this, just look at what happened when another Westminster-style democracy – New Zealand – switched to proportional representation in the mid-nineties.

That switch did not, in the end, completely upend the country’s politics.  Yes, there were a few new entrants, and they were of precisely the kind we’d expect to see in the UK – not least from the populist NZ First and the neoliberal ACT on the right and the Greens and a left party (the Alliance) on the left.  But Kiwi politics fairly soon settled into a familiar pattern: essentially bipolar blocs led by Labour and by National (NZ’s Tories) alternating in office, with the prime minister in each and every case being supplied by one or other of them. The election to be held on the 14 October – the tenth under New Zealand’s PR system – shows little sign of breaking that mould.

In short, to imagine PR bringing about no change in the UK would be an exaggeration. But a complete implosion of politics as we know it? Unlikely. Long-established parties have an infrastructure and a degree of brand loyalty that mean many voters will stick with the devils they know.

That said, New Zealand should serve as a warning to the smaller party that’s most likely to pressure Labour on PR in a hung parliament or tiny majority scenario – the Lib Dems. In the end, there turned out to be no place in the new eco-system for a centrist party. Like I said, be careful what you wish for.

Originally published at https://www.politics.co.uk/comment/2023/10/06/advocates-of-proportional-representation-need-to-manage-their-expectations-just-look-at-new-zealand/

According to Enoch Powell, “There is one thing you can be sure of with the Conservative Party, before anything else – they have a grand sense of where the votes are.”

Given the government’s evident determination to double down on policies which appeal to particular demographics – most obviously older, whiter, less well-educated and often less well-heeled voters – this is still the case. However, that strategy – divide in order to rule, if you like – proving sufficient to secure Rishi Sunak re-election next year looks increasingly unlikely.

After getting on for fifteen long and often chaotic years in office, and with virtually all the economic fundamentals currently pointing in the wrong direction, the mid-2020s looks odds-on to produce the fourth of those heavy, albeit only occasional, defeats the party has suffered since 1945.

Odds-on, of course, isn’t the same as certainty. After all, Labour needs a huge swing simply to win the narrowest of narrow majorities at Westminster. Knowing this, and knowing that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair, Tory politicians haven’t necessarily given up the ghost – not yet at least.

And there are still factors working in their favour. The most obvious fact (and one that explains why Sunak and Hunt are content to oversee an increase in pension rates that would be regarded as ‘inflation-busting’ in any other context) is that older voters are not only more likely to vote Conservative, but far more likely to vote per se.

There’s also the nailed-on support of ‘the party in the media’ – papers like the Mail, the Telegraph, the Sun, and the Express. While they don’t directly determine the way people vote, they nevertheless contribute heavily to a climate of opinion that helps the Tories and hinders their opponents, not least by setting the agenda for broadcast news. Admittedly, promises to ‘stop the boats’ and slow progress toward net-zero have their downsides, alienating some voters at the same time as appealing to others. But make no mistake, we’ll be hearing about them endlessly between now and polling day.

Nor should we forget the way both broadcast and print outlets tend to reinforce the idea that the nation’s economy is essentially like a household’s. This persuades many people that, when times are tough, the government should be even tougher – misleading, maybe, but still an undoubted boon for what is still an essentially Thatcherite party.

Thatcher’s belief that public spending should be kept as low as possible will continue to animate the Tories, win or lose – though expect an increasingly fraught fight (both before and after the election) between Sunak-style ‘fiscal conservatives’ and Trussite tax cutters.

Whether a similarly bitter battle will take place between self-styled ‘liberal conservatives’ and the party’s anti-woke warriors is another matter, however. Even if election defeat removes a fair few of the party’s ‘Fuck off back to Francers’, Rishi Sunak, his tech-bro technocratic vibe notwithstanding, has done little or nothing to halt the party’s shift toward the populist radical right. It’s a shift that may have been initially inspired by the need to counter Nigel Farage, but it has since taken on a momentum of its own, supercharged by celebrity Brexiteers like Boris Johnson and their media cheerleaders and parliamentary stooges.

The chances, then, of anyone winning a post-election leadership contest without doubling down on that Eurosceptic, climate-sceptic, national-populist approach, while also calling for a smaller state that will supposedly “do less better” (all the while offering comfort to the country’s elderly and, indeed, its NIMBYs), seem vanishingly small.

Powell may be best known for the infamously racist and ultimately career-ending ‘Rivers of Blood speech’, but he was, first and foremost, the Conservatives’ first neoliberal populist. This is very much his party now. 

Originally published at https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/state-conservative-party

Ardent fans of the British monarchy needn’t lose any sleep at the sight of a few republican protesters making their feelings known during the King’s recent progress through the streets of Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh. Even the fact that the Scottish National Party’s new leader and First Minister, Humza Yousaf, would like to see an independent country choose an elected rather than a hereditary head of state should not cause them too much concern.

What will worry them, though, is the fact that rejection of the institution to which they themselves remain unwaveringly loyal seems to be rising, albeit only very gradually: according to this year’s British Social Attitudes survey, it now stands at 25 per cent, compared to 15 per cent 30 years ago.

Clearly, that hardly represents a clear and present danger to Charles and Camilla. The monarchy still commands majority assent and residual affection. And if public approval looks rather more lukewarm than it used to, that might well be due to people drawing a predictable (if not necessarily fair) comparison between the late Queen Elizabeth and her less popular son. If so, when the crown eventually passes to Prince William, support may tick up once again. Royal births, marriages and deaths, it seems, routinely do the monarchy a favour.

But even if that does happen, the rise of republicanism looks likely to continue. That’s because there is a marked contrast between the views of older and younger generations.

YouGov polling from last autumn, for instance, makes this very clear. When asked “Do you think Britain should continue to have a monarchy in the future, or should it be replaced with an elected head of state?” only 15 per cent of those aged 65 and over opted for a republic. But support for that option grew as the pollster travelled down the age gradient, finding favour with 20 per cent of 50-64 year-olds, 31 per cent of 25-49 year-olds, and a striking 40 per cent of 18-24 year olds.

True, the latter were the only group where support for a president exceeded that for a king or queen – and even then, the gap was a mere four percentage points. True, too, that the gap not only ran in the opposite direction when it came to their elders but was also much wider – 23 for 25-49-year-olds, 52 for 50-64 year olds and a whopping 64 points for those aged 65 plus respectively. Moreover, older Brits said they felt more strongly about the issue than did their younger counterparts.

But a closer look reveals that the “Don’t know” figure for those in their late teens and early twenties was 24 points. Even if only half of that age group break for republicanism in the future, that option stands at least a chance of eventually commanding majority support.

Yet nothing is set in stone. Whether that scenario ultimately comes to pass will depend in no small part on whether a cohort effect trumps a life-cycle effect – in other words, on whether young Brits retain their scepticism towards the monarchy as they age or whether, instead, they gradually grow more attached to the institution, either as a source of comfort and continuity in troubled times or simply as a celebrity soap opera.

What happens could also depend on shifts in party political loyalties. Predictably, perhaps, support for a hereditary rather than an elected head of state increases as you move from the left to the right of the political spectrum. In YouGov’s poll only half of Labour voters opted for a monarch, compared to just under seven out of 10 Lib Dems, and between eight and nine out of 10 Tories.

We don’t know for sure, of course, whether it’s love of king (as well as country) that makes one a Conservative, or whether it’s becoming a Conservative that inclines one towards the monarchy. But if there’s any truth at all in the latter, then any eventual swing of the pendulum back to the Tories would presumably bode well for Buckingham Palace.

Republicans, then, can’t afford to simply sit back, safe in the knowledge that their time will come. Fascinatingly, for all that those at or nearing retirement age feel so positively towards the monarchy, it is they who turn out to be most pessimistic about its continuation. When asked by YouGov whether we’d still have a monarchy in a hundred years’ time, only those aged 65 and over believed on balance (by 37 for yes to 39 for no points) that we wouldn’t. Every other age group, notwithstanding the fact that more of them were republicans, thought that we would – and by an 11 or 12 point margin.

Enthusiasm for a hereditary head of state may be waning, and enmity may even be on the rise. But this is Britain, after all: acceptance and apathy will probably win the day come what may.

Originally published at https://inews.co.uk/opinion/republicans-seem-think-time-coming-they-disappointed-2462420

July 20 is shaping up to be something of a Super Thursday — unless you’re Rishi Sunak. Although nothing’s certain in politics these days, there’s a serious possibility that the Tories could lose all three by-elections scheduled to take place before the summer recess.

The pain looks set to continue into the autumn when (presuming she does eventually quit) Nadine Dorries’s belated departure from the Commons will trigger another potentially tricky contest — one that may end up taking place alongside what might well prove a defeat for another beleaguered leader, the SNP’s Humza Yousaf.

If things do go badly, expect the Prime Minister (or if he goes into hiding, his party chairman Greg Hands) to play down the results as reinforcing the need for the Government to hold its nerve while the harsh economic medicine the country’s being forced to swallow supposedly works its magic. Anyway, by-elections aren’t an accurate guide to the outcome of the next election, right?

Wrong. The Tories are hoping that 2024 will turn out to be another 1992, when they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, rather than a 1997, when they were buried by a Labour landslide. So expect them to point to the fact that, between taking over from Margaret Thatcher in 1990 and going to the country a couple of years later, John Major lost four Tory-held seats on the trot — two in by-elections to the Lib Dems and two to Labour.

But, long-term, the stats tell a different story. As Lib Dem president and big-time polling nerd, Mark Pack, pointed out, research suggests that by-election defeats — especially if a bunch of them involve big swings — tend to bode badly for incumbent governments.

Even worse, history suggests that they can create panic in the ranks: it was the loss of the Conservatives’ 17,000 majority in Eastbourne on a 20-point swing to the Lib Dems in October 1990, for instance, that finally persuaded her MPs that Mrs Thatcher had to go.

It’s unlikely, though, that these by-elections will do for Sunak. Most Tory MPs have decided it’s Rishi or bust. But if they’re lost badly, morale will hit rock-bottom — especially if it looks as if people vote tactically.

It’s worth recalling on that score that there are precious few seats where Labour and the Lib Dems are in direct competition with each other. So if they get their act together and make it obvious to voters (albeit informally) who stands the best chance in each constituency, then the Conservatives are in even greater trouble.

Although the two main opposition parties don’t quite seem to have decided who takes precedence in Dorries’ Mid-Beds seat (even if a recent poll there brought better news for Sir Keir Starmer than for Sir Ed Davey), it’s already pretty clear they’ve made up their minds in Uxbridge and in Selby (Labour) and in Somerton (Lib Dem).

These contests will also afford parties a chance to road-test their election messages. Watch (and listen) carefully.

Originally published at https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/super-thursday-byelections-poll-results-rishi-sunak-professor-tim-bale-analysis-b1092911.html

George Orwell’s memorable take on Dickens, “rotten architecture, but wonderful gargoyles”, didn’t really fit the Conservatives – until recently, that is.

For most of its history, the party – run by relatively pragmatic leaders unconstrained by rank-and-file members and fuelled by no-questions-asked donations from business backers – might as well have been precision-engineered to win elections. Meanwhile, very few of the Tories we used to love to hate ever proved sufficiently nasty (or sufficiently comical) for us to call them to mind decades after they’d departed the scene.

But all that has changed. The architectural rot set in when, at the turn of the century, the then-leader William Hague persuaded his colleagues to award the final say in leadership contests to the grassroots. And it spread when some of the Tories’ biggest donors – instead of contenting themselves with simply paying an insurance policy against a Labour government and letting the politicians get on with it – began to demand a little more for their money: access, influence on the direction of the party (particularly over Europe), and honours, however controversial. The party in the media, too – proprietors, editors and columnists – became ever more ideologically vociferous. 

As a result, any MP hoping to lead the Tories will need to please not only their Commons colleagues but the Conservative crowd too – often by appealing, in an increasingly 24/7 and polarised public sphere, to its most atavistic opinions. And that – along with the need to stem any bleeding of support to its Faragiste flank – has shifted the party’s centre of gravity firmly to the nationalistic and authoritarian right.

At the same time, the gargoyles have grown wonderfully grotesque – none more so, perhaps, than the ultras of the European Research Group and the so-called Red Wall: step forward Jacob Rees-Mogg, Suella Braverman, Lee Anderson and Nadine Dorries.

But the greatest gargoyle of all, of course, is Boris Johnson – a populist politician so morally ugly that, in the end, not even his ardent fans in parliament, in the press and among the grassroots were able to save him from himself. 

Johnson’s early exit from the Commons, however, has arguably come too late to save the party he seemed to see as little more than a vehicle for his own all-consuming ambition. Rishi Sunak – too spineless to come to parliament and endorse the Privileges Committee’s excoriating judgement on his predecessor – shows no sign, for all his tech-bro bonhomie, of wanting to move beyond the culture wars. If anything, he looks increasingly likely to double down on the anti-woke, anti-migrant rhetoric as his promises to “deliver” on the economy look less and less likely to produce results.

Defeat at next year’s general election may, of course, be the moment the Tories are mugged by reality. But don’t assume as much. That rotten architecture and those wonderful gargoyles will likely push Sunak’s successor even further away from the mainstream. How long will it take the party get back there?

Originally published at https://www.newstatesman.com/quickfire/2023/06/conservative-party-broken