Can the Tories Detoxify?
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Title : Can the Tories Detoxify?
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Title : Can the Tories Detoxify?
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The first step to dealing with a problem is admitting you have one. Amidst the divisions and despair of Tory party conference, and after that speech, precious few Tories are willing to concede they do have a problem. I mean, how else are we to take their plans to freeze tuition fees and bung mega cash into Help To Buy other than signs of structural denial? Yet there are a small number of MPs who've grasped the gravity of the situation, and one of them is "blue collar Tory" and self-styled friend of the trade unions, Robert Halfon.
He starts his assessment where, funnily enough, Theresa May began hers way back in 2002 with a recognition the party is tarnished and out of touch with the majority of people. He says, "I am always amazed when I hear of those talking abstractly about the merits of capitalism, totally removed from the lives of most of our fellow countrymen and women ... Going on about Venezuelan socialism may delight Conservatives in the Westminster village but it means little to most ordinary voters ... Every time the Conservatives engage in old-fashioned opposition attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, all we do is advance their cause." Ouch. There is also a groping toward an understanding of why people have flooded into Labour, though this is stuck on the level of ideas (romantic and noble identification with the underdog) than an appreciation of the role interests have played in the rejuvenation of the party. And on the young, well, their abysmal support here is "nothing short of a calamity".
These are words that should focus the minds of smart Tories, the sprinkling for whom decadence hasn't yet meant blindness beyond the next opinion poll and Daily Mail editorial. But there is precious little evidence of movement for internal Tory party reform and political repositioning. When you look over the non-entities squabbling over Number 10 there isn't a single one of them that can sort the party out. At the most perhaps a wee jump in the polls is likely by virtue of not being Theresa May, but swapping one leader out for another cannot solve their problems.
Here Halfon is on the right tracks for where the Tories need to go if they are to stand a chance of dominating the 21st century as surely they did the preceding hundred years. Instead of getting misty-eyed over St Margaret, they need to go back even further to the Tory governments of 1951-1964. Here, unfortunately, their party showed its chameleon-like ability to adapt to the times. Labour forged a new post-war settlement and laid the groundwork for a more stable and equitable capitalism than the ruin of the 1930s, but we forget now what became the post-war consensus was consolidated under Tory rule. Yes, there were plenty of horrible things about them then but nevertheless there was enough of an appreciation of speaking to and being seen to serve workers' interests. Instead of frustrating aspirations from below, which is pretty much the story of the Dave and May governments, the Tories worked hard to co-opt them and subsequently shape them. A lesson, it seems, not lost on Halfon and a handful of other Tories like Heidi Allen, Sarah Wollaston, and Ruth Davidson.
The problem the Tories have is this route is closed to them. A quick chop and change cannot undo the sectional inertia driving the party. The election underlined their dependence on ageing voters and declining occupational sectors, and as their record has persistently antagonised pretty much all constituencies outside of this grouping, it would take something pretty drastic for the rising class of networked/socialised workers to break for the Tories in their millions. That 'something drastic' would have to be a substantive reboot as a technocratic and relatively innocuous centre right party on the model of Angela Merkel's CDU (minus the export of economic violence a la Germany's relationship with Greece). Tearing out the fangs and ripping out the claws that have made life miserable for millions of people is the only way they can detoxify and get younger, antipathetic voters to give them another look. Doing so, however, would require Tory bloodletting on a scale that would dwarf its current difficulties and those John Major had with his "bastards". Yet they either do this, or they surrender to a future playing second fiddle in Britain's electoral politics. What's it going to be?
The first step to dealing with a problem is admitting you have one. Amidst the divisions and despair of Tory party conference, and after that speech, precious few Tories are willing to concede they do have a problem. I mean, how else are we to take their plans to freeze tuition fees and bung mega cash into Help To Buy other than signs of structural denial? Yet there are a small number of MPs who've grasped the gravity of the situation, and one of them is "blue collar Tory" and self-styled friend of the trade unions, Robert Halfon.
He starts his assessment where, funnily enough, Theresa May began hers way back in 2002 with a recognition the party is tarnished and out of touch with the majority of people. He says, "I am always amazed when I hear of those talking abstractly about the merits of capitalism, totally removed from the lives of most of our fellow countrymen and women ... Going on about Venezuelan socialism may delight Conservatives in the Westminster village but it means little to most ordinary voters ... Every time the Conservatives engage in old-fashioned opposition attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, all we do is advance their cause." Ouch. There is also a groping toward an understanding of why people have flooded into Labour, though this is stuck on the level of ideas (romantic and noble identification with the underdog) than an appreciation of the role interests have played in the rejuvenation of the party. And on the young, well, their abysmal support here is "nothing short of a calamity".
These are words that should focus the minds of smart Tories, the sprinkling for whom decadence hasn't yet meant blindness beyond the next opinion poll and Daily Mail editorial. But there is precious little evidence of movement for internal Tory party reform and political repositioning. When you look over the non-entities squabbling over Number 10 there isn't a single one of them that can sort the party out. At the most perhaps a wee jump in the polls is likely by virtue of not being Theresa May, but swapping one leader out for another cannot solve their problems.
Here Halfon is on the right tracks for where the Tories need to go if they are to stand a chance of dominating the 21st century as surely they did the preceding hundred years. Instead of getting misty-eyed over St Margaret, they need to go back even further to the Tory governments of 1951-1964. Here, unfortunately, their party showed its chameleon-like ability to adapt to the times. Labour forged a new post-war settlement and laid the groundwork for a more stable and equitable capitalism than the ruin of the 1930s, but we forget now what became the post-war consensus was consolidated under Tory rule. Yes, there were plenty of horrible things about them then but nevertheless there was enough of an appreciation of speaking to and being seen to serve workers' interests. Instead of frustrating aspirations from below, which is pretty much the story of the Dave and May governments, the Tories worked hard to co-opt them and subsequently shape them. A lesson, it seems, not lost on Halfon and a handful of other Tories like Heidi Allen, Sarah Wollaston, and Ruth Davidson.
The problem the Tories have is this route is closed to them. A quick chop and change cannot undo the sectional inertia driving the party. The election underlined their dependence on ageing voters and declining occupational sectors, and as their record has persistently antagonised pretty much all constituencies outside of this grouping, it would take something pretty drastic for the rising class of networked/socialised workers to break for the Tories in their millions. That 'something drastic' would have to be a substantive reboot as a technocratic and relatively innocuous centre right party on the model of Angela Merkel's CDU (minus the export of economic violence a la Germany's relationship with Greece). Tearing out the fangs and ripping out the claws that have made life miserable for millions of people is the only way they can detoxify and get younger, antipathetic voters to give them another look. Doing so, however, would require Tory bloodletting on a scale that would dwarf its current difficulties and those John Major had with his "bastards". Yet they either do this, or they surrender to a future playing second fiddle in Britain's electoral politics. What's it going to be?
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You are now reading the article Can the Tories Detoxify? With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2017/10/can-tories-detoxify.html