There is a sense of real spiralling decline about British
politics right now. The Tories appear to be in full kamikaze mode. Their plane
has lost an engine and the last drops of fuel are being siphoned out of their
depleted policy tank. The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg tweeted that the
average age of the party member is now 71. Some observers claimed this was fake
news, but it seemed for a brief moment all too plausible.
Freezing student loans or offering more money for people to
buy their own homes just aren’t dramatic enough gestures for the scale of
resentment. When you’re a teacher or doctor, aged 35, and you’re sharing a room
in a communal house in London, you might indeed feel you were being treated
with contempt.
The Tories have no big ideas. Theresa May spouts
half-hearted platitudes. And her leadership rivals look woeful. The only
remotely credible candidates currently have long odds at the bookies. Sajid
Javid, for example. Or the talented Ruth Davidson, who can’t currently compete
because of the fact she doesn’t represent a Westminster seat.
The Conservative collapse is a big challenge to the
so-called Centrist Dads. We CDs are ridiculed by Corbynistas as the people who
despair of the Tories and Brexit, but have been hostile over the past two years
to Jeremy Corbyn. I did indeed vote Lib Dem in the 2017 election, albeit in a
constituency where my Labour vote has previously helped the Tory win. For the
first time in my life, I made the ‘tactical’ leap, because the alternative was
going to be a pathetic abstention.
Now, when I survey the political scene, an obvious truth is
staring me in the face. My ranting about Jez is really not going to help
anyone. I have been negative and angry for a couple of years and it’s
unproductive – both at a personal and political level.
As the Tory conference unfolds, it’s time to state the
obvious. People are turning to Corbyn because they are getting increasingly
frustrated and desperate. And he represents some kind of alternative to the
status quo.
Jez, for all his faults and profoundly unsavoury history, is
someone who rocks the boat and offers hope to people who feel that the current
economic system gives them little. While it’s clearly fanciful to believe there’s
some kind of intellectual renaissance on the left (as claimed here in a baffling FT article) or that Corbyn can deliver on his overblown promises, I accept that
it matters not one jot right now.
We are heading for a period of tumultuous change and
uncertainty. Almost anything can happen. The Tories might pull themselves
together, even though they show little sign of it now. If they dumped May and
plumped for a leader from outside the obvious group of candidates, I think
Corbyn might have good reason to be unnerved. But any change of leadership
would need to be accompanied by a new sense of direction and policy definition.
Are they really up to the challenge?
If Corbyn’s dream came true and the Tory government
collapsed, forcing an election, it seems entirely possible that he could now
win – something I admit I never believed I would ever write.
Nevertheless, the campaign would be far more difficult for
him this time, as his fence-sitting over Brexit would no longer wash. The
Remain voters who flocked to him in June would need to know for certain that he
was committed to the idea of a soft Brexit at the very least. And that leaves him
vulnerable in the pro-Leave Labour heartlands.
So we drift towards disaster with the divided and
incompetent Tories. Or we embrace, by default, a Labour Party in the hands of
hard-left ideologues. We career towards hard Brexit and long-term economic
decline or we do our best to stay in the single market and accept freedom of
movement, provoking a cultural and political backlash from outraged Leave voters.
I’ve followed British politics in depth since my early
teens, way back at the start of the 1980s. For the best part of 20 years, I was
engaged as an activist and candidate. Never have I felt such a sense of
profound unease about what’s to come. I glimpse an all-consuming cultural war looming
with the nation divided along a variety of fault lines: rich and poor; old and
young; urban and provincial; left and right.
The next year will be critical and may give us greater clarity
over what lies ahead. But unpredictable events abroad add another dimension to
our current woes. Not least the possibility of war between the United States
and North Korea, which is likely to prove the biggest conflict in half a
century and have a huge impact on the global economy, as South Korea, Japan and
China would soon be directly involved.
As the world polarises and extremes assert themselves,
history tells us that heartache will follow. Tomorrow will offer little refuge
for a Centrist Dad.
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