No True Conservative
The purity spiral the post-Brexit Tories find themselves in is a danger to their existence. But it is also a danger to us all.
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Purity spirals get us all in the end.
Well that’s not true really. If I were to ask a normal person, someone who didn’t work in politics, media, academia or the third or public sector, what a purity spiral was they would probably look at me somewhat baffled and assume I was trying to sell them a water filter.
So when I say “us all” what I really mean is the kind of person who is likely to read this newsletter.
But many of us do recognise the dangers of the purity spiral both to ourselves and to the strength of our politics.
We know that in the moment we’re in we have to be a little more careful than we used to be to say what we think. We obfuscate, we talk around things. We know that the slightest slip could cause even those closest to us to turn against us.
We also know that this leaves too much undiscussed and under-examined. And that leads to policy mistakes that blow up in our faces.
Those of us who have been through a cancellation know quite how exquisitely painful that is. Some will have tried their absolute hardest to make sure they never feel that pain again. Others have realised that once cancelled you stay on the lists (and there are real lists).
Much has been written about the new McCarthyism of the left. Some of it by myself. It worries me a lot. The ever-narrowing boundaries that constrict us. But this is not a post about that. I have written about it repeatedly and it was even the topic of my TEDx talk last year.
But there is a sense that this is a problem only on the left. It isn’t.
Within 24 hours I saw this tweet from Tim Montgomerie:
And this column from Tim Stanley:
Both Tims are invoking the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy where they are the final arbiters of all that is Conservative (or conservative) and therefore anyone who disagrees with them is, in a fundamental way, simply not a conservative (or Conservative).
Two days and two Tims. But this is happening on the right more and more often in the UK and elsewhere.
The Tories are in trouble and they know it. Their electoral strategy - such as it is - is to lash out at Keir Starmer and hope some of the mud they are throwing sticks. They don’t have much of an agenda for the coming year other than trying to pass the unworkable Rwanda legislation and brief potential tax cuts.
The former won’t work even if it passes - and that’s still a significant ‘if’. So the political energy being expended on it will never repay them in electoral benefit.
The latter might work as a narrative for the Tory-supporting press to cling onto when they have so little else to say. It is less likely to do so as people walk into the polling booth thinking about whether they feel better off now than they did four years ago - or fourteen for that matter.
But even on these two positions, where the government is bending as much as it can to accommodate its Tankie tendency, they are still being accused by those same Tankies of not going far enough. And often in the language not of policy disagreement, but of not being ‘True Tories’.
A lot of this is - of course - post-election leadership positioning. A question of who can best tickle the Tory membership sweet spot. But that there is a sense that this is how far they have to go to do that tells us worrying things about who those members are and how many of them are also of the ‘no true Conservative’ mindset.
We got a taste of that when they elected Liz Truss as leader. But I strongly suspect that previous contest will be as nothing compared to what is to come.
For their faults - and they are legion - Sunak and Truss were fighting over two different interpretations of what it means to be a right wing Tory. They were not claiming to speak for the soul of the Tory party.
But think about what all the talk about readmitting Nigel Farage might actually be about. It is signalling from those inside the party that their fellow MPs and comrades are not nearly as true a Conservative as Farage is - and by reflection, as they are.
So if this is all just positioning, what does it matter?
Well because you don’t position yourself for nobody. An audience that the people weighing up their options consider to be a majority within the party will find these messages appealing.
But more than that, positioning shapes who you are in politics and who you are able to be. The audience you are playing to are the ones who will continue to demand that purity after you’ve got what you want. And they know - especially from recent years - how much power they have over your fate. So you never tack back to the place you thought you might. And the position stops being expedient and starts being fundamental. That is until someone more extreme comes along to challenge you.
Don’t think the Tories could get more extreme? Think again. Those of us on the liberal left used to think that Priti Patel was as bad as it got for Home Secretary - in fact, we used to say the same about Theresa May. Then along came Suella. The lesson is - there are always new depths to plumb.
The Tories are extremely likely to lose the next election - and possibly by a considerable margin.
When Parties first go into opposition they rarely tack back towards the centre. And we can already see the contours of the Tory conversation to come in the language of the Tims above. It may be quite some time before the Tories can pull themselves out of the purity spiral they are nosediving into. It will feel like a comfort zone to them. They can tell themselves they lost because they just weren’t Tory enough.
For some Labour supporters, this might feel like good news. A Tory party constantly trying to outdo each other with their puritanical Thatcherite, xenophobic zeal are likely to make themselves even less electable.
But if the old adage that Oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them holds true (and let’s remind ourselves just how few years of its existence Labour has actually been in government) then we might just end up with a party still in the depths of that purity spiral leading us all.
The possibility of that scares me. So yes, I think the Tories may be making themselves more and more unelectable. I think there is even a possibility they may actually tear themselves apart.
But I cannot find too much joy in watching the fireworks when there is just a chance of danger they could take the whole country with them.
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What I’ve been up to
As ever we have released two episodes of House of Comments - the first on What to look forward to in election year and the second discussing the UK and US strikes on the Houthis and the ongoing Post Office scandal.
Do please have a listen to House of Comments. We’re available wherever you listen to podcasts and we are that rare thing - two women having a decent - and occasionally argumentative - chat about politics. Charlotte and I come from very different political perspectives so we have a lot that we don’t agree on. And that’s great!
I’ve also been on GB News a lot as ever. Here’s a clip of me responding to Liz Truss’s “honours” list