Operation Leave All Tories Behind
Russell Jones, author of 'The Decade in Tory' and 'Four Chancellors and a Funeral', on the worst week yet for Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives
Most Prime Ministers boast of being single minded, but Rishi Sunak’s commitment to efficiency has reduced him to a lot less than that. This week he compressed The Longest Day down to a couple of hours, as part of his efforts to streamline everything, including the number of Tory MPs.
I’m not alone in doubting his strategy. When selling yourself as a detail-oriented and decisive leader, it’s perhaps not ideal that your excuse for beshitting the national bed is that Special Advisors made you do it. He rudely abandoned Normandy veterans, like a Captain Ill-Mannering being run by Spads Army.
‘Stupid boy,’ said his MPs.
‘Don’t panic!’ replied Downing Street.
‘We’re doomed,’ despaired his MPs.
And so Operation Damage Control leaped once more into action, banged its head on the doorframe, and had to have an immediate lie down. Sunak’s media appearances were cancelled, a great plan, except it left TV news no option but to endlessly repeat promo clips from the interview that had caused the crisis in the first place.
It was Sunak’s worst week to date, and then inevitably it became even worse. Having run his entire campaign as a Nigel Farage tribute act, Sunak’s legs were knocked from under him when the real thing announced his lucrative World Tour of Clacton.
There’s a much-debunked claim that Farage had once been a member of the National Front, although I don’t blame anybody for believing it. In the 1970s, NF policies were exactly what Farage has called for ever since: Stop immigration; Reject Common Market; Restore capital punishment; Make Britain great again; Scrap overseas aid; Rebuild armed forces.
But Farage wasn’t in the NF, not least because the NF had already splintered by the time that he entered the political fray. The group’s Neo-Nazi leader had left to set up the British National Party, although it’s hard to see why, since he admitted the two organisations had ‘scarcely any difference in ideology or policy’.
Nick Griffin later attempted to transform the BNP into a mainstream political force, largely by dressing up as a mid-ranking politician and denouncing violence on the odd occasion he remembered to. The BNP suddenly started winning council seats, in some constituencies attracting 16% of voters. They seemed unstoppable, right until the moment Griffin appeared on BBC Question Time in 2009, and people saw him for what he was.
Support evaporated, but Griffin’s appearance had attracted unprecedented audience figures. Most tuned in for the bearbaiting, but the controversy put bums on seats, and the media took notice. It was time to find a new controversy-magnet, and Nigel Farage was more than happy to volunteer.
In the whole of 2003, Farage was mentioned just 36 times in national media. By 2012, it had risen to 23,000, his party still hadn’t had a single MP, and the term Brexit hadn’t even been invented. Inevitably, the referendum further turbocharged Farage into omnipresence. Farage has appeared on Question Time 36 times, more than anybody else this century.
Both the Tories and New Labour had generated reams of disenchanted, left-behind voters, and UKIP offered them a home. They were by no means all racists, most of them just politically disengaged people who had been ignored by other parties.
However, it’s a fair bet that plenty of Farage’s supporters had been sympathetic to fascists only a few years before: the fall in the BNP vote corresponded closely to the rise of UKIP, and their major policies were those same six National Front policies. There was, to coin a phrase, ‘scarcely any difference in ideology or policy’.
As UKIP ate into the Conservative base, panicky Tories moved right to hold on to the votes of those who were comfortable with NF policies, except for those relating to stabbing. Not every Conservative was keen on this move. Cameron called his membership ‘mad, swivel-eyed loons’, and a former Tory chairman despaired that an activist fixation on foreigners was driving MPs to ‘obsessive and destructive behaviour’.
That much is clear. Five of those six NF policies are now officially shared by the Conservatives. Sunak’s choice of Deputy Chairman, Lee Anderthal, advocated the return of the sixth – capital punishment – just 48 hours into the job. And Suella Braverman is openly lobbying to merge with Farage’s Reform party
Like many of his predecessors, Sunak has spent 18 months attempting to harmonise with the mood music sung by Reform (previously UKIP, out of the BNP, with reference to the National Front). Fortunately, his team have learned from their mistakes, which is why they are now making even more impressive mistakes: fresh from leading his sinking ship to the Titanic Quarter, the Conservatives elected to launch their car crash manifesto at Silverstone.
Sunak promises ‘long-term decisions for a brighter future’, but just in case his dedication to efficiency requires the bright future to be turned off for budgetary reasons, the Braverman clique have already announced they have another manifesto ready to go, designed to coincide with Farage once again.
There is scarcely any difference in ideology or policy.
And I expect Sunak’s latest long-term decisions to be reversed by the weekend.
Russell Jones is the author of two books, The Decade in Tory, and most recently, Four Chancellors and a Funeral. His forthcoming book Tories: The End of an Error, the final volume in the ‘Torygeddon’ Trilogy, is currently crowdfunding on Unbound. His legendary #The Week in Tory threads can be found @RussInCheshire on X/Twitter
You can read his epic take on the past 14 years of Tory rule in the new print edition of Byline Times, available in all good shops next week
The sliver of good news is that Reform isn’t a political party but a company controlled by a 7-times loser whose approval ratings are on the same shitter as Sunak’s.
I stopped reading at "Deputy Chairman, Lee Anderthal,"
Serious writing does not use such nonsense terms but joke pieces do.