The Ritual Humiliation of Theresa May

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/opinion/theresa-may-conservative-conference.html

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MANCHESTER, England — The choice in British politics today is between the disastrous and the useless.

At its conference in Brighton last week, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party — reinvigorated by its surprisingly strong performance in the general election in June — reinforced its commitment to an unabashedly socialist program that would, if enacted, spell economic ruin for Britain.

In Manchester this week, the Conservatives’ annual gathering has dramatized their disunity, dramatic loss of confidence and fading grip on power — even as they hold the prime minister’s office.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Theresa May will deliver her closing speech, seeking to salvage what is left of her own authority and to raise the spirits of her disconsolate tribe. They will cheer her, but their hearts will not be in it.

How did things get so bad? Having lost her parliamentary majority in the election, Mrs. May has held on to office only with the support of the 10 members of Parliament from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party.

In particular, the prime minister’s weakness has been embarrassingly emphasized by the conduct of her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson. Though insisting that he remains faultlessly loyal, the flamboyant Mr. Johnson has done little to justify this claim in recent weeks, publishing a 4,000-word essay on Brexit in The Daily Telegraph setting out his own personal conditions for the Britain’s departure deal with the European Union. The anger among his cabinet colleagues is palpable. In private, it involves many expletives.

Yes, the foreign secretary remains popular among Tory party members and has a theatrical flair that appeals to many voters. His speech on Tuesday was full of his customary brio: a celebration of the nation’s “cyclotron of talent,” a declaration that “it is time to be bold” and a call for the British “lion to roar.”

But scrupulously loyal as he may have been to Mrs. May at the lectern, his maverick behavior elsewhere has been deeply destructive, shoring up his own position at the expense of the party’s credibility as a united force that deserves to remain in power. In an interview with the BBC’s Today program on Tuesday, Mrs. May had to resort to the formula that a strong leader does not surround herself with “yes men.” If this seems desperate, that’s because it is.

Though Mrs. May publicly aspires to hang on to fight the next general election — scheduled for 2022 — not a single delegate I have spoken to believes that she will do so. Inevitably, therefore, the conference has been a halfhearted beauty contest, as members of Parliament and other Conservatives have scrutinized potential leadership contenders, like Amber Rudd, the home secretary, Ruth Davidson, the party’s leader in Scotland, and the cartoonishly old-fashioned Jacob Rees-Mogg.

All deny that they are running for the top job, with varying degrees of plausibility. What matters more is that the party is behaving as if there will soon be a vacancy, and a decision to be made. Each time one of the prospective candidates avows his or her impregnable allegiance to the prime minister, the question of her fate simply becomes more vivid.

The ritual humiliation of Mrs. May — and let’s be clear, that is what it is — has ramifications far beyond the party conference and, indeed, Britain’s shores. Negotiating the country’s exit from the European Union would test the strongest of governments. But this is one of the weakest in living memory. It lacks clarity of purpose, collaborative drive and strong leadership.

The divisions between cabinet ministers over Brexit and its terms are scarcely concealed. In answer to Labour’s challenge, senior Tories lecture the voters on the past failures of socialism and attack Mr. Corbyn personally, instead of offering a fresh and contemporary defense of capitalism, freedom and compassionate Conservatism that fits the needs of the age.

Such a defense is there to be made. If the party could liberate itself from the past, it would see that the present is rich with possibility: the pathologies of globalization, the challenge of automation, the disruptive power of the digital revolution: All of this should be rich terrain for Conservatives, if only it were less attached to its bygone triumphs and better attuned to the insecurities and hopes of today’s voters — especially the young and those under 40, who have little taste for what the Tories are offering.

There have been piecemeal announcements at this conference. For example: a tweaking of the university fees system, help with home loans, a new English language and literacy plan and a plastic bottle recycling scheme. Nothing objectionable — but nothing to quicken the pulse or stir the imagination, either. Precisely when the Conservatives need to bare their souls and ignite the fire of their great political movement, they have behaved like timorous technocrats.

After more than two decades attending these events, I have rarely seen the Tories so intellectually exhausted and drained of fighting spirit. The government is less than the sum of its parts. The party is like a driverless car, visibly headed for a crash.

A vote of no confidence, an internal party coup, a collapse of the deal with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party? In such volatile times, any of these disasters could befall Mrs. May in the foreseeable future. It is entirely conceivable that this might be her last conference speech as the party’s leader.

So she has nothing to lose and much to gain by acting with audacity and passion, by taking risks, and by speaking over the heads of her fractious party to a nation that needs to be persuaded, as if from scratch, that the Conservatives crave power with a purpose, rather than power alone. Whether or not she dares to take this risk, the Manchester conference has only confirmed what should have been obvious already: The status quo is not an option.