This isn’t about the Tory party. It’s a battle for the soul of British politics
|
Version 0 of 1. There is only one political party in Britain today that wants more powers ceded to the European Union and more migrants crossing the Channel. Its leader is Nigel Farage. He’d deny it of course, but the last thing Ukip needs is a lower foreigner head count or European reform because its stock-in-trade is discontent. Despair when other politicians can’t make everything better is the fuel in Farage’s tank. If Britain found itself outside the EU with a draconian visa regime to prevent Polish plumbers boarding the Eurostar, the spirit of Ukip would not dissipate; it would coalesce around another supposed source of social and economic contamination – probably poorly integrated minority communities or alleged Muslim disloyalty – because Faragism is a strain of nationalism, and that is the road that nationalism always eventually travels. Ukip sells cries of protest to people with deep-rooted problems who feel voiceless. It aggravates grievance to expand its market. This is a different business model to the one the so-called mainstream parties should pursue. They are elected as purveyors of credible solutions. Farage is not just a new entrant in the marketplace for votes where loyalty to the old brands is fading; he is waging a culture war against the politics of practical solutions and workable imperfections. There should be no doubt as to which side the Tories stand on in that contest, and sometimes David Cameron appears to understand as much. His general election strategy is built on the assertion that the Conservatives alone command a “long-term plan” to steer the country through dangerous times. Yet the evidence of nearly a decade as party leader shows that Cameron has a fickle relationship with long-term thinking and with plans. His eyes are currently fixed on next month’s Rochester and Strood byelection, triggered by the defection of MP Mark Reckless to Ukip. That battle has now been inflated into a test of the prime minister’s capacity to check a Farage advance. A detachment from Conservative HQ is setting up in Rochester; every Tory MP is expected to visit the constituency three times; cabinet ministers are meant to make five trips; flashmobs of eager Conservative youth will be bussed in. No door will go unknocked. Covering the ground offensive is the airborne message of aggressive Euroscepticism. Downing Street has let it be known that Cameron sees curtailment of the free movement of people as a central pillar in his plan to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s EU membership. That would require consent in Brussels for treaty changes that no one on the continent wants. His plan cannot be enacted in time for the referendum he wants to hold in autumn 2017, so either he is preparing to join an “out” campaign, or he is heading for a humiliating climbdown that would boost the out campaign more than his endorsement ever could. Either way, it is a victory for Ukip and their allies in the Tory ranks who have pursued a strategy of ratcheting Cameron towards the European exit. Every notch along the track is accompanied by mumbles of frustration from Tories who want to stay in Europe, or want to keep the option open, or just recognise that their leader is diminished by the ritual of begging for mercy from people who want to control and then destroy him. Yet the voices of Tories who deem Ukip appalling are barely raised. Ken Clarke has warned Cameron against chasing the “daft ambitions” of his party’s hardliners. Dominic Grieve has derided plans to abandon international human rights obligations as “unworkable” and “almost laughable”. But they are easily dismissed as the obsolete old guard bemoaning, as every retired generation does, the folly of impetuous usurpers. Younger MPs who sympathise with the liberal grandees keep a low profile. Many are guided by principles of unity and loyalty to the leader. Six months before the general election, few MPs want to out themselves as rebels and wreckers. Most hope to avoid a schism or, more realistically, defer it until after polling day. Some liberal Tories look at alternative leadership candidates and conclude that Cameron and Osborne, for all their flaws, are as good as it gets. Faith in the incumbent leadership to guard the flame of Tory moderation is misplaced, as is the belief that message-discipline holds the party together. The tug of war has already started, but only one side is tugging. There are Conservatives who wish their party would project the same crusading passion about low pay and housing shortages as it does about foreign benefit cheats and Brussels bureaucrats, but they dutifully await permission before taking up their end of the rope. This is not a crude contest between left and right or between old-style “wets” and neo-Thatcherite hardliners. There are Eurosceptics who think it was a mistake to scrap the 50p top rate of income tax; there are advocates of immigration clampdowns who also believe the party sounds too punitive in its treatment of benefit claimants. The real battle is between two modes of politics. One engages with the challenge of complexity. It levels with people about the causes of their misfortune. It recognises failings in the EU but balances them with the benefits of membership. It understands anger about migration in the context of pressure on public services. To those who feel left behind by bewildering economic change, it offers help catching up. The other mode sees grievance as a commodity to be mined for electoral profit. To those who feel left behind, it offers scapegoats for blame. In place of policy it offers facile homily – closing the gates, storming the citadel, sticking two fingers up to the establishment. It is clear which is more viscerally exciting. Increment, nuance and moderation have become deeply unfashionable – watchwords of a bloodless, self-hating technocracy that feels obliged to constantly apologise for its elite education and patrician impulses. But the alternative – accepting the rage of a minority as sovereign and refusing to defend the apparatus that has yielded stable and civilised government for a generation – is not where responsible politics should go. Cameron is the quintessential candidate of patrician elitism, which is perhaps why he plays with populist gesture so casually. He struggles to understand why anyone would vote for a vulgar party like Ukip, which is why he thinks they can be teased away with his own dilettantish tribute act. He depicts Brussels as an OK Corral where a gunslinging prime minister can beat bad-guy bureaucrats to the draw, and pretends that population flows can be controlled by yanking “emergency brakes”. This would matter less if the battle was simply over the future of the Tory party. It needs to choose whether it is an organisation that believes in responsible government for the many, or would rather squander its good name lending respectability to Farage’s agenda of embittered English nationalism. The proper place to work that one out is in opposition. Yet it is happening while Cameron still holds the levers of power. He has duties to the whole country. The terrain Ukip contests is the soul of British politics. Is it too much to hope for that our prime minister might choose the side of evidence over anecdote, reason over fury, truth over fiction? |