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| The May doctrine: just go with the populist flow | |
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| Only when the tide goes right out can you finally see what’s left on the beach. So perhaps that’s why, although the water started retreating for David Cameron some time ago, it was only with the unexpected announcement this week that he’s retiring from parliament that something about Theresa May clicked sharply into focus. If Cameron has spent the summer revising what he thought he knew about her, he’s not the only one. | Only when the tide goes right out can you finally see what’s left on the beach. So perhaps that’s why, although the water started retreating for David Cameron some time ago, it was only with the unexpected announcement this week that he’s retiring from parliament that something about Theresa May clicked sharply into focus. If Cameron has spent the summer revising what he thought he knew about her, he’s not the only one. |
| May’s first two months have been a slap in the face for anyone expecting a dull continuity candidate, but it’s not the radical streak that will surprise anyone who followed her career at the Home Office; it’s more the reactionary one. The moderniser who made her name telling hard truths to her party has somehow ended up not just vowing to reduce immigration and severing ties to Europe – that much was inevitable after the referendum – but also bringing back grammars and bemoaning political correctness in universities. She won’t say what Brexit means for Britain, but the prime minister is inadvertently revealing quite a bit about what she thinks it means for the Conservative party. | May’s first two months have been a slap in the face for anyone expecting a dull continuity candidate, but it’s not the radical streak that will surprise anyone who followed her career at the Home Office; it’s more the reactionary one. The moderniser who made her name telling hard truths to her party has somehow ended up not just vowing to reduce immigration and severing ties to Europe – that much was inevitable after the referendum – but also bringing back grammars and bemoaning political correctness in universities. She won’t say what Brexit means for Britain, but the prime minister is inadvertently revealing quite a bit about what she thinks it means for the Conservative party. |
| It may be merely coincidence that Downing Street chose to come out for the 11-plus only days before Ukip, a longstanding champion of bringing back grammars, unveils its new leader but the message to Tory backbenchers is clear: May will defend their right flank more aggressively than her predecessor did. | It may be merely coincidence that Downing Street chose to come out for the 11-plus only days before Ukip, a longstanding champion of bringing back grammars, unveils its new leader but the message to Tory backbenchers is clear: May will defend their right flank more aggressively than her predecessor did. |
| The lesson she has clearly drawn from Brexit is that it wasn’t just about immigration or sovereignty but about what one ex-Downing Street staffer calls people who resent being told “it’s more complicated than that”; people sick of hearing that the evidence proves them wrong, that they can’t have what they want. (It’s a feeling some Corbyn supporters, furious at being told their heartfelt beliefs are naive or electorally unpopular, may recognise.) However inadvertently, by holding three referendums in five years, Cameron gave people who don’t normally get heard in general elections a voice and they’re not about to give it up. | The lesson she has clearly drawn from Brexit is that it wasn’t just about immigration or sovereignty but about what one ex-Downing Street staffer calls people who resent being told “it’s more complicated than that”; people sick of hearing that the evidence proves them wrong, that they can’t have what they want. (It’s a feeling some Corbyn supporters, furious at being told their heartfelt beliefs are naive or electorally unpopular, may recognise.) However inadvertently, by holding three referendums in five years, Cameron gave people who don’t normally get heard in general elections a voice and they’re not about to give it up. |
| And making the case for grammars, May explicitly tied the two things together. The referendum wasn’t just about Europe, she argued, but a more widespread feeling of people being “fed up with being ignored or told that their priorities were somehow invalid, based on ignorance and misunderstanding”. Which is undeniably true, but leaves hanging the awkward ethical question of what a democratically elected servant of the people should do if the people’s concerns ever did start to be based on ignorance or misunderstanding, or on evidence that crumbles to dust under cursory prodding. Point that out, and you’re an arrogant elitist. Surrender, and they’ll only blame you if it all goes wrong. If theirs turn out to be among the 90% of children rejected by shiny new grammars, will voters really instigate a backlash against themselves? | And making the case for grammars, May explicitly tied the two things together. The referendum wasn’t just about Europe, she argued, but a more widespread feeling of people being “fed up with being ignored or told that their priorities were somehow invalid, based on ignorance and misunderstanding”. Which is undeniably true, but leaves hanging the awkward ethical question of what a democratically elected servant of the people should do if the people’s concerns ever did start to be based on ignorance or misunderstanding, or on evidence that crumbles to dust under cursory prodding. Point that out, and you’re an arrogant elitist. Surrender, and they’ll only blame you if it all goes wrong. If theirs turn out to be among the 90% of children rejected by shiny new grammars, will voters really instigate a backlash against themselves? |
| Jeremy Corbyn demolished May over grammars at prime minister’s question time this week precisely because she didn’t have a leg to stand on. She couldn’t name a convincing expert supporting the return of grammars, resorting instead to arguing that they’d worked for her and Corbyn. | Jeremy Corbyn demolished May over grammars at prime minister’s question time this week precisely because she didn’t have a leg to stand on. She couldn’t name a convincing expert supporting the return of grammars, resorting instead to arguing that they’d worked for her and Corbyn. |
| At Westminster, that still looks like an intellectual admission of failure, the equivalent of arguing that cigarettes don’t really kill because your dad smoked and lived to be 100. But outside, where facts increasingly bounce off voters enraged by the very word “experts”, things can be very different. Personal experiences count. What May seems to be doing is responding to this changing mood as unsentimentally as she confronted the very different electoral challenges facing the Tories 15 years ago. | At Westminster, that still looks like an intellectual admission of failure, the equivalent of arguing that cigarettes don’t really kill because your dad smoked and lived to be 100. But outside, where facts increasingly bounce off voters enraged by the very word “experts”, things can be very different. Personal experiences count. What May seems to be doing is responding to this changing mood as unsentimentally as she confronted the very different electoral challenges facing the Tories 15 years ago. |
| What’s often forgotten about her infamous “nasty party” speech is that she never told the party it was nasty; she merely observed that voters thought so, and therefore the party had to knuckle down and accept it. As the old saying goes, “The people have spoken, the bastards”; it doesn’t matter whether they’re right or wrong. She appears now to be applying the same brutally simple logic – call it populist or nobly democratic, depending on whether you like the results – to bigger and more dangerous questions. | What’s often forgotten about her infamous “nasty party” speech is that she never told the party it was nasty; she merely observed that voters thought so, and therefore the party had to knuckle down and accept it. As the old saying goes, “The people have spoken, the bastards”; it doesn’t matter whether they’re right or wrong. She appears now to be applying the same brutally simple logic – call it populist or nobly democratic, depending on whether you like the results – to bigger and more dangerous questions. |
| What makes education a particularly interesting example of knuckling under and accepting the popular verdict, however, is the particular people whose verdict is being accepted. It’s a good indicator of how far the electoral ground is shifting quietly under all our feet, and not just because of this week’s threatened boundary changes. | What makes education a particularly interesting example of knuckling under and accepting the popular verdict, however, is the particular people whose verdict is being accepted. It’s a good indicator of how far the electoral ground is shifting quietly under all our feet, and not just because of this week’s threatened boundary changes. |
| The strongest advocates now of new grammars are not parents seeking good schools, but older people for whom school is a distant memory. Only 39% of people aged 35 to 44, the age group most likely to have children, support new grammars compared to 66% of over-65s, according to a recent ComRes poll. What makes this significant is that by 2020, more than half of voters will be over 55, a demographic earthquake intensified by the fact that older people are also more likely to vote. | The strongest advocates now of new grammars are not parents seeking good schools, but older people for whom school is a distant memory. Only 39% of people aged 35 to 44, the age group most likely to have children, support new grammars compared to 66% of over-65s, according to a recent ComRes poll. What makes this significant is that by 2020, more than half of voters will be over 55, a demographic earthquake intensified by the fact that older people are also more likely to vote. |
| That’s an existential crisis for Labour, which traditionally does badly with pensioners. But a referendum in which under-50s swung towards remain while older people – who were significantly more worried about immigration – swung decisively to leave makes it a problem for Tory modernisers too, a faction to which May belonged before Cameron was even elected. | That’s an existential crisis for Labour, which traditionally does badly with pensioners. But a referendum in which under-50s swung towards remain while older people – who were significantly more worried about immigration – swung decisively to leave makes it a problem for Tory modernisers too, a faction to which May belonged before Cameron was even elected. |
| Once their greatest headache was the party’s elderly membership, dismissed as horribly out of step with a younger country and a roadblock to the reforms necessary to win back power. | Once their greatest headache was the party’s elderly membership, dismissed as horribly out of step with a younger country and a roadblock to the reforms necessary to win back power. |
| But in an ageing nation, that’s slowly changing. Now it’s Labour’s younger and more restless membership that looks culturally out of step with the places it needs to win, and Tory pensioners who look practically au courant all of a sudden. What’s making more thoughtful Tories twitchy is that this feels like the beginning of something new in politics, a gradual surrender to the demographically inevitable. | But in an ageing nation, that’s slowly changing. Now it’s Labour’s younger and more restless membership that looks culturally out of step with the places it needs to win, and Tory pensioners who look practically au courant all of a sudden. What’s making more thoughtful Tories twitchy is that this feels like the beginning of something new in politics, a gradual surrender to the demographically inevitable. |
| Two months on, of course it’s too early for lasting judgments on where May is headed. It’s arguably too early even for history to judge Cameron. But it’s not impossible that in a few years’ time he will be remembered not just as the man who accidentally left Europe, screwed up Libya and gambled on austerity, but as the full stop marking the end of one era and the beginning of something different: the last leader to try – however unsuccessfully – to hold back the tide. | Two months on, of course it’s too early for lasting judgments on where May is headed. It’s arguably too early even for history to judge Cameron. But it’s not impossible that in a few years’ time he will be remembered not just as the man who accidentally left Europe, screwed up Libya and gambled on austerity, but as the full stop marking the end of one era and the beginning of something different: the last leader to try – however unsuccessfully – to hold back the tide. |