This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/14/theresa-may-save-tories-unpopulist-surge-populist-right-funeral-director
The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 2 | Version 3 |
|---|---|
| What can Theresa May do to save the Tories? Lead an unpopulist surge | What can Theresa May do to save the Tories? Lead an unpopulist surge |
| (6 days later) | |
| There’s no back-to-school pep yet from the Conservatives, nobody’s bought a new pencil case or made any big resolutions about the year ahead. Yet the realisation is creeping in that, after a summer of avoidance and the doomed carnival of the election, they do at some point have to go back to school. | There’s no back-to-school pep yet from the Conservatives, nobody’s bought a new pencil case or made any big resolutions about the year ahead. Yet the realisation is creeping in that, after a summer of avoidance and the doomed carnival of the election, they do at some point have to go back to school. |
| Philip Hammond and Liam Fox ushered in a new sobriety on Sunday with a joint promise: we will leave the single market and the customs union; there will be a transition period; it will be time-limited, though nobody can say what that time limit will be. If somebody had said a year ago that this is what would count for unity and purpose – that nobody in the party of government wants the nation to go off a cliff, and nor is anyone manoeuvring to stay in the EU by the back door – they would have been called a catastrophist. If someone had said two years ago that this is what the referendum would do to the party, it would have sounded like a witch’s curse. | Philip Hammond and Liam Fox ushered in a new sobriety on Sunday with a joint promise: we will leave the single market and the customs union; there will be a transition period; it will be time-limited, though nobody can say what that time limit will be. If somebody had said a year ago that this is what would count for unity and purpose – that nobody in the party of government wants the nation to go off a cliff, and nor is anyone manoeuvring to stay in the EU by the back door – they would have been called a catastrophist. If someone had said two years ago that this is what the referendum would do to the party, it would have sounded like a witch’s curse. |
| If reasonable parliamentary Tories are pinning their hopes on Hammond, that message hasn’t got through to the grassroots. The Conservative Home website’s regular poll last week about who should lead the party turned up the unsurprising result “none of the above” – 34% of respondents chose AN Other, who outstripped his or her nearest rival, David Davis, by 15 points, and he was the only cabinet minister to reach double figures. The fantasy of salvation from some unique individual who has it all figured out and is just waiting for the moment, has reached its apex. There is talk of “skipping a generation”, waiting for someone “new and fresh”, a Sleeping Beauty scenario, where the party can go into hibernation until awoken by the kiss of someone who doesn’t yet exist. | If reasonable parliamentary Tories are pinning their hopes on Hammond, that message hasn’t got through to the grassroots. The Conservative Home website’s regular poll last week about who should lead the party turned up the unsurprising result “none of the above” – 34% of respondents chose AN Other, who outstripped his or her nearest rival, David Davis, by 15 points, and he was the only cabinet minister to reach double figures. The fantasy of salvation from some unique individual who has it all figured out and is just waiting for the moment, has reached its apex. There is talk of “skipping a generation”, waiting for someone “new and fresh”, a Sleeping Beauty scenario, where the party can go into hibernation until awoken by the kiss of someone who doesn’t yet exist. |
| It is the nature of their project, rather than any individual’s shortcomings, that has exhausted their options. That’s not to say that those shortcomings aren’t epic, and won’t be retold as myth five decades hence, as we recall, awestruck, the buffoonery of Boris Johnson’s views on cake and wonder on Moral Maze whether any of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s six children has a duty to change his nappy. | It is the nature of their project, rather than any individual’s shortcomings, that has exhausted their options. That’s not to say that those shortcomings aren’t epic, and won’t be retold as myth five decades hence, as we recall, awestruck, the buffoonery of Boris Johnson’s views on cake and wonder on Moral Maze whether any of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s six children has a duty to change his nappy. |
| But the execution of Brexit has been their real undoing, for the simple reason that nobody with the competence to do it has any enthusiasm for it, and nobody with the enthusiasm has any competence. It’s not a bad working definition of the worst idea ever, but that’s democracy. It is fitting that the party that put it on the menu should have to cook it. | But the execution of Brexit has been their real undoing, for the simple reason that nobody with the competence to do it has any enthusiasm for it, and nobody with the enthusiasm has any competence. It’s not a bad working definition of the worst idea ever, but that’s democracy. It is fitting that the party that put it on the menu should have to cook it. |
| Theresa May’s early flirtation with a Kim Jong-un Brexit (we do it my way, and nobody needs to know what that way is because I am glorious) has left her rather weakened, but even that isn’t the problem. Her job now is to manage down expectations, and maturely present a series of choices which are hard because they are all suboptimal. | Theresa May’s early flirtation with a Kim Jong-un Brexit (we do it my way, and nobody needs to know what that way is because I am glorious) has left her rather weakened, but even that isn’t the problem. Her job now is to manage down expectations, and maturely present a series of choices which are hard because they are all suboptimal. |
| The job of smothering division and presenting a unified front – which has occupied the Conservatives for so long it has given them a driving sense of purpose quite devoid of ideological content – is now over. Whoever’s machinations land them at the top, the party is on a path whose only certain outcome is its own destruction. | The job of smothering division and presenting a unified front – which has occupied the Conservatives for so long it has given them a driving sense of purpose quite devoid of ideological content – is now over. Whoever’s machinations land them at the top, the party is on a path whose only certain outcome is its own destruction. |
| They can steer us out of Europe skilfully or ineptly, they can come up with a deal whose changes are relatively mild or utterly reckless, they can even go back to the nation with their finished product and let us all choose again, but they can never deliver what they promised – the dynamism and riches that sovereignty would bring – and they can never get back the years when “creative destruction” eclipsed all meaningful, day-to-day acts of government. | They can steer us out of Europe skilfully or ineptly, they can come up with a deal whose changes are relatively mild or utterly reckless, they can even go back to the nation with their finished product and let us all choose again, but they can never deliver what they promised – the dynamism and riches that sovereignty would bring – and they can never get back the years when “creative destruction” eclipsed all meaningful, day-to-day acts of government. |
| It has become routine to say that our politics are so febrile that predictions are worthless; yet I predict with absolute confidence that, wherever we are vis-à-vis Europe in March 2019, we will be so heartily sick of the Conservatives, disaffected from so many angles, disappointed on such reasonable grounds, impoverished in so many ways, that the last days of John Major will look like a honeymoon. | It has become routine to say that our politics are so febrile that predictions are worthless; yet I predict with absolute confidence that, wherever we are vis-à-vis Europe in March 2019, we will be so heartily sick of the Conservatives, disaffected from so many angles, disappointed on such reasonable grounds, impoverished in so many ways, that the last days of John Major will look like a honeymoon. |
| The energy of the populist right is spent: May’s job now is to embody the unpopulist right, the prime minister who tells you that winter is coming. She’s not so much caretaker as funeral director. It’s not an impossible rhetorical gig – the death of the empire, the end of British exceptionalism, the hard graft of returning to prosperity after you’ve just broken everything: these are all grim truths that prime ministers from Churchill to Wilson have managed to deliver quite elegantly. But it takes more than graceful prose: to make it work, you have to play to people’s intelligence rather than their adrenal glands. It helps, of course, if the situation you describe was created by some circumstance other than your own stupidity. | The energy of the populist right is spent: May’s job now is to embody the unpopulist right, the prime minister who tells you that winter is coming. She’s not so much caretaker as funeral director. It’s not an impossible rhetorical gig – the death of the empire, the end of British exceptionalism, the hard graft of returning to prosperity after you’ve just broken everything: these are all grim truths that prime ministers from Churchill to Wilson have managed to deliver quite elegantly. But it takes more than graceful prose: to make it work, you have to play to people’s intelligence rather than their adrenal glands. It helps, of course, if the situation you describe was created by some circumstance other than your own stupidity. |
| Concern trolling is, I believe, a Twitter term where you emulate sympathy and helpfulness to mask your deep and unseemly delight in an adversary’s chaotic downfall. That’s certainly the look I’m going for. But consider the Conservative party too deeply, and the concern becomes genuine. Nobody would envy May this role, nor Hammond any part in this shambles. Few would look at her nearest rival and say David “British Bulldog” Davis is the buck where everything should stop. | Concern trolling is, I believe, a Twitter term where you emulate sympathy and helpfulness to mask your deep and unseemly delight in an adversary’s chaotic downfall. That’s certainly the look I’m going for. But consider the Conservative party too deeply, and the concern becomes genuine. Nobody would envy May this role, nor Hammond any part in this shambles. Few would look at her nearest rival and say David “British Bulldog” Davis is the buck where everything should stop. |
| They re-enter parliament like seven-year-olds going back to boarding school: you can hate what they represent, but you’ve got to feel for the poor kids. | They re-enter parliament like seven-year-olds going back to boarding school: you can hate what they represent, but you’ve got to feel for the poor kids. |
| • Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist | • Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist |
| Brexit | Brexit |
| Opinion | Opinion |
| Conservatives | Conservatives |
| Philip Hammond | Philip Hammond |
| Liam Fox | Liam Fox |
| European Union | European Union |
| comment | comment |
| Share on Facebook | Share on Facebook |
| Share on Twitter | Share on Twitter |
| Share via Email | Share via Email |
| Share on LinkedIn | Share on LinkedIn |
| Share on Pinterest | Share on Pinterest |
| Share on Google+ | Share on Google+ |
| Share on WhatsApp | Share on WhatsApp |
| Share on Messenger | Share on Messenger |
| Reuse this content | Reuse this content |