The Tories have a lot going their way. They are going to do a boundary review that will make the new constituencies more Tory and less Labour friendly (and way less Lib Dem friendly, if such a thing can be imagined). The government looks like it is going to make ID mandatory at polling stations. The Labour Party still seem like they want to continue on with their suicide trip, flirting heavily with the idea of Rebecca Long-Bailey as their next leader. The Lib Dems have been once and for all destroyed, so there isn’t even a chance of them chipping away at the Tory majority from another angle.
In addition to all of this, there is another big roadblock to any party beating the Tories anytime within the next fifteen years, one that no one is really talking about in the media. It’s Westminster becoming hegemonically, culturally Tory, something that will deepen year on year.
The Conservative party fell short of a majority in 2010 and formed a coalition government with the Lib Dems. This meant that although Labour stock fell, we had a situation, probably never to be repeated in any of our lifetimes, when three political parties were highly relevant in the whole of the country. The Tories and the Lib Dems since they were in government; Labour, because it was believed that it was very likely they could form the next government. After the 2015 general election, everything swung much further the Tories direction. Yet within a year of winning what was a slim majority, Cameron was gone post-EU referendum. The Brexit result both threw everything up in the air and meant that leaving the EU sucked up all the political oxygen. After the 2017 general election, we were back to hung parliament territory. The Tories seemed to be clinging on the whole way in spite of the weakness of the main opposition party.
Now, the Tories have a big majority with Labour and the Lib Dems in pieces. What were witnessing is the first moments of what is likely to be a long period of true Tory hegemony within Westminster. The deeper this goes, the harder it will be for the country to emerge from it. I’ll now explain why.
First of all, I know the line about how Westminster is so out of touch with the rest of the country and what happens in the bubble doesn’t reflect what goes on in Workington, blah, blah, blah. Except, when you stop and think about this, it only goes so far. Take Euroscepticism. No one really cared about this that much before the EU referendum was called. It just wasn’t a big issue for the vast majority of people. Now, it is the major cultural schism affecting the whole country. Like it or not, within a country as centralised as the UK, most political weather is made in Westminster and then radiates outward, slowly sometimes, but it happens nonetheless.
What we’re seeing in Westminster at present is everyone coming to terms with the fact that the Tories are likely to be in power for the next decade. The effects of this are wide-sweeping. In-house public affairs people at big companies who are anti-Brexit were sometimes happy to be critical of the Brexit process and swing their elbows a bit pre-election; now, everyone wants to play nice with the government. One, there is now no way to stop Brexit, so there is no value in trying to spend political capital trying to do so; two, this government and very possibly its successor will be in power for a large chunk of the rest of these people’s working lives. Everything will become way more Tory-friendly in Westminster, very quickly.
In think tank world, most of the policy types who are floating around out there in the Westminster ether are going to work for Tory-leaning outfits. That’s where all of the policy action is going to be over the next ten years at least, and if actually changing anything means something to you, working for a Tory-outfit (or at least one with good contacts into the Conservative party) starts to look de rigueur. Particularly given Labour seems to be in no mood to realise that one of the big mistakes they have made over the past decade is to allow all of the non-aligned thinking to drift to the right at their expense. Even more policy ideas will now be slanted toward the centre-right/right.
In the media, the space on the right to talk about things will get bigger while the left space shrinks. More liberals will try and make their peace with the Tory hegemony, making the tent the Tories are putting together larger while the Labour tent shrinks even further. Perhaps Starmer or Phillips can stop this rot – if Long-Bailey gets it, this process will become turbo-charged.
Again, there are ways to halt this process, even now, but it would require a Labour Party way less insular than what we are seeing at present. I’ll leave you to wrestle with how likely you think that is to emerge any time soon.
Interesting piece as always. I don’t disagree at all on the strong likelihood of the Tories securing the next 15 years. It seems inevitable at the moment. But I think it is important to recognise that, if this is the case, the fault lies entirely with the LibDems and the Labour Party. They can take the necessary action to learn from defeat, stop playing victim and take responsibility for making a targeted and palatable ‘offer’ that appeals. They clearly have no desire to do that right now but who knows that one or other of them (but not both!) might develop such a desire – at least either after the next, or the next again defeat.
But, as you are gazing over the horizon, there is another couple of alternatives:
1. After the next defeat, the umpteenth new leaders of the opposition parties might opt for the progressive alliance route. Yes, this will blow their chances for all time – but the consequent disintegration (neither have a right to exist) may force the emergence of a new or merged party or parties. They both having a cracking opportunity with the Green agenda – but I’m thinking ‘takeover’ more than ‘alliances’.
2. If the Tories are in power for 15 years without an effective opposition- they will tear themselves apart. These people (all politicians – not Tories) crave an adversary. They will find it internally if not externally. And Westminster and the country will get fed up. Then they will be out of power for a 10 years or so – but they’ll regroup. They always do. But by then British politics will be entirely different. The opposition need to spend some time now, as you are doing, working out how that future will emerge based on likelihood- not desire.
If this happens
Then look no further than Sir Nick Clegg
That shit selfish decision in 2010 by him and the idiots around him to go into coalition was the springboard
The right has ended the Liberal party
First past the post will mean huge amounts of tory rule but labour will survive as the only opposition as even they will elect a decent leader in the next 10 years after more battering
Would like to know if any liberal member agrees that they are out of business for a century at least
At least Clegg has found a job
That shit selfish decision in 2010 by him and the idiots around him to go into coalition was the springboard
What do you think would have happened in 2010 had Clegg decided not to go into coalition?
The only plausible scenario I can see resulting from that is a minority Conservative government limping on for about six months before holding another election (no Fixed-term Parliaments Act, remember) which would almost certainly have returned a small Conservative majority, in the mirror image of 1974.
I suppose in that case the Liberal Democrats could have continued, untainted by ever actually having to make any decisions, to be the repository for the ‘plague on all your houses’ votes which deserted them in 2010-2015. They’d have given up any pretence of actually being a serious party of government, obviously, but then (a) it turns out that that wasn’t why people were voting for them and (b) they’ve ended up there anyway, so maybe that wouldn’t have been much of a loss.