One surprisingly interesting question to come out of the last two years – particularly with the December election now approaching – is what the Conservative and Unionist Party now represents for voters. By this point in 2019, do its core values remain the same? Can those voting for it still trust its MPs to be roughly the same kind of people?
Had Brexit been better managed within the government’s policy programme, or had it taken a shorter period of time to make a final decision, it might have been that the Conservative Party of today was still defined by its core values: monetary responsibility, intellectually-driven decisions, putting the breaks on anything it considers ‘too extreme’ and conserving the nation’s heritage – not least the Union – whilst guiding it steadily onwards. It might have been that a vote for the Conservatives still reliably meant a vote for stability, tradition and the status quo.
This is, however, not what happened. The pre-existing European divide within the party, which threatened to take it under before Cameron’s resuscitation, has combined with some truly disastrous tactical decisions. Not least among these has been the decision to react to the perceived electoral threat from Farage by taking on those policies themselves. This has, it is true, been a successful tactic for the Conservative Party in the past. It has, counterintuitively, passed some of the most progressive policies in the last century – not least LGBT marriage – as part of its core aim of winning marginal votes. Much of the modern Conservative Party (or at least the party pre-2016) was very close to the Liberal Party of a century ago. Traditionally, a functional Conservative Party moves with the times as the gatekeepers to what is then considered traditional Britain.
However, it has been a mistake to employ that same tactic here. Doing so has given Farage (and those supporting him, such as Arron Banks) the authority they feared he already had. Adopting UKIP’s policies is what has encouraged and fuelled Farage, leading to his all new and improved electoral vehicle of the Brexit Party. Furthermore, it has not mixed well with the party’s internal divides over Europe. In combination with the absence of Brexit opposition from Labour’s leadership, it has pushed the Conservative Party a long way out of balance.
Theresa May’s attempt to bluntly enforce the (slight) majority result, in the characteristic manner of someone who doesn’t hold that perspective, has morphed into core party policy. A party which was once divided between Europhiles and Eurosceptics now enforces Leave with an iron fist, rejecting internal debate and self-correction. It is the political equivalent of the anti-vaxxer movement – cutting off all mechanisms of defence, self-regulation and innoculation for which aspects of politics or ideology it should take on board. Even before 2016, this was not a party with strong-enough immune defences to take on Farage’s ideas.
The reason for this difference between the effectiveness of tactically taking on others’ views comes down to the party’s existing relationship with those ideas. Normally, the political ideas taken on are largely external and very deliberate. They are taken on in order to win voters and become part of the party’s identity over time, during which there is much debate over how the party should stand on the issue. The process for Brexit, however, has been more like that of triggering an autoimmune disease. The party already had strong opinions and was already strongly divided – that’s why Cameron wanted to use the referendum to settle it in the first place. Rather than a deliberate, manageable political manoeuvre, taking in Brexit has resulted in a shock and uncontrolled response.
What we have now ended up with is a Conservative Party which seems to have abandoned its core values, at least for the moment. These are decided by its members and leadership – the latter of which is now nearly indistinguishable from the Vote Leave campaign, which was found to have seriously breached electoral rules. It can no longer be confidently seen as the responsible party, having threatened to throw Britain off a no deal cliff to push through a deal which, despite the year or so of work on it, remains rushed compared to other projects on its scale. This is in addition to a Prime Minister who is well known to be almost the opposite of responsible, pursuing vanity projects which, like the £53 million garden bridge, sometimes never even materialise.
Few in this current iteration of the Conservative Party have much interest in holding up traditional Conservative values – especially in putting those values before anything else. Having put all its resources into winning over a new Leave voter base, its traditional voter base has its own decision to make: does the Conservative still party represent the same choice to its traditional voters – and does it still merit their support this December?
Global Retrospective 