I have a friend. This might be hard for those of you who read my articles to believe, but there you go. People are odd. To spare his blushes, let us call him “Robert”.
Robert is, like me, at that stage where others refer to him as middle-aged. He prefers “Late Youth” and expends considerable time and sweat in confirming this (to his own satisfaction and others’ amusement). He was privately-educated, attended one of the world’s leading universities and is engaged in what can only be termed a professional career. He is married to another well-educated professional, has children and owns a house in that leafy part of the country which, before they discovered Fulham, would have been termed the stockbroker belt.
If you had to design a stereotypical Conservative voter, you would end up with someone very like Robert. But in real life, neither he nor Mrs Robert actually vote Tory.
In truth, they are privileged enough not to require much from the government. They do not qualify for benefits, nor do they need them. Medical insurance allows them to avoid queues in the NHS and, if they choose to use state schools, a nice catchment area, tutoring and (when required) a dose of middle-class pushiness will ensure their children get into decent universities. The neo-liberal consensus works well for them and any party which hews to it is worthy of their vote.
That Robert wants little from the government works to the Conservatives’ advantage for their years in power have given him little. The economy has been, to be charitable, sluggish and his tax bill has risen. The state of the common weal has declined – even the country’s leafier parts have almost as many potholes as trees. If it does not affect him personally, he is aware of NHS waiting lists.
However, because the performance of politicians is relatively unimportant to his day-to-day life, he can choose to cast his vote based on more than bread and butter reasons. For his wife and him, it has become less a way of getting what they want or need, more a method for signalling who they are, the electoral equivalent of a bumper sticker. They are educated. They are sophisticated. They care. Both about those less fortunate and about the planet. They are cosmopolitan and open to new experiences. They appreciate what they consider to be the finer things in life. In other words, they believe they are everything they believe the current Conservative Party is not.
Things were fine under David Cameron. He was one of them. He had kitchen suppers and an intriguing spice rack. He holidayed in Cornwall. He hugged a husky. And a hoodie. He lived in Notting Hill, for goodness’ sake.
But it has all been downhill since then.
To Robert, the E.U. was primarily about mobility (although the attraction to the educated middle class of a system which vests power in the educated middle class should not be denied). It offered easy, queue-free access to the continent’s more chi-chi areas and held out the prospect that he might be able to move there. A desire which, unlike those lower down the social order, he had conceived and thought achievable but which, unlike those higher up, he was not confident he could satisfy without assistance.
Since mobility was at the heart of his fondness for Brussels, it was only reasonable to conclude that it underlay the enmity of those on the other side. He liked the E.U. because it allowed him to go out into the world, they must have disliked it because it allowed the world to come to them. Had that awful Farage not stood in front of a poster of immigrants trying to enter Eastern Europe? He was, of course, no Conservative, but Theresa May was. Acute enough to have observed that she was a member of the “nasty party”, she was not acute enough to have spotted that, with her “Go Home” vans and the Windrush scandal, she appeared quite nasty herself. It was hard to avoid the conclusion that the party was more than a little racist, that least forgivable of modern sins.
Then came Boris, the Brexit bounder. While he could just about be stomached in contrast to Corbyn (there was always the fear that the latter might actually mean what he had so often said) when that threat to the social order (i.e. the housing market) passed, it was hard to forget his past indiscretion. Nor those he continued to commit. The Rwanda plan was obviously a case of straight-forward racism (the Home Counties fortunately not hosting many refugee camps). Levelling-Up sounded suspiciously like a way for the hard-working South to fund the feckless North. More than that, though, we were the people. All those Northern accents. Nadine Dorries. Lee Anderson. Neither of them would fit in at a dinner party. He probably thinks za’atar is a video game.
On Liz Truss, we shall spend fewer words than she spent days in office, contenting ourselves with saying “The Mortgage Rates! The Mortgage Rates!”
Rishi might appear better but he doesn’t seem very competent. Nothing has changed, not even the mortgage rates. He bears the mark of Brexit upon him. He is worryingly wobbly about the environment (a former arts student, Robert accepts the gloomiest forecasts of scientists as gospel truth). He may have fired her, but he brought back that awful Braverman woman from the well-deserved obscurity into which, in her one praiseworthy action, Liz Truss had cast her. He gave her a platform for her hateful rhetoric about “hate marches”. Robert’s education may tell him that post hoc ergo propter hoc is a logical fallacy, but that doesn’t stop him using it, particularly to link Suella Cruella (and Rishi by extension) to Tommy Robinson.
The party for people like us unfortunately no longer has many people like us.
It is reported that the Conservatives have given up on the “Red Wall” and are planning to concentrate their resources on shoring up the “Blue Wall” in the upcoming election. The reshuffle confirms this, showing a bit of ankle to Robert by removing nasty Suella and replacing her with smooth Dave, attempting to make him think that the Tories still party like it’s 2012. A cynic may note that as a result of the moves, the Chancellor is a man known to have no further ambitions, the Foreign Secretary cannot become PM and the leader in the ConHome poll has been shunted to an acknowledged political graveyard but we shall not be uncharitable.
Instead, we shall ask, will it work?
In a word, no.
For Lord Cameron is not a particularly popular figure. Future historians will, I think, find it fascinating that on the day a photo of Dave entering his new office flashed around the world another was released showing Nigel Farage in his I’m a Celeb jungle kit. Whether the juxtaposition will mark the end of populism or, as I suspect, merely the end of the beginning of populism, Farage is only hated by half the population (the ones who will be jamming the phonelines to get him to eat warthog anus). Dave, by contrast, is hated by all – by remainers for calling the referendum and by leavers for campaigning the wrong way in it. Outside his family (and perhaps not even there), there is no coalition in the country calling for his return.
Expecting Robert to vote Tory because the man who broke his dreams has returned to politics is a bold strategy. Masochism, in the Home Counties, stays strictly in the bedroom.
More fundamentally, too much has happened for cosmetic changes to work. The reshuffle is the equivalent of a man wearing his soon-to-be ex-wife’s favourite tie to a meeting about their divorce in the hope that his sartorial choices will persuade her to overlook his serial adulteries. For the Conservatives have let Robert down too often, and by letting him down, they have told him that they are not who he thought they were. They might have been charming in the beginning, but their actions have shown them to be unpleasant and uncaring, not the sort of people he would choose to associate with. Particularly when he can spend his time with that nice couple Keir and Rachel. They’re educated, they care, they won’t let him down because, at heart, they’re his sort.
Rebound relationships rarely work. Robert may not think that he is rich, but the value of his house means that Keir and Rachel will when, as fiscal logic dictates, they decide they need more money. But that is an argument for five years’ time. If there is still a Conservative Party to have it.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.
This piece first appeared in Country Squire Magazine, and is reproduced by kind permission.
Great observation. The high art of virtual signalling with other people’s money. Winners all the way.