Don’t Panic

            “A person often meets his fate on the road he took to avoid it”
        Jean de la Fontaine

That people might, by trying to avoid something, make it more likely is an idea which has fascinated me since I was a child. Whichever comic (remember them?) I took (Hotspur?) featured a story one week about a footballer who, told by a fortune-teller that he would break his leg in a pass, persuaded his manager to give him the week off. That he decided to go skiing points you to how the story ended…

For those of more sophisticated tastes, Somerset Maugham’s (very) short story Appointment in Samarra tells of a servant in Baghdad who meets Death in the souk one day and panics when the latter tells him, “I’ll see you this evening”. Borrowing his master’s horse, he sets off for the distant town of Samarra, leaving his employer to do his own shopping. In the souk, he too meets Death and (brave man) decides to broach the matter whereupon Death confesses her surprise at seeing the servant in Baghdad, for she knew she had an appointment with him scheduled in Samarra…

The best stories tell us something we already know. Often when things start to go wrong, our efforts to retrieve the situation merely make them worse. The reason the Ever Given became stuck in the Suez canal is that, having got out of position, the initial attempts to correct the situation drove it towards the opposite bank, requiring further correction which, in turn, forced further correction until, for reasons of hydrostatics which I will not confirm my ignorance by attempting to explain further, it got sucked into the side of the canal.

It is hard not to see a similar process at work in the election campaign. The initial plan, it seems, was to turn right at the start, squeeze Reform and then, flank shored up, tack back towards the middle. Germany had a similar idea in WWI to take Russia out of the conflict before turning its full attention against France, and the Conservatives’ strategy has, so far, been equally successful.

With the polls not budging after the National Service announcement, and the return of Farage suggesting they will not budge, Sunak has (in the past few days) brandished figures of, let us be kind, far from unimpeachable accuracy and left the D-Day commemorations early to record an interview not to be shown for several days with a journalist best known for his role in the downfall of the last Prime Minister but one. Neither of these actions have helped and have left a man known for honesty (at least in comparison to some of his predecessors) and respect (“the perfect Indian son-in-law” as he was once described) looking like a shifty liar who does not care about “Our Boys”. There are circumstances in which this turns out to be an election-winning pitch, but they are rare…

It would be easy to look at these events and cite Conquest’s Third Law “The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies” but there is an alternative and less conspiratorial explanation: the Tories are panicking.

Having chosen a less than entirely obvious time for the election (going late would have allowed the benefits of lower inflation and taxes to feed through, probably an interest rate cut, Farage to go off to America and, depending on the timing, the chance to ask how Keir Starmer would deal with Donald Trump), they now face the sickening reality that the strategy has failed and they face a humiliating loss. So gripping is this fear that they will do anything to assuage it. Including things which will probably make the situation worse. It doesn’t matter if the figures provided are wrong if they might make people worry a bit about voting Labour. It doesn’t matter if leaving the D-Day commemoration is disrespectful if it gives a head-start for tomorrow’s campaign. As The Times noted on Saturday, already worried about the amount of international engagements the PM had to undertake, “getting back on the front foot and campaigning was seen as more important.” Tunnel vision has gripped the campaign. Where previously the visit would be considered against a range of criteria (respect for veterans/statesmanlike photo opportunities/potential for backroom diplomacy), moving the polls is now the only game in town. But this is a sign of panic.

That Sunak should experience it is, at one level, a surprise. For he comes from an industry which prizes (and rewards handsomely) those who can keep their heads. The best returns come from (and the biggest bonuses go to) the traders who can stay rational and accurately evaluate the market no matter how it gyrates. Those who cannot become lunch for those who can. But the Prime Minister is acting like an inexperienced investor. Finding himself behind, he is making a series of increasingly risky bets in the hope that one will pay off. Doing something has become more important than doing the right thing. Ideas which would, in normal times, never be considered become central to the strategy because they might just work. But, of course, they don’t. All they do is go wrong in turn and make the hole still bigger.

These spirals are much easier to enter than they are to exit. Each further loss merely makes the problem more intense – if you hate yourself for losing 10%, your self-loathing when down twenty is off the charts – and lowers yet further one’s resistance to bad ideas. Knowing that, eventually, time will run out merely adds to the pressure. The one person I knew who found himself in that position ended up a shell, and the end, when it came, was an act of mercy.

Here, then, is the future of the Tory campaign. Either a series of increasingly desperate announcements which backfire and drive the polls yet lower, or a zombified leader who shuffles through the rest of the campaign before being dispatched by the voters. Either way, having sought to avoid an appointment with electoral Death in November, the party has run into her arms in July.

Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.

This piece was first published in Country Squire Magazine, and is reproduced by kind permission.  

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