Politics: grim tidings
By Pete North - July 25, 2021
Notwithstanding the usual caveats about polls, it looks like the Tory lead is collapsing. The latest YouGov poll shows an 18 point Tory lead among C2DE voters shrinking to just three points.
We can safely say this is not because Labour has done anything to improve its standing. Starmer has taken baby steps toward deradicalising his party but it’s still nowhere near electable. This is very obviously a collapse of confidence in the Tories. And not before time. As to the precise cause, it could be one of half a dozen major things. Or all of them.
That the Tory party is gradually transforming into an echo of New Labour has no t gone unnoticed, and the latest round of Covid policies haven’t gone down too well on the right. And then there’s those dinghies. I suspect, mind you, that this poll does not tell the whole story. Polls won’t be useful until they give us the numbers for those not intending to vote.
It’s getting to the point now where anyone who voted Tory to “get Brexit done” will not likely do so again. Nobody who voted for Brexit voted for a tax and spend Net Zero health interventionist who’s not getting the job done on immigration. The Tories could well make Ukip great again. If Johnson wants to stay in business he has to start preforming and fast. That then suggests he may go for the nuclear option on the NI protocol. But that only goes so far. There’s a few months of dinghy weather yet.
Frankly, it’s hard to tell what the thinking is at the moment. Nobody looks good right now. The left lost it ages ago, while the anti-lockdown right seem to have gone of the deep end, and anyone loitering around the centre who just wants good government is shit out of luck. It all feels so very futile. The political process is broken. But there doesn’t seem to be any way of fixing it. We can all rip chunks out of each other but there is no way to settle it at the ballot box. The parties simply don’t represent anyone.
It could be that between Covid and Brexit the Tory lead is whittled down, and we end up with a Labour government by accident of numbers – that absolutely nobody wants. Not even Labour. Or perhaps as bad, another Tory-Lib coalition which nobody wants. By rights this should mean a lower turnout at the next election, but most will still vote regardless of the futility.
In that respect, we’ll be pretty much back where we started with a political and media establishment playing their own games, oblivious to the lives and concerns of voters, with maybe a Ukip style party reclaiming its place as an insurgency vehicle. There is unfinished business here and Boris Johnson has squandered the catalyst potential of Brexit. Or rather Dominic Cummings who refused to adopt a Brexit plan.
I think, though, that there is more to these protests on London than just Covid (which will linger on for some time). The protest rationale will mutate as people gradually wake up to the fact that our politics does not really respond regardless of who we vote for. Even after voting for Brexit we still get more of the same. It should have been a sea change in politics, but some how it has evaporated. For now anyway. The protests might be here to stay.
The key difference between now and 2015, is that a lot of things that used to work within tolerance will simply stop working altogether. It hasn’t taken much to disrupt supply chains (the most visible sign of distress) but we have yet to experience the full consequence of Brexit and the lockdowns, or face up to the state of public finances. The UK’s tax take for the past 12 months is down by £49bn – an 8 percent overall drop in revenue heading to HM Revenue. Tax rises are coming. Cuts are coming. Job cuts are coming.
Then, just to make life more interesting, there’s that small matter of the police having completely lost control of the streets, and gang violence and inter-ethnic rivalry spilling on to the streets. All the things some of us were warning about over the last twenty years (and were told to shut up about) will bubble to the surface – as they inevitably do in times of economic strife.
Ordinarily governments choose immigration to plug the GDP gap, not least because the welfare state depends on a steady influx. But I can’t see that flying this time. Britain has some hard choices about the NHS and welfares to make. Again, tough choices that have been kicked into the long grass over three decades. We’ve cut defence to the bone and the only way we can cut more is to make some bigger designs about our strategic status. Either the carriers or Trident have to go.
In some respects we have drifted back to the status quo of 2015, back into our state of denial, and the political head is firmly back in the sand. We’re pretending there isn’t a price for lockdown and Brexit. We’re pretending our so-called democracy can continue to function the way it does. We’re pretending we’re still a functioning country – despite the last two years of definitive proof that we aren’t. The only question left is for how long can we delay the contact point?
As much as anything, it ain’t just “gammon” on the warpath. The younger generations have been deprived of even the most basic pleasures, let alone anything more substantial. We keep running up a huge economic and moral deficit, while votes are becoming a worthless currency. Unless something changes, we’re headed into the abyss.
