No Bloody Panico

A guillotine in Sloane Square, tumbrils crowded with Chelsea Conservatives driven towards it along the King’s Road, which is lined with triumphant Labour supporters, watched over by a knitting Madame Angela Defarge Rayner. The Tory scum had it coming …

The Conservatives have been routed, but some perspective is needed. In these days of mass suffrage, a fifth term in government is unprecedented.

Great governments win elections, offering an inspiring vision. Is anyone feeling boundless optimism about the future this morning? An enthusiast for the French Revolution with its utopian ideals of liberté, égalité et fraternité, Wordsworth swooned “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive”.

With all the parties keeping schtum about any hopey-changey stuff throughout the campaign, the national mood seems reminiscent of the five stages of bereavement. Except with turn-out so low, we seem to have gone straight to apathetic acceptance.

The election highlights how Conservative grassroots’ activists devote their time, energy and funds to the cause, only to be let down by a clapped-out Party machine.

Regime change is coming, not just in Downing Street, but – let’s hope – also in Matthew Parker Street. This is the home of Conservative Campaign Headquarters, which has been sub-optimal. It is not particularly Conservative, it campaigns with number-crunching head when heart and gut instinct are also needed, and, if it were a military HQ, it would be guilty of chateau generalship.

Rishi Sunak was correct to call the election for early July instead of November. Given the appalling conduct of too many self-serving Conservative MPs, months of gruesome headlines would have been generated by either resignations, Elphicke-type defections or speculation about “letters”. Potentially difficult episodes have been avoided, including the EU’s new Entry/Exit System in the Autumn: Party Conference, a.k.a. the Truss Show, would have been a cabaret of cringe.

Whenever it was called, a General Election was due this year, but the Party was far from match-fit. Candidates should have been in place a year ago, allowing them to start campaigning locally. Instead, reminiscent of the 2017 snap election, there was a scramble to fill vacant seats – minus the excuse of surprise.

Could the muddle over candidates simply have fallen between the silos of the voluntary Party (represented by the National Convention) and CCHQ, the Party’s paid officials? Was no-one on the Party Board asking questions about the number of vacancies?

Did the Board encourage a corporate culture enabling staff to flout lockdown with a Christmas knees-up in the building in December 2020? Like Partygate, Betgate reflects CCHQ’s dysfunction. These people are supposed to be professionals, hired for their political acumen. Clearly, it never occurred to them how damaging it is to the Conservative cause if they were caught apparently benefiting from inside information or breaking pandemic law.

Although he took leave of absence as Director of Campaigning, it must be asked why Tony Lee’s wife ended up as a Parliamentary candidate. It is bad as the Party Chairman Richard Holden being on a shortlist of one for Hornchurch and Billericay. (Good people have gone. He was narrowly elected. There is no justice.)

From the whiff of entitlement and petty corruption to campaigning. A barrage against the Red Wall was surely priced in: undermining the Blue Wall leads to a Conservative Endgame narrative.

One major cause of the Blue Wall’s righteous anger is the level of pollution in Britain’s waterways. Ironically, the improved monitoring of sewage spills thanks to the 2021 Environment Act handed the vacuous Lib Dems a powerful weapon. In their campaign leaflet for Surrey blue bastion Runnymede and Weybridge, “Tackling sewage dumping in our rivers” came second behind “Fighting for our precious NHS.”

Waterways were apparently not on the radar of Conservative Party strategists, Ministers and adolescent SPADs. They were oblivious that every magazine from Vogue to Grazia is urging Waitrose Woman to dive into the craze for wild swimming. Surfers Against Sewage suggests that nearly 100 per cent of Combined Sewer Overflows are now monitored in England and Wales: in Scotland, where water is publicly owned, 4 per cent are.

A more astute press operation could have reframed this issue – and many others. Are the Lib Dems calling for renationalisation: until creaking infrastructure is improved, do they want overflows in rivers – or in people’s homes? As Penny Mordaunt (see Holden above) too aptly noted in another context, “Our comms is shit.” The damaging speculation about PM Sunak fleeing to California would have stopped with a single-sentence statement that his daughters are settled at school.

Since 2019, the Conservatives have been responsible for the highest taxes since the Second World War, unsustainable record immigration and the Soviet-style statism of the Covid response. It is like Through the Looking Glass, where everything is reversed. Instead of taking inspiration from Lewis Carroll, it is time for Conservatives to read Hayek’s Road to Serfdom.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s masterly Bloody Panico! Or, Whatever Happened to the Tory Party? takes its title from Admiral Sir Morgan Morgan-Giles MP who would calm down his febrile colleagues with the motto “Pro bono publico, no bloody panico.”

The last thing the Conservative Party must do now is bloody panico. Rishi Sunak should stay on as Leader. The most important issue facing the country remains the economy: no-one in the Party comes close to his level of expertise.

The polls had not even opened but the reliably disloyal Suella Braverman was sounding off. Before any new leader is chosen, preferably next year at the earliest, a new Chairman (or woman) is needed to give fresh heart to genuine Party activists and be alert to entryism.

The rules for choosing the leader should be changed, with the current process reversed. Party members could be kept involved by drawing up a shortlist of perhaps six MPs: this would be whittled down round-by-round by Commons’ colleagues until the winner emerges.

It would be something constructive to debate at the Party Conference.