This week in Brexitland, May 30, 2024
Why is the Tory general election campaign so terrible? Here are some of the basic reasons
Most sane commentators across the political spectrum have noticed that the Tory election campaign, the timing of which was explicitly chosen by their leader, has been a complete shit show thus far. We don’t need to go over the rain sodden suit or the “Exit” signs by Sunak’s head or the Titanic stuff - if you’re reading this, you’ll know it all already. It’s been bad. Very, very bad. Worse than most of us thought, and it wasn’t like we held out any expectation that it would be remotely good.
Why has it been this awful? After all, the Conservative party have long been a political machine, capable of switching into overdrive when it counts. In 2015, we saw it work at close to its best, realising with incredible accuracy where and how it needed to win a majority. Usually when a general election is called, particularly when the Tories themselves choose the timing, we see something impressive roar to life, seemingly instantaneously. So again, why has the first week been as dreadful as its been?
Brexit gutted the Conservative party in several key ways. One is that anyone vaguely centrist in the party has little power over anything. During the last few years, if you wanted to matter within the Tory party, you had to flash a little nuttiness. This has left three types of people at the heart of power: genuine lunatics, children (people under 23, say) and professional brown-nosers. The combination of these three groups has been toxic, like combining a trio of substances that together make a deadly, spreading, poisonous gas.
Of the three, the lunatics have the least actual, direct power, but their nuttiness is still a key factor in how things have gone so wrong. Sunak and his team are constantly thinking of them, wondering how to keep them happy, even though this is clearly impossible. Even a Conservative party that’s gone as wrong as this one has wouldn’t put the real loons in any place to control anything. You might say “What about Suella Braverman?”, to which I’d say two things: one, even though she was Home Secretary, Sunak mostly rebuffed most of her looniest ideas and two, he got rid of her before calling the general election. But having said that, Braverman had a real impact - look at the Rwanda scam or this stuff on national service. It’s all the influence of the loons.
The kids have a disproportionate amount of power, simply because there are a lot of them about. Most of the worst stuff from this past week has just been thoughtless errors, brought about by people with too little experience being in charge of things fairly large, at least in communications terms. As the grown ups have backed away from the frontline dealings of the party, the youngsters have risen. My feeling is that they are trying their best, and some of them might have potential, but they just don’t have the experience yet to know when your man is standing behind a set of letters that spell “Moron” behind his head.
Finally, we come to the brown-nosers, the group that has the greatest amount of power within the Sunak government by far. When you have a bunch of lunatics and a group of kids, the former screaming their latest demands while the young ones just try and keep everything going, to have the managerial caste be a bunch of people who got to where they are because their prime talent is sucking up to powerful individuals is a recipe for disaster. Particularly when the brown-nosers in question don’t see themselves as such, and have somewhere along the way fooled themselves into seeing themselves and the other brown-nosers around them as genuinely talented and insightful. They can’t seem to notice that up until they got into Downing Street, they hid behind people much cleverer than they are. It’s an age old affliction, found across politics - when you get to Number 10, you sort of have to convince yourself that you deserve to be there.
Basically, you could summarise this all as: the campaign is so bad because no one who has any real power within it knows what they are doing. There are a handful of grown ups in the mix, and it’s clear they aren’t being listened to. Add to this the ultimate problem with the campaign, something which sits above and informs everything, namely that Rishi Sunak has no idea what he’s doing himself. He’s surrounded by yes men and children because he didn’t know any better. And he clearly doesn’t know what to do from here.
Things could change. The Tories might well bring in some political genius to turn the ship around. They better do that fast, if they want any hope of avoiding an historical defeat. Time is quickly running out.
Thanks for reading. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do, and I’ll be back next week with, well, whatever is happening next week in the madcap adventure we’re all on.
Richi Sunak has a great deal to do with why the Tory campaign is so bad and it really is that bad, but it's bad to it's core right down to local level and they have another 5 weeks of this embarrassment.
Sunak was chosen as leader as:
there was no real leader available;
he had a bout of popularity during the pandemic because of the Treasury free money scheme;
he works hard and long hours micromanaging all the little bits and pieces and loose ends;
he can memorise and spout back a lot of relevant words at a very rapid pace.
But there are too many missing links. Sunak has no broader vision or clue as what substantial policy is needed to start to turn this sinking, flailing country around. But a creeping, bit by bit withdrawal on rights to smoke legally, would cause chaos as to who was say 43 and able to buy fags or 42 and banned, thereby boosting the range and profits of drug dealer supplies on a steady rising projection. Yet, he wasn't able to deliver even that curates egg.
Then there are the Tory's personal financial interests and those of their rentier supporters, most of them landlords, creaming it off the disadvantaged half of society for doing mostly very little. They said they would ban the worst single practice that destabilises people's lives in turning them out with little notice, or in the constant threat of doing so. But after four and half years of doing little in this zombie parliament, they just couldn't bring themselves to actually ban their own freedom to gazump rents by changing tennents or flogging off renter's homes.
The Tory gravy train in all it's miraculous self interest, is creaming off the poor, monopoly private industries, dodgy contracts, exported tax free investments, or 10% on Russian extortion money, all supported by an unwarranted centralised monopoly power in parliament. But it's coming to an end and probably many, the unemployable, are due for penury, with a select few for prison.
The public mainly sense this self aggrandisement, supported by the busy hollow semi billionaire attempting to further feather his dynasty's nest, such as with the India trade deal that Modi wouldn't grant Sunak, because it would have have required free UK access for Indian business people , holiday makers and students to name a few.
The public have mainly stopped listening to the Tories, making Sunak's blatherings extremely ineffectual. You can watch him with ears ready but 50-150 words later, nothing has gone in. The tory election machine, such as it exists, has realised that Sunak doesn't do ordinary people. He can't relate to them and keeps dropping faux pas which makes them realise there's nothing to him. Their solution has been to put in local Tories and dress them up native to look fawning and drop planted questions in front of cameras. The press smelled a rat and the Tories were found out in seconds looking desperate in their failings.
The tory election machine at local level is so hollowed out that can no longer find many dupes to deliver leaflets or canvas voters. They are reduced to paying companies to put the leaflets around which either reduces their legally allowable campaign spend or goes into secret budgets that can and do get officials banged up. Meanwhile Labour campaigning is based on a motivated mass membership and the LibDems are like a happy smiling community who refuse to be beaten.
There are 78 Tory MP's leaving the gravy chain and it's increasing, others cross the floor to Labour, the desperate threats to depose Sunak continue, 50 Tory MPs are still under investigation, mostly for sexual wrong doing or bullying and the complaints and howls are daily. Why, they think did he call the election at 21% behind in the main polls, right after a local election massacre where they came third and when they could have added another £44,000 to bank accounts before the end of the line....more as ministers? Hunt is so afeared at losing to the LibDems that he spent over £100k of his own money on local campaigning, just last year.
I believe Sunak had had enough of an ungrateful Tory Party and voting public when he called it for July. He gave himself 6 weeks to turn it around in a helicopter & private plane fuelled dash around Britain, performing tens of thousands of bits of micromanaging. He dreamed of the greatest election campaign turnaround in history. Instead, the Tories will be scraping the bottom of the barrel for the next most right wing leader ever, to lead the unruly rump that will remain. Sunak will be on the next plane to California. The next time he takes a moment while talking to swimming pool maintenance people or when buying his next can of intoxicant cola, he'll be able to say: "I used to be Prime Minister of the UK you know" and the reply will probably be something like: "Would you like a bag with that sir? You have yourself a nice day"
To think they repealed the Fixed-term Parliaments Act which gave them an advantage and they ended up doing this with it. It's just unbelievable.