On Raab and the current Tory culture
Yesterday, Dominic Raab quit his job in the cabinet. He also said he basically did nothing wrong. Then he wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph about how him having to leave the government was possibly historically dangerous.
To an increasing number of voters, the way the Conservative party behaves seems bizarre, irrational, often self-destructive. The Raab thing was handled in the worst possible way by the prime minister: allowing it to drag on and on and then ending in a messy way that will cause even more damage. A lot of people outside Westminster are probably wondering how so many Tories can be blind to what level of trouble their party is in, how the way they are acting is constantly reinforcing the negative perceptions voters have of them, and further, how they cannot understand that certain behaviours are deeply off-putting to the electorate.
Here’s the thing: the Conservative party is a bubble. In a sense, that’s not surprising given most groups in 2023 life exist in a bubble, but there are two things to note about the Tory bubble. One is that the walls to it are incredibly strong. You might look at Liz Truss, mere months after being so bad at the job of prime minister that she had to resign after less than 50 days in Number 10, going around giving speeches on how to change the world and wonder at how she could be so delusional. I’ll tell you how: she has scores of people within the Tory bubble telling her how brilliant she is all the time; how she was done over by the “woke blob” and that her time will come again.
The Conservative bubble can feel all-encompassing to those fully embedded inside of it. The experience is not far from being addicted to a powerful drug; your reality becomes the small circle of those you spend time with and the euphoria of power or at least, the proximity to power, is all-encompassing to most. Those inside the bubble, like heroin addicts or cult members, tend to lose all perspective on reality.
The second thing to note about the Tory bubble is more important. As the drug of power is seeping away from those inside the bubble, the general election looking to toss them out of the drug den and onto the hard pavement outside, they have begun to go a little crazy, much like drug addicts having their supplies drastically diminished over a short time span would behave. They’ve become paranoid and talk of conspiracies - the “New Elite” or the “woke blob” or whatever it is this week is just Tory bubble dwellers getting antsy about the days of glory coming to an end.
It has to be someone else’s fault. It couldn’t be that they themselves have become cut off from people outside of their ridiculous, insular world. No, no, they are being undermined by saboteurs. The real British public will give them all the power back at the next election, no doubt about it.
That they don’t actually want to test this theory by pushing for or calling a general election tells you a lot. Beneath all the bluster, the Tory bubble denizens know they’ve screwed up. They know Brexit is a disaster and it’s mostly their fault. They know the Tories have thrust upon us a series of terrible prime ministers. They can see the polls. They know in their hearts that it’s all over.
In this light, the Dominic Raab episode makes perfect sense. Why kick Dom out of the cabinet? He surely did nothing wrong. And even if he did do something wrong, who cares, it wasn’t to real people, defined as either other individuals in the Tory bubble or some imagined, great British public that lives solely in their imaginations. Raab would feel he has every right to be indignant about having to resign. Don’t “they” (who “they” are being purposefully ill-defined) understand that we Tories get to run the country for as long as we like, however we like? I mean, the great British public will never really elect Mr Softie, that left lawyer man, to be the prime minister of this country? Surely not? Really?
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