{UAH} Don’t be distracted by the chaos at No 10. The real problem is rotten ideology
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9:45 AM |
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This isn't a government, it's a parody of one. Theresa May has the trappings, residence and salary of a prime minister, but little else. It's like Night of the Living Dead meets Fawlty Towers, where the politically undead govern with an almost unwatchable level of farce.
This is a decaying administration with no unifying programme, whose leading figures increasingly loathe each other on both ideological and personal grounds. They pretend to govern purely out of fear that, if they do not, their opponents really will. It is the terror – and "terror" is the correct word to describe how they feel – of a Jeremy Corbyn government assuming office that keeps them from imploding altogether.
It's often called a zombie government, but if you watch a zombie flick, you will notice that the undead have a sense of purpose – going after the enemy – and they don't turn on each other. The Tories would love to be in such a position.
Their dilemma is thus. From the 1970s onwards, the party established a new order based on privatisation, deregulation, an assault on collective organising, and slashing taxes on the rich and corporate Britain. In the aftermath of the cold war and the surrender of social democracy to neoliberalism, Tories told themselves their order would last for ever.
Unfortunately that order stripped away security for millions and brought about stagnating living standards, inefficient privatised utilities charging rip-off prices and grotesque levels of inequality. In the June election, the public were presented with a viable radical alternative – and a political consensus which has prevailed for a generation collapsed, costing the Tories their majority.
Our alleged rulers are now torn. Do they, like born-again Christians, take the view they just haven't preached with enough zeal and passion? Or do they accept that their social order is structurally failing, and concede the argument to the enemy?
Robbed of ideological purpose or a central authority to bind it together, the government is falling to pieces. Take the curious case of Priti Patel. Some people choose to fight for a living wage, others against climate change, others for refugees fleeing violence and persecution. Patel, a former big tobacco lobbyist, chose to fight a life-saving EU tobacco control directive because it hit the profits of tobacco merchants.
It is a national humiliation that this sort of character, who offers only twisted ideological zeal and naked self-advancement in place of ability and basic decency, became one of our most powerful politicians. We know she apparently set her up own freelance foreign policy (though it is not clear exactly what No 10 knew and when), visited the illegally occupied Golan Heights, and offered to shower British aid money on an Israeli army currently enforcing a brutal occupation. Patel did this because she knows May's career is a festering carcass, and she is among the many circling vultures.
Priti Patel's fall from grace
And now that Patel has resigned, how can Boris Johnson remain as foreign secretary? His extensive back catalogue of lying, bigotry and general charlatanry would, in a world which did not favour the malign and self-serving, have precluded him from the post of Britain's chief international representative. It is criminal that this media-created buffoon was allowed to take a position which, because his self-regard is only matched by his incompetence, could have cost Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe another four years in an Iranian prison.
That should haunt Johnson for the rest of his life. It won't – he's beyond shameless. But it should torture May until her final days. Is she really, deep down, so shocked that this disaster could have happened when she herself appointed him foreign secretary?
However, Labour should not be complacent. Yes, the political winds are on the party's side; yes, it began an election campaign 24 points behind and almost drew level the Tories within six weeks. But despite the Tories' meltdown, this shambolic party of government still polls around 40%.
These supporters are an overlapping coalition of wealthy voters, older voters who have been protected from the extremes of austerity, and the socially conservative. They are united not behind any inspiring Tory vision, but a fear of a leftwing departure from the status quo. A decisive Labour victory – and the end of this social order – is possible, though far from inevitable, and it still has to be fought for.
But good grief. When has a governing party in British history inflicted such damage on itself, from the EU referendum to the snap election, merely because of crude attempts at gaining party advantage? Britain is currently facing one of its greatest challenges since the second world war. At the same time, we have the most chaotic, divided, farcical administration in our modern history.
To her credit, after David Cameron's downfall, May understood that the political tide was shifting. On her wall hangs the speech she made on her first day in No 10 about the great injustices afflicting British society. And the preamble of the 2017 Conservative party manifesto did, wisely, accept that the public appetite for free market fundamentalism was not there.
But the sad reality for the Tories – though happily for the nation – is that a party ideologically wedded to a failed economic and political settlement has no answers. Sure, this surreal performance art masquerading as a government will be remembered for incompetence. But let's not forget that it was New Labour – despite some humanising tweaks – and the Tories who propped up this crumbling order. That's the real story here, not the hopeless and the helpless scurrying around a sinking Tory ship, occasionally throwing each other overboard.
When they finally defenestrate May – it could be at any moment – the Conservative party will try to pin every calamity on her. Don't let them. It's the Tories' rotten ideology that lies at the root of this government's existential crisis. And the task ahead – which will prove one of the most challenging missions in British history – is to build a new social order instead.
• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
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