With his Tory conference speech Rishi Sunak has attempted a relaunch of the Conservatives in preparation for a general election. It is hardly likely to succeed. Survation polling for 38 Degrees this weekend showed the Tories in freefall. A Labour government remains the most likely next phase of British politics.
But in adopting the principle that a bad plan is better than no plan, Sunak has at least provided some kind of framework for the final stage of his period as Prime Minister.
More importantly, with Sunak’s new turn and the generally right wing character of this year’s Tory conference, he and his party have prefigured the kind of party we can expect from the Conservatives in opposition. The Tories are reorganising around a more hard-right platform. A more right wing Tory party, allied to the most right wing parts of the media, has the capacity to poison British society and create the space for a very reactionary phase in politics.
These developments are one of the many reasons that the straitjacket Labour has imposed on itself is a mistake. However good some individual policies may well be, the party’s overall programme falls short of dealing with the depth of the economic problems in British society. A Labour government that does not deliver very significant improvements in peoples’ lives, and tells them to wait, would sow disaffection and leave a space for a right-led Tory party.
I have written about an aspect of this debate for Byline Times today - the deadening hand of authoritarianism in the Labour Party, at a time when the political situation screams out for a renewed vigour and dynamism.
Nothing in Britain seems to work anymore. The full consequences of thirteen years of Conservative Government can be seen everywhere from crumbling schools to the cancellation of HS2. Household incomes have been squeezed at an unprecedented level and the NHS is in crisis. But as I have argued in the article, where a healthy flow of ideas is required, Keir Starmer’s trajectory has been to pursue uniformity yet further. His most recent reshuffle amounted to another elevation of the party’s right at expense of the soft left, with those further to the left already gone.
What we are seeing is a disconnect between the scale of the problems a newly-elected Labour government will face and the political and intellectual content required to confront them. Working to exclude the left from the party’s landscape has blocked off an important source of new ideas.
You can read the full piece here.