The political class is in terminal decline

Above is a clip from the Locked and Loaded show on TNT Radio, in which I rehearse many of the themes from yesterday’s post. Today, though, I think we need to take a closer look at the other parties.

Personally, I’m not remotely convinced the polls have it right. Labour is on course to win, but their lead in the polls is phoney. Labour isn’t popular or trusted and the voters aren’t all that taken with Starmer. Their policy agenda isn’t to be taken seriously either. That has me thinking about what a Labour government will look like.

I’m now working on the assumption that every one of Labour's headline policies will hit the reality wall. From British Energy to the EV rollout, Starmer's policy initiatives have nowhere to go. His administration will be spending most of its time explaining why most of its manifesto is unachievable. That's what makes Labour quite dangerous. They will instead focus on constitutional meddling that doesn't cost anything.

Assuming Starmer is not a complete fool, he will not let Anneliese Dodds loose with her gender self-ID nonsense, and circumstances will force him to delay the massively unpopular ICE ban, and there's no additional capital for decarbonising the grid. All he can do is tinker.

I think Starmer is smart enough to keep the Islamists at bay for at least one term. They're his "break glass in case of emergency" option, which he won't need until 2029. Instead he'll attempt to shore up the black vote with more equality and social justice legislation which piles on HR red tape for business.

It will take less than six months for Labour's political sponsors to be disillusioned with Starmer. Any promises made over Israel/Palestine will be abandoned, and the subsidy grifting wind barons will be told they've already had as much as the system can bear. I don't think Starmer will reverse Badenoch's trans guidelines, or contradict the Cass Review. Starmer is not stupid enough to make a rod for his own back on something that has largely been settled for him.

Meanwhile, I very much doubt Starmer will get anywhere with trade negotiations with the EU. The EU has no interest in opening up a comprehensive renegotiation process, and it is likely the French agri-lobby will have the final say, and French politics is complete chaos right now.

What will be interesting is how Starmer deals with the dinghy crisis. There are no good options available to him. He can scrap Rwanda, and implement what amounts to a general amnesty, but he's going to be dumping migrants on councils to house, ensuring a massive backlash from the white working class. Meanwhile the boats will keep coming. Starmer doesn't have any answers, and it will show.

The metropolitan left have been operating on the assumption that Britain is broken because the wrong people are in charge, and all will be well just as soon as the red rosetters take charge. Soon they will come to learn what conservatives have known for quite some time. The system is completely unresponsive, democracy is broken, and the complex problems we face are simply beyond the wits of our sub-mediocre politicians.

They will attempt (with some success) to blame the Tories for their paralysis, and they may even come to blame the civil service as the Tories did, but ultimately, you can't get different results by voting for the uniparty. It will be a hard lesson for the left - and will only add to the political disaffection in 2029. Labour too will be looking at its own oblivion.

In the meantime, The Tory party has a lot of soul searching to do. There’s going to be a great deal of bickering over who is responsible for their catastrophic loss. David Gauke and Amber Rudd are pushing the notion that the party went too far to the right. Gauke outlines his version on Conservative Home.

This is self-serving toss obviously, but there are some points worthy of discussion. Particularly "...the decline in competence and trust is inextricably linked to the move to the right. The Brexit Wars of 2016-19 resulted in a weak Cabinet that saw a commitment to the Brexit cause prioritised over ability. The Tories maintained the Leave campaign’s habit of promising the undeliverable."

There's a good deal of truth in that. Brexiteer Tories weren't exactly high calibre politicians and their understanding of the dilemmas of Brexit was minimal. That is not to say that their remainer colleagues were any better informed, with the vast majority of them being incapable of distinguishing between the functions of the single market and customs union (and have learned naff all ever since). We have been cursed with a singularly awful crop of politicians.

This was compounded by Brexit supporting Tory members who threw their weight behind an oaf like Boris Johnson who has never stood firm on any matter of principle that I know of.

That nothing of consequence was ever done with Brexit, though, is born of the fact that Brexit was entrusted to a party that never wanted it in the first place, and was the de facto leader of the remain campaign. Vote Leave never specified a Brexit manifesto, and the European Research Group had done very little actual research.

Gauke further remarks that "the right have to accept that this Conservative Party – one that is about to go down to an historic defeat – is their party. They have chosen the leaders (at least, until their choices imploded) and dictated the policies (at least, until they were exposed as unworkable)".

To a point that is also true. You didn't have to be nostradamus to anticipate Boris Johnson being an unprincipled oaf with no idea what to do with power, who would always take the path of least resistance. Similarly, it was quite obvious that Liz Truss was not cut out for high office. But Tory members were forced to pick the least worst of a pretty dismal crop of politicians on the right, many of which have no business being in the Tory party, not least those who believe that men in frocks are women. Choosing a leader of the Tory party really is a case of sifting turds for peanuts.

But since Brexit, the collective hissy fit of supposedly "centre right" Tories has seen them vanish up their own backsides, taking up contrarian positions out of spite, to the extent that they may as well have defected to Labour - and it would have been more honest had they done so.

We should also recall that a great many Tories owe their seats to the fact that the British public would rather tolerate Tory dross than put up with Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister. The voters have been short-changed throughout by having to vote always for the lesser of evils. In that respect, these "one nation" Tories forget their place. Very few of them are actually wanted, and even fewer were elected on their own merit.

As such, the row as to which faction is responsible for this electoral wipeout overestimates their own importance. The Tory party as a whole shares a collective responsibility. Ultimately, they are judged on outcomes. The party was elected to deliver meaningful change and a dramatic reduction in immigration. Instead, the party has opted for status quo policies, delivered record immigration, and implemented a raft of harmful Net Zero policies that absolutely nobody asked for, nobody voted for, and are certainly not a product of the Tory right.

Ultimately, a self-indulgent Tory party put its own wants ahead of the public demand for change, and at this point, we are not remotely interested which faction is to blame, because none of them are worth a tinker's toss if the policy trajectory from that party is more of the same, where the hopes and aspirations of Tory voters simply don't matter.

In the final analysis, though, the "one nation" Tories are the ones who second guessed the voters. At every turn, they prioritised GDP and the sanctity of the "international rules based order" ahead of all other concerns, while the Tory right did little other than whinge about wokery, while doing precisely nothing all about it, other than issuing "guidelines" that unions and activist civil servants (whom they won't sack) take great pride in disregarding. Don't ask us to choose between you. You're all equally contemptible. There's a reason why Tories of all stripes will be looking for alternative employment next month.