The Conservatives’ Campaign Is Not A Last Hurrah For Their Vision. It’s a Death Rattle.
Nothing symbolises the UK's slide into irrelevancy more than a party spewing absurd, backward policies just as an animal sputters and writhes in its dying throes.
When a British prime minister calls an election earlier than expected, as Rishi Sunak has done, they usually do so with confidence, often hoping to capitalise on favourable political winds by sailing their party into a successful election with a clear vision. It’s expected they have a plan, a coherent strategy intended to galvanise their own voter coalition while peeling away at their opponents’, always ready to go on the assault. This is exactly what Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair did by going to the polls ahead of schedule in ‘87 and ‘01, respectively.
So far, Rishi Sunak has failed at every opportunity, stumbling from one scandal to the next. Only four days have passed since the prime minister stood forlornly in the rain outside 10 Downing Street like a drowned rat where he triggered the dissolution of Parliament and the campaign has faltered at every step of the way. From failing to brief his own ministers about the timing of the election to struggling to field enough candidates in competitive seats, Sunak and his team appear directionless, isolated and feeble, even after calling the election on their terms. For a man who ostensibly wants to win an election, the decisions undertaken by Sunak remain perplexing. At times, it often feels as if he is deliberately sabotaging his party’s efforts in a subtle retribution for the grievances he has suffered since coming to office in October 2022.
Tory strategists seem unable to grasp the concept of optics as they march across the country to drum up support. While campaigning in Derbyshire, Sunak thought Tory councillors could be camouflaged as regular voters by dressing them in high-vis vests. Immediately after that fiasco, he travelled to Northern Ireland, where people couldn’t vote for him even if they wanted to because his party is not fielding any candidates, and chose a precinct, the Titanic Quarter, as a background for his speech, practically inviting journalists to draw comparisons between the fatal voyage undertaken by the eponymous ship and the trajectory of his campaign.
Reflecting this, a feeling of defeatism pervades the Conservatives. An exodus of talent and experience followed the triggering of the election. As of the time of writing, eighty MPs have announced an intention to stand down at the next election, including party veterans like former PM Theresa May, Housing Secretary Michael Gove and ardent Brexiteer John Redwood. Even the MPs still competing seem to have given up barely a week into the campaign, with some opting to obscure their party affiliation by hiding behind different branding, swapping out the traditional Conservative blue for light green or yellow, de-emphasising the national party in favour of local ties. Steve Baker, MP for Wycombe (a seat he is projected to lose to Labour), encapsulated the bleak mood gripping his party when he felt no remorse jetting off to Greece for a summer vacation rather than campaigning in his own constituency.
If this wasn’t bad enough, the policies now dripping out of Tory HQ reflect the lack of vision permeating through a malaise-riddled party after fourteen consecutive years in government.
On Sunday, Rishi Sunak pledged that, if his party was returned to government, he would introduce mandatory national service for all 18-year-olds after their departure from mainstream education. In isolation, the plan is promising. Instilling a sense of public obligation into younger people towards their communities, country and institutions would go a long way in healing a social fabric that has fragmented in recent years following the emergence of a culture prone to social alienation. In fact, obliging younger people to spend a limited amount of time working for others, and their national community, is something that happens in many progressive, well-functioning democracies – Sweden, Norway, Denmark – and is currently under consideration in France. Anything which encourages mingling, empathy for other citizens from different backgrounds, and a sense of the public good is to be welcomed.
Despite these optimistic motives, the plan falls apart under even the mildest scrutiny. For one, the scheme was sold, cynically, as a revival of the postwar 1949-63 National Service, a proposal designed specifically to provoke nostalgia from elderly, disillusioned voters the party is desperate to hold onto to cushion their declining poll numbers. However, strangled by logistics, the military element of the proposed scheme is capped at 30,000 places and confined to areas such as logistics and cyber security, amounting to a grand total of one in 20 of all 18-year-olds, a million miles away from what the more rheumy-eyed readers of the Telegraph may have assumed.
Ministers, presumably having realised just what they had chucked into the hornets’ nest, immediately explained that nobody would be sent to jail for refusing to take part in national service, yet were completely unable to explain what sanctions would follow non-compliance. Would people be ordered to do community service for refusing to turn up for community service? What would be the impact on our already creaking and heavily delayed court system? If there are no sanctions, how can the government expect it to be mandatory?
The truth is that in a state which was already well-funded and operated with smooth public efficiency, a scheme like this might work. In Britain, where “nothing works,” it is a complete and ludicrous fantasy.
To add insult to injury, on Monday night the Conservatives showed their utter disdain for Britain’s youth when they launched the next sequence in their vision for Britain: another ring fence around pensions, the so-called ‘quadruple lock.’ Costing around £2.4bn per year, the quadruple lock would extend another privilege to an already coddled demographic, widening the gulf between generations and affirming the UK’s mindless drift to a government-protected retirement home.
Even after all the sacrifices made during lockdown, the Conservatives repay Britain’s youth by ramping up taxes, enlisting them into mandatory service, and using their hard-earned income (or what little is left) to fund a "quadruple lock" for pensioners, one of the most coddled, privileged demographics in the country, sparking the question: what does this party offer the future generation of this country apart from decades of meaningless servitude to a clique that vehemently resents them?
Already trailing in the opinion polls by around twenty points, the Conservatives seem intent on cementing their declining spiral by spewing asinine, half-baked policies for a dwindling few just like an animal writhes and sputters in its dying throes. For the good of the country, let’s just hope the death follows quickly, painlessly and leaves no lasting trace.