The Would-Be Poetry of @rcolvile is irresistible?
Political Observer wonders at this short lived 'evolution'!
The first paragraphs demonstrate a remarkable ‘evolution’, that reminds this American Reader of Rod McKuen’s ‘Listen to the Warm’ of 1967! He was reported to be Elizbeth Taylor’s favorite Poet! Mr. Colvile poetic reach, not to speak of his blend of ‘The Eclipse’ , the political with popular entertainment of the moment, lends a certain elan !
For medieval peasants a solar eclipse was a certain sign of the apocalypse. A 14th-century text, “The Fifteen Signs before Doomsday”, explained that the sun “will give no light and will be cast down to Earth — while you now see it as pleasing and bright, it will become as black as coal”.
For Tory MPs there is no need to watch the heavens to predict the end: they just have to look at the polls. The Conservative rating of 19 per cent in Ipsos’s Political Monitor is the lowest since the survey started in 1978. Rishi Sunak’s personal favourability has hit a historic low, too — yet the same polls suggest that changing leader would do little to help.
Indeed, a better parallel than the Middle Ages may be Fallout, the big new show on Amazon Prime, in which a mismatched group of characters have to navigate a derelict, post-nuclear hellscape.
Admittedly, those Conservative MPs that do make it back into parliament may not have to grapple with flesh-eating ghouls, mutated fish monsters and murderous robots. But on present polling it’s looking like about as much fun.
Yet in politics, as in Fallout’s wasteland, life always goes on. Which is why thoughts are already turning to what comes next.
Unfortunately, Mr. Colvile then touches the ground of reality, in the political present, I’ll attempt a foreshortened collection of the ‘highlights’ :
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With the signal exception of Suella Braverman, the main contenders for the Tory leadership after the election are still supportive of Sunak,…
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…Conservative Home’s survey of Tory members, vindicated by the Cass review on transgender care for under-18s, giving a punchy speech on regulation and growth and using the free vote on the smoking ban to express principled opposition to creating two categories of legal adults.
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Yet the more I think about the Conservative Party’s plight, the more questions of personality feel almost irrelevant.
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We don’t need to rehearse all the reasons for the Tories’ spectacular — and historically unprecedented — slide in the polls.
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The Conservatives have lost voters to both left and right,…
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The Tory party, as one of its senior members told me the other day, is made up of three tribes.
Editor: The Three Tribes:
the soft centre
“the wets”
There are those (like me) who prioritize free markets and economic opportunity.
…Conservatism is cultural, inspired by faith, family and flag.
Editor : Perhaps I don’t understand British Counting, it looks like 4 to me!
Of course, these tendencies mix and mingle, often within the same individuals.
Editor: Liz Truss is entitled to her own section!
…Liz Truss complains that during the Brexit referendum, in which she campaigned for Remain, “Vote Leave’s main campaign message … was simply a pledge to increase public spending on the NHS. This seemed an odd rallying cry for free-market conservatives.”
The brutal truth — much as Truss and I would both wish it otherwise — is that messaging tailored to free-market conservatives barely wins you a majority among Tory MPs these days, let alone the wider electorate.
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Assuming that the polls do narrow (as I still suspect they will), there will be enough of a core for the Tories to rebuild after their likely loss.
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I mentioned Fallout earlier. It’s a hit show. But the audience for even the biggest hits today is a fraction of what it was in the four-channel days. We’re a multiculture, not a monoculture. So why should political parties be an exception?
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But that majority also relied on the electoral steroids provided by Corbyn and Brexit. Even without the stream of shocks and scandals that followed, it would have been hellishly difficult to keep that coalition together.
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There is, of course, one consolation: the same probably applies to Labour. That may seem a strange claim, given Keir Starmer’s position in the polls. But that lead is built on dislike of the Tories, not enthusiasm for the other lot.
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Owen Jones, the leftie’s leftie, has already departed in high dudgeon, because a Labour Party that moves far enough right to win a majority has gone beyond the ideological pale for the Corbyn lot.
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I’ve always been a strong supporter of first past the post. I still am.
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Fixing them will take serious reforms, as it did under Thatcher — a topic I’ve been reading about in depth, given that I run the Centre for Policy Studies, the think tank she and her allies founded to do that job 50 years ago.
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How, for example, do you persuade an electorate that is increasingly dependent on the state that there are limits to not just what it can do, but what it should do?
If rebuilding a majority Conservatism is a hard task, building one that also addresses Britain’s core challenges feels even harder. Yet it’s a job that absolutely needs to be done.
@rcolvile self-presents as a modern day Sisyphus?
Political Observer