The Observer view on the Tories: A chance to pass judgment on 14 years of misrule
As the Commons held its pre-election valedictory debate last Friday, two more senior Conservatives announced that they would be stepping down: the communities secretary, Michael Gove, and the former cabinet minister Dame Andrea Leadsom. They join 15 other current or former Tory cabinet ministers who are resigning seats, bringing the total number of Conservative MPs standing down to 78, higher than in 1997 when the party stood on the brink of a historic defeat.
This is just the latest indicator of the lack of confidence Conservative MPs have in their own party and its leadership; a party that deserves to be dealt a resounding defeat by voters in the polls on 4 July. Its 14 years in government constitute an appalling track record: the Tories have left Britain a poorer country blighted by rising inequality and falling social mobility; a less confident nation with declining influence on the global stage; and a much tougher place in which to lose your job or to fall sick. Their political choices have worsened the impact of the tough global headwinds of a pandemic and rising energy prices.
Rishi Sunak will undoubtedly get a lot of the blame over the next six weeks. And deservedly so: his hapless election campaign start has seen him claim credit for a smoking ban he did not get through parliament, and promise voters that, while he has not yet been able to fulfil his immoral pledge to send people who arrive in the UK fleeing torture and conflict to Rwanda, this will happen straight after a general election if only voters re-elect him.
But the story of Conservative failure starts long before then: with the decision by David Cameron and George Osborne to use the global financial crisis as a pretext to hack away at the welfare safety net for children in poverty and cut back on services for vulnerable older people, disabled people and the homeless. They argued this was a necessity, despite the fact the cost of borrowing was at rock-bottom and that they found the money to cut taxes in a way that disproportionately benefited better-off households in the top half of the income distribution. This disregard for the impact on child poverty – not to mention the long-term economic effects of reducing levels of service provision for people in need – has been a consistent theme for Conservatives since then; just two months ago the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, prioritised spending £65bn over the next five years on cutting national insurance over more targeted support for children in low-income families.
Sunak's obsession with his Rwanda plan is symptomatic of just how little meaningful stewardship he had to offer the UK
Layered on top of that is the ideological pursuit of a Brexit that has made Britain more hard up – a massive own goal for an economy that has long struggled with poor productivity growth. Again the stage was set by Cameron, offering a referendum that paved the way for a Vote Leave nirvana to be pitted against the reality of remaining in the EU; the result not only led to Cameron’s downfall but created Prime Minister Boris Johnson, perhaps the worst this country has seen in modern times. Johnson fought the Vote Leave and the 2019 general election campaigns on the populist promise that Brexit would fix all the UK’s long-term problems, boosting growth, freeing up money to improve the NHS, and reducing immigration. Voters aren’t stupid: the Conservatives’ terrible performance in the latest round of local elections in large part reflects them holding the government responsible for delivering precisely none of this.
Johnson’s populism has infected politics way beyond Brexit: as premier he degraded the political honour code to the extent that he thought little of misleading voters and the Commons. Standards in public life declined on his watch, with minister after minister breaking the ministerial code and Johnson himself the first prime minister to have been found to have broken the law while in Downing Street over the “partygate” scandal during the Covid pandemic.
All the while, the mounting challenges facing Britain – its crisis of low productivity growth, the fact that the social care system cannot even start to meet the challenges of an ageing society, a housing bubble that is trapping too many people in the insecurity of the private rented sector, the widening attainment gap between children from poorer and less affluent backgrounds – have been utterly neglected by a Conservative party that has consumed itself with its ideological predilections over Brexit. Sunak inherited an unenviable mess from Liz Truss, the shortest-serving prime minister in history, who managed to tank the economy and triggered chaos in the markets in just 45 days. But his obsession with his Rwanda plan – an expensive and amoral gimmick that will not work in deterring desperate people from crossing the Channel – is symptomatic of just how little meaningful stewardship he had to offer the UK.
The Tories are a spent political force and over 14 years they have caused immeasurable damage to the country. The general election cannot come soon enough, and Sunak was right to call it now rather than wait till the autumn. His problem is that the move reeks of desperation: nobody would call a general election when they were 20 or so points behind in the polls after a terrible set of local election results unless they believed things were likely to get even worse. It is an inauspicious pitch to voters, and all the signs are that unless something drastically changes, voters will see right through it.
