Having “got Brexit done”, the Tories in theory had a one-off opportunity to change the frame. They could have used the time to pack Britain’s NGOcracy with their people, or even tackle the plethora of New Labour constitutional innovations that paved the way for the post-liberal order. But they didn’t take it, which suggests that either they had so poor a grasp of the political machine they supposedly operated as to make an inadvertent case for the technocratic “experts” they affected to deplore. Or else, perhaps, they understood how that technocracy worked, and liked it just fine.
The latter position is understandable, if not commendable. When you can leave the machinery of state largely on autopilot and focus instead on lining your own and your friends’ pockets, who in their right mind would want actual responsibility? There are honourable exceptions to this: Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates have both stuck their necks out, while for voicing mainstream British views on migration control and the inadequacy of multiculturalism, Suella Braverman was smeared as the reincarnation of Oswald Mosley.
But that’s three MPs, out of what was (until the Tories’ roundly deserved electoral hammering) several hundred. As for the others, their behaviour in Parliament suggested that whatever the electorate may have hoped, they mostly accepted it is Tony’s world now, and we all just get to live in it.
“Or else, perhaps, they understood how that technocracy worked, and liked it just fine” is of course the correct answer.
A simple Google search can bring a list of conservative beliefs or philosophies. Different sources vary slightly but are broadly the same.
I’m happy for anyone to jump in and correct me but I can’t think of any reflected in the Conservative parties actions while in government for 14 years.
With so much else to digest one story largely slipped under the radar. In an otherwise disastrous night the conservatives did actually re-take a seat from Labour for the first time in over a generation.
The constituency of Leicester East will now be represented by Shivani Raja who ticks many of the boxes for a modern day MP including a niche degree (Cosmetic Science, not I guess much to do with STEM), extensive management experience in Consumer Product Development and multinational companies and a deep commitment to charitable work.
However commendable her CV might be one must look at her opponents in order to form a possible opinion as to why she was selected. Her Labour opponent Rajesh Agrawal was surely hampered by the votes cast for his two unlovely predecessors, Claudia Webbe and Keith Vaz, both of whom stood as independents and doubtless cleared a few quid in the process. The Lib Dem and even Reform choice of candidates Zuffar Haq and Raj Solanki left little doubt that in this constituency plus many more in the coming years we are, to quote the article, living in Tony Blair’s world.
Incidentally Leicester was also responsible for another glimpse into the future when shadow cabinet minister Jonathan Ashworth saw his nearly 23,000 majority from 2019 overturned by Independent candidate and now MP Shockat Adam who appears to have campaigned solely in opposition to Labour’s stance on the conflict in Gaza. When you consider former leadership candidate Jess Phillips only squeaked home in her Birmingham Yardley constituency against another pro-Palestine candidate from Galloway’s Workers party it becomes even more obvious that dealing with Blair’s legacy (admittedly enhanced beyond even his wildest expectations by 14 years of “conservatism”) will be a major headache for our new PM.
Phillips is such a thick and vacuous person. Bitches about her unlovely constituents yet her entire political ideology is dedicated to inviting all of them in the country. She gets what she deserves.
I think trying to pack the NGOcracy with “your guys” is a a very short-term view. Just scap it all. Here’s my 10/5 rule. If a civil servant can’t explain to a smartish 10 year old in 5 minutes why they are “needed” then they aren’t. The head of the Army can. What abouit his beaut…
https://www.lgcjobs.com/job/strategic-director-adults-public-health-dass-29052
There is not enough discussion of the 4 Independent MPs (Jeremy Corbyn is Independent as well but slightly different) who have targetted and been elected by mostly muslim communities. I foresee this pattern developing and soon this type of ‘Independent’ will join to publicly form a named Islamic Party.
Many or most voters do not understand what Islam is, what it teaches and how it behaves when it has power.
Many people think that ‘Islamophobia’ is a bad thing.
I think ‘Islamophobia’ is a good thing. That’s because I know what Islam is.
Some Conservative Members of Parliament “stuck their necks out”, but Mary Harrington does not mention them. For example, Christopher Chope over the Covid “vaccines”, and both Jacob Rees-Mogg and Philip Hollobone over the Equality Act.
Sadly government, both national and local, is structured in such a way that power is not really in the hands of the elected people (unless the elected politicians are on the same wavelength as the officials and “experts” – as, under the new Labour government, they are) – “in office but not in power” is the term used. Elected politicians do have some influence, but it is limited influence – declining (bit-by-bit) for a very long time indeed. Oddly enough Disraeli, of all people, was the first to notice the danger and to warn against it – but people only followed the bad things he said (the Social Reform stuff), they ignored his warnings against bureaucracy and experts.
It is much the same with David Hume – the nonsense he came out with on philosophy is wildly fashionable, but the good sense he produced against Credit Money, Credit Bubble banking and Corporations – is all ignored.
“Know how technocracy works and liked it that way”.
No (contrary to Perry saying this is “the correct answer”) – those Conservatives I know, hate the current system of Technocracy (this Sir Francis Bacon – New Atlantis) and so (to be fair) do some Labour people – although not the leaders.
Could elected politicians have made more of a stand?
Perhaps YES – if they had been prepared to smash this Credit Money Corporate State.
But faced with that, Liz Truss gave in – the lady was not prepared to smash-the-system, perhaps fearing that if she tried she would have been removed (of course Liz Truss was removed anyway).
It was the same with Mr Johnson and Covid – had he stuck NO over lockdowns, he would (almost certainly) have been removed. Although, again, he was removed anyway – for doing exactly the same thing that Mr Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer did, socialising with work colleagues after work, anyone who thinks that “Partygate” was the real reason Mr Johnson was removed is an idiot.
A British Prime Minister does not have the protections that, say, an American State Governor has – a British Prime Minister can be removed at any time, and without any formal procedure of impeachment.
That is why some American State Governors were able to stick to NO over Covid lockdowns.
To end on a positive note….
Conservatives no longer have to worry about the terrible suffering that would result from smashing the Credit Money based Corporate State – and, make no mistake, there will be terrible suffering (especially for the poor).
This is because the system will collapse under the new government – it will collapse here, it will collapse in the United States, the system is going to collapse everywhere.
The question now is – not “how can we reform things so that the system does not collapse”, the collapse of the system can not, now, be avoided – the question now is, “what will replace the current system?”
The international establishment have their own answer to this question – international digital currency and full on totalitarianism (control over every aspect of the lives of ordinary people).
But that is not the only possible response to the now inevitable collapse of the current system – there is another possible response.
Liberty.
Curious: Was this shellacking the main tool for convincing the Tories to fix themselves? Or was it just the 2×4-to-the-head to get their attention, and now the actual persuasive effort begins?
I think it will be easy for the Tories to convince themselves that they lost badly for . . . reasons other than the reasons y’all wished to convey. I hope you have mechanisms in mind to dissuade them of this.
I suspect they are not the grandees running the Party, so they are supporting a party whose leaders said one thing & did something quite different for a decade and a half.
If a leading member of the party states he wants a “bonfire of the QUANGOs” but the party doesn’t three-line-whip try to repeal all the enabling acts that make those QUANGOs indestructible, I would infer that whatever quixotic Conservative Party members hate about the current system of technocracy, the grandees in charge are perfectly ok with it.
I’m sorry, I despise the Tories as much as the next former Tory voter, but that rewrites history. There was a little thing called ‘Covid 19’ that came along and derailed the Johnson government. Whatever plans it and he may have had to rearrange the Uk’s political furniture went out the window within a very few months of them winning the 2019 election. And the post covid period was dominated by the ultimately successful attempts by the Blob to dethrone Boris, with all that followed that, the Truss debacle and the Sunak insertion. By the time that covid was obviously over there was little appetite for taking on the Blob, and indeed once it had defenestrated Boris and then Truss it had its own man in charge anyway.
Where the Tories went wrong was their response to covid, and with the best will in the world I cannot see any politician having stood against the overwhelming public demand for what actually happened. Its the UK public who are responsible for the covid response, because they demanded lockdowns and free money to sit at home doing nothing, and the politicians just went along with it. Its why no-one wanted to discuss covid in the last election, because the public want to forget their role in it. If there was a deep seam of public opposition to lockdowns etc then someone (probably Nigel) would have mined it. But there isn’t, so no party bothered to bring it up, which suits the public just fine. Everyone just wants to pretend it all never happened and they had no role in it at all.
Was this shellacking the main tool for convincing the Tories to fix themselves? Or was it just the 2×4-to-the-head to get their attention
It’s doubtful the Tories can be fixed at all, and yes, they are apparently in the process of convincing themselves of all the wrong reasons for their loss. It is quite likely they will decline to become another minor party like the Lib Dems, while Reform or something like it takes over as the new party of the right. That is assuming that Reform (or something like it) gets its act together and starts grinding away at becoming a credible party of government rather than just a campaign with some MPs attached.
I have always maintained that if only three people in the entire country voted, the party that got two votes would claim that with a majority of 66% they have a clear mandate to rule and the one getting one vote would claim that they lost by one vote only and demand a recount.
The Conservatives are in the position of the party that got the one vote and neither party would get the message that NO ONE wants them.
The so called conservative government have conserved nothing except the policies and legislation introduced by the left wing Labour party and added to the lunacy and stupidity with their “ban everything” and do nothing about the real concerns of the electorate (such as mass immigration, sky high taxation to pay for it, the “BREXIT in name only” – the French still fishing our waters, continuing payment of money to the EU, paying the French Police to watch illegal migrants leave France, the state of the sacred cow, the NHS – add in your own flavour of annoyance) and the conclusion is that there is barely a nanometre of separation between the policies and behaviour of the two parties.
Add in that the party is basically foreign run – OK, Sunak, Badenoch, Braverman et all were “born” in the UK but Sunak is a Brahman with everything that that entails, Badenoch spent 16 years in Nigeria and the USA so, obviously, soaked up all the British values and attitudes so necessary to be British. Braverman is first generation British but again, her family upbringing would be extremely heavily influenced by their origins in another country.
You only need look at the number of people of Indian origin that Sunak has allowed to gain visas to enter and remain in Britain legally and their utter failure to do anything about illegal immigration.
Again, I repeat that the Government bangs on about Net Immigration but if 1 million British people with skills, education and a decent work ethic emigrate annually but 1 million and one people from the third world with zero skills needed in a modern society enter the country, then where is your concern? Net immigration is only one per year.
Will they learn? I have a cartoon somewhere of Adolf Hitler in his bunker in Berlin in late April 1945 where the city is being pounded to rubble by the American 8th Air Force by day and the RAF at night and Stalins tanks are rumbling overhead and he says “Perhaps I wasn’t ruthless enough?” Maybe the “Conservatives” are thinking that they weren’t Blairite enough?”
I fully expect that the towering intellects at the Tory party (the same towering intellects that thought Sunak would be a good prime minister) will conclude that, as they were beaten by a left wing party, they are too right wing.
The Tories have made it perfectly clear that they are not, and have no intention of being, a right wing party. Their only hope now is that Starmer does something so awful, collapse of the pound, bank runs, civil war, that they can get back in as the safe pair of hands.
the grandees in charge are perfectly ok with it.
Not just the grandees. I will never forget or forgive the image of Conservative MPs braying like excited donkeys at their Pyrrhic success in propping up Theresa May following the 1922 Committees extremely half-hearted vote of confidence. At that point I realised that Alan B’Stard wasn’t a caricature, if anything he was an understatement.