The world’s most successful electoral machine is in the midst of a “nervous breakdown”, as the leader of the Scottish Tories, Ruth Davidson, puts it. But the crisis of the Conservative party is not being caused by an embarrassingly weak leadership – although Theresa May’s zombie premiership is hardly helping matters. The “political consensus” has collapsed in Britain, as May herself put it on Sunday, and the very model of society promoted and fashioned by Toryism is rapidly losing public consent. The internal squabbling, the political manoeuvring, the backbiting: these are just the morbid symptoms of a broader existential crisis within the movement.
It is worth considering the beauty parade of political ghouls sitting at the bedside of May’s political career, feigning concern and pretending to will her on, but secretly waiting for life support to be switched off.
Take Amber Rudd, a former director of companies located in tax havens. The problem with Rudd is that when she’s on TV, all I can see is a juicy steak fashioned into the number 346: that’s the number of votes she has left after her majority collapsed this year, from 4,796 in 2015. Her desperation has driven her to hire Lynton Crosby, after his dazzling success in this year’s general election. I look forward to joining hundreds of activists campaigning in Hastings and Rye as part of Momentum’s Unseat campaign.
Then there’s Boris Johnson, a bumbling vulture who is already feasting on the carcass of May’s leadership before it has even properly expired. There are two types of Tories: one who realises that Johnson will repel the younger voters that the party needs in order to win an election; and another who is completely and utterly deluded.
Not as deluded as those who have come down with a serious case of Moggmania, of course. What are these people thinking? Do they really think those repelled by May’s Tories in favour of Corbyn’s Labour party are going to see an 18th-century eccentric proffering a combination of hardcore economic Thatcherism and uncompromising social conservatism and say, “Yes please, sign me up”?
But it was Philip Hammond’s speech yesterday that gave away the true extent of the Tory malaise. He echoed May’s view that Corbyn had broken the political consensus. Most of his speech was a red-baiting rant warning of an impending Marxist seizure of power. What it revealed is that the Tories are out of ideas and out of vision, and worry they will be out of power sooner rather than later. They can see that the consensus has collapsed, but they don’t have the faintest idea of what to do about it other than ramp up the fear and loathing towards the opposition.
But it is not all over for the Tories. Labour should be full of enthusiastic momentum, but not complacency. The Tories’ polling has solidified around the 40 point mark since the election. Their electoral coalition is substantially older, sure, than Labour’s, but much of it represents a solid anti-socialist bloc, united by fear of what will happen when Britain’s current social order falls.
Nonetheless, there is a growing sense that the country is on the verge of a peaceful, democratic revolution, one that will replace the old society and not simply tinker with it. There is a very real prospect, at least, that this can happen. And that explains the panic enveloping the Conservative party.
• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
