The Conservative party that gathers in Manchester for its annual conference this week is exhausted, divided and intellectually bankrupt. The constitutional basis on which Rishi Sunak governs is solid, but his electoral mandate is the flimsiest of any prime minister in modern times. The parliamentary majority that keeps Mr Sunak in Downing Street was won by Boris Johnson nearly four years ago on a platform that has subsequently fallen apart. Mr Johnson’s mendacious character rendered his promises worthless. His successor, Liz Truss, was chosen by a ballot of Tory members representing a tiny fraction of the electorate. She then imposed policies derived more from her own ideological fantasies than any published manifesto.
That operation had to be swiftly reversed by the current prime minister, who was elected by no one. He was installed by his parliamentary colleagues to restore financial stability and professional credibility to a country that looked absurd. That duty has been discharged, leaving Mr Sunak without a more coherent governing purpose. Opinion polls indicate a substantial appetite for regime change. A shift in that position is technically possible before an election next year, but few Tories believe it is likely. Some don’t even think it is desirable. After 13 years in power, the party needs to admit its failures and resolve profound questions about its identity.
All parties contain factions and competing currents, but 21st-century Conservatism is unusually conflicted, styling itself as both the reactionary bulwark of traditional culture and a radical insurrection. It is sometimes liberal and sometimes nationalist; obsessed with global status but resentful of international obligations; rhetorically committed to public services and environmental protection but ideologically allergic to the kinds of state intervention that would honour those commitments.
Brexit is the paradigmatic expression of those contradictions and an impediment to their resolution. Since 2016, the Tories have become increasingly radicalised in a doctrine that promised a kind of heroic national renewal that was unavailable by means of separation from the EU. That basic error is too monumental for most Tories to admit. Like all utopian revolutionaries and political fraudsters throughout history, Brexit ultras switched seamlessly from making unrealistic promises to hunting scapegoats. They went from denying that their plans had a downside to diverting blame for their failure.
This explains the relentlessly aggressive rhetoric directed by Suella Braverman, the home secretary, towards refugees. The same displacement activity foments culture wars on other matters that are, at most, peripheral to the needs of a country mired in economic stagnation. Mr Sunak might eke some electoral advantage out of the attempt to oppose speed limits and anti-pollution measures as a crusade for motorists’ liberty, but such fixations suggest the prime minister lacks bigger ideas.
Conservatism is looking like a spent force in government. Austerity hollowed out public services without delivering economic growth. Brexit sabotaged the economy with no practical gain in sovereignty. Mr Sunak was installed by Conservative MPs as a leader of last resort to project managerial competence and to defer civil war in his party. That is the limit of what he can achieve in Manchester this week. He has a constitutional right to govern, but he should not mistake that for a licence to indulge his party’s predilection for radical experiments.
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