What have we, the people of Britain, done to the Conservative party? Why do they hate us so much? As the odours from their annual feasting in Birmingham drift over the airwaves, I find my responses metastasising beyond the merely political and into the realms of the psychological.
I get the sense that they’re punishing us, somehow. That there’s some deep-seated Jungian weirdness being acted out on the British public, every time the zealot Daniel Hannan vows to feed us his chlorinated chicken, every time Jeremy Hunt threatens us with his leadership credentials. It’s as if we (Britain) are the child. And they (the Tories) are the dysfunctional parents, ripping themselves apart, occasionally grabbing us by the wrists to prove some sort of point to the other.
Theresa May comes up for air. She would like it to be known that she hopes to end freedom of movement within the European Union. She will remove – just like that! – our right to work in France or retire in Spain as that, she has decided, is what we want. She seems weirdly proud about it, too, a little bit “Look what you made me do.” But no member of the British public asked for this. No one made her do it other than the peculiar tribe to which she has pledged allegiance.
There’s something similarly demented about Boris Johnson’s ambitions too. You don’t want this reckless narcissist in charge of the country. No one wants that. Aside from perhaps, a certain portion of the 120,000-odd people who are still perverse enough to be members of the Tory party – because it’s his turn. And somehow, by some convoluted ancestral logic, this is the wing who must be appeased, these are the appetites that must be indulged, these are the people who might actually decide.
England, as George Orwell once wrote, is a family with the wrong members in control. There are the rich relations who must be sucked up to, the poor relations who must be spat upon, and it’s best not to ask too many questions about where all the wealth came from. And remember: “It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts.” Just as adult family squabbles bring with them that same sense of “Why am I still dealing with this shit?”, so it is here: the patrician fossils aren’t talking to the reckless Atlanticists, and the oleaginous metropolitan wing is at odds with the racist granddads – and Cousin Jacob must have his special plate. Stop being the difficult one!
Toxic introspection is not confined to the Tories. There is a certain species of Labourite who believes their own internal squabbles are of paramount interest to Labour voters too. But at least this tendency of the left was counterbalanced by a set of coherent ideas emerging from the Labour conference, a vision for the sort of country we might like to become. There is none of that emerging from Birmingham – no policies, no direction from our bedridden aunt of a prime minister.
The reason all this feels more personal than political is that Tory dysfunction has already infected our lives. No one outside the Tory membership much cared much about the European Union prior to David Cameron calling a referendum. The 2016 vote was intended as a way of resolving the Tory family squabble. All it has done is impose it on the nation as a whole; their problem is now our problem.
Far from settling the issue, it has blown it wide open. Brexit is already costing the economy £500m per week and rising; the economy is 2.5% smaller than it might have been. That isn’t abstract. It has made millions of lives quantifiably worse in terms of wages, jobs and prospects. It has made plans about children, homes and family life impossible to make – just as the extent of Tory damage to the public realm is becoming apparent.
And perhaps the most insidious effect is the way that Brexit has entered actual families too, setting children against parents, sibling against sibling, such that the word “Brexit” conjures something beyond mere trade deals and treaties. It has poisoned relationships, distanced generations, infected homes. For a party that is supposed to stand up for family values, that will be quite a legacy.
• Richard Godwin is a freelance journalist
