Andy Beckett's Blog, page 14

Picking fights has served Johnson’s Tories well – but it’s a strategy that may backfire | Andy Beckett

The divisive style of Britain’s most dominant incompetent may lose its appeal as his voters feel their incomes shrinking

Until last week’s Chesham and Amersham byelection, politics seemed incredibly easy for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. However disastrously they governed, the political outcomes – in opinion polls, elections, and control of the national conversation – were consistently favourable. Johnson has arguably been Britain’s most dominant incompetent ever.

In our often-sour old democracy, politics is supposed to be difficult, especially for parties in their second decade in office, when disillusionment has usually set in. But the government has seemingly defied this convention, as it has so many others.

One of the keys to its unlikely ascendancy has been a willingness to pick fights. Liberals, lefties, lawyers, remainers, antiracists, Scottish nationalists, the EU, Channel 4, the BBC, even the Oxford students who voted to take down a photo of the Queen – no potential enemy has been too large or too small, it seems, for the government to leave it in peace.

You could say there has been a frankness about this appetite for confrontation. In some ways politics is always about conflict, between interest groups and philosophies as well as parties. Before Johnson, prime ministers such as Tony Blair and David Cameron often sought to play these conflicts down – “We’re all in this together,” as Cameron liked to say – in order to appeal as widely as possible. Yet since 2015 the Conservatives have found that they can win elections with the strong support of only a few large sections of the population, principally older white voters and inhabitants of rural and smalltown England.

Out of this realisation the Johnson government’s strategy of confrontation has emerged. Overseen by his trusted adviser Munira Mirza – a former member of the abrasive but surprisingly rightwing Revolutionary Communist party, who is now head of the Downing Street policy unit – this strategy claims that the best way to mobilise these groups of sometimes anxious and resentful voters is to tell them that their country and values are being undermined by subversive forces.

As a government source recently told the website Tortoise: “Boris thinks that he and Munira are in the same place on this as the vast majority of the public, and that every time there is another row about statues or Churchill or white privilege, another Labour seat becomes winnable.” If the Conservatives capture the west Yorkshire seat of Batley and Spen from Labour next week, as is widely expected, then the Tory culture warriors will feel further vindicated.

Their aggression seems to bewilder what remains of centrist Britain. From the Tory remainers who lost their seats in the 2019 election to Keir Starmer, with his ineffectual “constructive opposition”, our politics is strewn with reasonable people who haven’t come to terms yet with its change of tone.

The media have been much happier. Confrontational ministers attract audiences, from Twitter to the Today programme. Meanwhile the rightwing press, which has been picking fights with liberals and lefties for decades, seems delighted to see the Conservatives so wholeheartedly joining in. In their coordination of attack lines, the relationship between the party and these newspapers feels as close as it has ever been.

This aggression also seems to suit the times. Ever since the 2008 financial crisis, much of our politics has been a search for scapegoats, for people to blame for the ending of the relative prosperity and stability of the 90s and 2000s. Attacking the liberal left is a good way of drawing attention away from the real causes of today’s deep environmental and economic crises: Conservative free-market capitalism and the consumer appetites of voters themselves.

And yet there is something a bit too neat and self-satisfied about this Tory strategy. There are no magic potions in politics: the effects of new tactics always wear off after a while. The unexpected loss of the Tory citadel of Chesham and Amersham to the Lib Dems may be a sign that aggression is starting to repel. Voters there preferred Sarah Green, a remainer who emphasised her record of “helping individuals facing injustice”. After years of polarised, exhausting politics, it would not be a surprise if voters elsewhere also began to find less divisive figures appealing again. The relatively consensual politics of the 90s and 00s was itself partly a reaction against the red-toothed Conservatism of the Thatcher era, with its constant hunger for “the enemy within”.

At the G7 in Cornwall this month, there was another sign that Tory aggression may be reaching its useful limits. Johnson’s plans to use the gathering as an advertisement for “Global Britain” were partly ruined by his government’s argument with the EU over Northern Ireland. Like all rows between Britain and the EU, this may play well with Tory voters. But to see it in only those terms is shortsighted and parochial. Not all politics is national; relations with other countries also matter. If Britain is seen as untrustworthy in trade negotiations, that will affect the economy and ultimately voters’ incomes.

Blair sometimes made the mistake as premier of trying to reduce politics to the governmental, to efficient administration. Johnson is making a different but equally large error: trying to reduce politics to the electoral. And as he may discover if the post-Brexit trade deals he promised don’t happen, elections can be influenced by external factors. Culture wars and government flag-waving may attract new voters, but they may melt away if a clumsily nationalistic foreign policy makes it harder for them to pay their bills.

By picking fights, the Conservatives also assume that their chosen enemies are weak and will remain so. Yet the balance of forces in a society isn’t static. Today’s left-leaning millenials, so derided by the Tories, will become decisive voters in future elections, like generations of young people before them. Unless they drastically change their views, it’s hard to see what Conservatism can offer them.

Finally, all the current, outwardly-directed Tory aggression feels like a premonition of – or a way of delaying – the battles likely to come within Conservatism itself: between its northern and southern voters, its free-spending ministers and fiscally cautious ones, its free-marketeers and economic interventionists, its reactionaries and social liberals. In Chesham and Amersham, some of these tensions burst into the open, and the Tory vote disintegrated.

Divisive politics, when it’s successful, is about drawing lines: between your party and an electorally sufficient mass of supporters, on the one side, and your enemies on the other. Johnson’s government is doing that well for now. But if lines start being drawn within your own party, politics gets harder. When that happens – and the Tories’ acrimonious history since Thatcher suggests it soon will – Johnson’s days of easy dominance will feel like a distant world.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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History shows that the Conservatives can’t hold back social change | Andy Beckett

Tory election victories haven’t prevented many British people becoming more liberal in their social attitudes

Britain is a conservative country. This is repeated so often that even many of those who want a different society have come to believe it. Especially during long periods of Tory government, when disheartening electoral results and the exercise of rightwing power can feel almost like the whole of politics.

But politics isn’t just about elections and holding office, however much politicians, party activists and Westminster journalists might want that to be the case. It’s also about slower, less noticed, more continuous shifts in public attitudes and behaviour. What we consume; how families function; what we consider a legitimate sexual relationship; which words we use to talk about race. Changes in such things may begin with a few individuals, yet they can alter the distribution of power across society.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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The shapeshifting Tories have grown their base – but this could be their downfall | Andy Beckett

Despite gathering new voters, Boris Johnson’s promises to ‘level up’ the country could alienate his most faithful supporters

Conservatism is stretching its boundaries in Britain. Electorally it is extending ever further into previously hostile parts of England. In Downing Street, it is prolonging its tenure into a second decade, far beyond what many expected during all its disasters in office since 2010. In the opinion polls, it is widening its lead over Labour, in one recent survey to an impregnable feeling 18 points.

Above all, current Conservatism seems to be expanding what Tories are able to do in power. Increase corporation tax. Pay the wages of millions on furlough. Make “disruptive” protests illegal. Impose a border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Remove the borders between party donors, the state and Conservative cronies. Nationalise an airport, as the Tory mayor Ben Houchen has on Teesside. Privatise parts of the NHS in the middle of a pandemic.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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If we really have passed ‘peak London’, what does that mean for Britain? | Andy Beckett

The capital may have fallen on hard times. But it still offers a defiantly different version of Englishness

London feels like a city that might be in trouble. The usual tourist crowds are gone. New towers of offices and overpriced flats stand empty. Recently extended railway stations are deserted for much of the day. Hundreds of shops have not survived lockdown. Thanks to Brexit and the pandemic, 700,000 foreign-born residents may have left the city since 2019: almost one Londoner in 13.

Politically, London has also fallen on hard times. Many of the government’s priorities – restricting immigration, “levelling up”, culture wars against urban liberalism, Brexit itself – are either implicitly or explicitly against the interests and values of the capital. The likely winner of this week’s London mayoral election, the Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan, is already quite a lonely figure: he is one of his party’s few holders of high-profile office, yet with limited powers, such as overseeing public transport, which the Conservatives are constantly trying to weaken further.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Brazen, destructive, aggressive: how does Boris Johnson get away with it? | Andy Beckett

While Thatcher had to face down the unions, northern England and a confident BBC, this prime minister has few constraints

Since the beginning, one of the most striking aspects of Boris Johnson’s government has been its brazenness. The Downing Street press briefing room redecorated in Tory blue, regeneration funds crudely funnelled towards Tory towns, the troublesome Brexit parliament illegally shut down, the pandemic as a business opportunity for Conservative cronies – in these and many other ways the government has exercised power with a cartoonish lack of subtlety.

The response to this, especially from the many people who believe that British governments should be more consensual and diplomatic, has been to wonder privately or out loud, in liberal publications and on social media: how do they get away with it? The unwritten rules of British public life are supposed to make such blatantly self-serving government impossible. And our political system is supposed to punish prime ministers whose divisiveness becomes too obvious, as even the formidable Margaret Thatcher found out.

Related: ‘Sleaze’ doesn’t capture it: Boris Johnson is utterly careless of everyone but himself | Aditya Chakrabortty

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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How did the UK’s most powerful civil servant fall for Lex Greensill? | Andy Beckett

Jeremy Heywood was lauded as ‘the greatest public servant of our time’. Did his veneration of the private sector lead him astray?

Jeremy Heywood was always a bit of a mystery. Even by the opaque standards of the British state, the motivations of the late cabinet secretary and the enormous power he wielded in Whitehall – from 1997 until shortly before his premature death in 2018 – are hard to explain completely. For four successive prime ministers, he was a fixer, confidant, crisis manager, peacemaker, policy assessor and key contact with the outside world. For the civil service as a whole, he was a dominant figure: seemingly ubiquitous, forever laying out in his quick, soft voice exactly how things should be done. Often, this was not how they had been done before.

In February, his widow, Suzanne Heywood, published a memoir about him, What Does Jeremy Think? Jeremy Heywood and the Making of Modern Britain. There are quotes from all the prime ministers he worked with on the back cover. “The words ‘civil servant’ seem too dry to describe greatness,” gushes Tony Blair. Yet despite being more than 500 pages long, and full of sometimes revealing personal and Downing Street details, the book leaves intriguing gaps. There is little about Heywood’s political beliefs – or why he appeared to lack them, despite his era’s increasing ideological polarisation. And there is nothing about the controversial Australian financier Lex Greensill, whom Heywood reportedly brought into David Cameron’s administration as an adviser, and seems to have energetically supported despite widespread opposition from Whitehall.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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If Keir Starmer wants to ‘rethink Britain’, he’ll need some bigger ideas | Andy Beckett

The Labour leader is drawing inspiration from those who seem determined to ignore why the party’s policies resonated in 2017

Keir Starmer is a quick reader. As a barrister, he was renowned for his ability to digest complex briefs. As Labour leader, his most effective Commons performances often rely on telling quotes and figures. Being an opposition politician involves more research than action, and the pandemic has increased that imbalance by restricting his public appearances. Meanwhile, Labour’s recent electoral defeats and Starmer’s own relative inexperience (he has been an MP for only six years), mean that, in theory at least, he is open to ideas. What he reads matters.

Next week Jon Cruddas, one of Labour’s more thoughtful MPs, publishes a book with a cover blurb from his leader. The Dignity of Labour “seeks to re-establish Labour as the party of work”, says Starmer. “It is an ambitious and essential read for anyone interested in how our movement can rebuild”. It’s enlightening to read this book alongside another, similar volume, which Starmer seems to have liked so much he hired its author. The New Working Class: How to Win Hearts, Minds and Votes, by Claire Ainsley, was addressed to politicians of all parties. But one of Starmer’s first acts as leader was to make Ainsley his director of policy.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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The Tories' decade in power is remarkable for the hollowness of their vision | Andy Beckett

Past governments have inspired imitation – but Keir Starmer shouldn’t look to this one for an ideological steer

One of the dirty secrets of politics, in democracies as well as dictatorships, is that if a party is in power long enough, its enemies adopt some of its outlook. Sometimes, this adjustment is just pragmatism: the opposition’s need to adapt to a hostile environment. But sometimes it’s a deeper shift, a recognition that the dominance of those in office reflects social realities. Margaret Thatcher’s government persuaded some on the left that individualism and free markets were forces that no realistic politician could challenge. Tony Blair’s government persuaded some Conservatives that they needed to make concessions to social liberalism, such as accepting same-sex marriage.

Related: Labour MP apologises for saying he once saw business as 'the enemy'

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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What happens if we're not interested in going to the shops when they reopen? | Andy Beckett

British retail, already challenged by digital, has been hammered by Covid. Thousands of jobs could be lost

Under capitalism, shops are one of the places where our society is supposed to feel most alive. Window displays beckon. Products are piled high. Stock changes constantly. Desires are created and never quite satisfied.

For most of the past year, shops in Britain – one of the economies most driven by consumerism – have not been like that at all. Even the grandest London department stores were often eerie places during the few months they were open last summer and autumn: customers sparse, staff trying to keep busy, the same goods on the shelves for much longer than normal. In its most physical form, British consumerism has slowed down and frequently ground to a halt.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Don't rely on a Covid inquiry to bring down the Tories | Andy Beckett

Will the deadliest government failures in peacetime have political consequences? The evidence of previous inquiries is not reassuring

For a long time, a lot of people have been waiting for this government to be found out. Over 11 years, with each misfiring or disastrous policy, from austerity to Brexit to the management of coronavirus, an expectation has grown that at some point the Tories will be – must be – decisively called to account. So far, the electorate, the opposition and the media haven’t done the job. And the next election may be almost four years off. So the best hope for the government’s critics until then could be a public inquiry into Britain’s pandemic response.

The sheer scale of our loss from coronavirus – already almost twice Britain’s second world war civilian death toll – has meant that even Boris Johnson, who has based his career on avoiding accountability, has had to promise an “independent inquiry”. But that was nearly eight months ago. In the government’s view, the “appropriate time” for an inquiry has not yet come.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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