US can teach toxic Tories a lesson
Published by The i paper (26th February, 2024)
Adam Kinzinger used to be a mainstream Republican. He is an evangelical Christian and former US Air Force colonel who served as a pilot in conflict zones before becoming a congressman. But he broke with the party after the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, incited by ousted president Donald Trump with lies about voter fraud. Now he finds himself in the political wilderness as a patriot disturbed by his party’s slide into populism, disgusted by pandering on the right to Vladimir Putin, dismayed at seeing former colleagues and friends in politics selling their souls for power – and fearing for the future of democracy in his country.
Kinzinger is among star turns at a “Principles First” summit in Washington trying to seize back the conservative agenda from the fantasists and populists. It is timed to coincide with the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac), which he calls “the clown show of conservatism” that once featured “some weird people” but “now those weird people are the entire Republican party”.
Cpac provided a platform to conspiracy theorists, election deniers, extremists and hate-mongers, sprinkled with some of the shameless opportunists competing to become Trump’s running mate. “Welcome to the end of democracy,” declared one far-right speaker. “We’re here to overthrow it completely.”
No surprise to see Nigel Farage, slippery architect of the Brexit disaster, sitting in such tawdry company among the Maga crowd. Yet he was joined by a former Tory British prime minister – albeit Liz Truss, who lasted just 45 days in power after crashing the economy. Now this tragic-comic figure claims Conservatives are operating in “a hostile environment”, styling herself to Cpac as a warrior of the right brought down by “an almighty backlash” from “the media, from inside government, from the Bank of England and the IMF, even from President Biden”. In an interview with Steve Bannon, she stayed silent as the former Trump aide hailed the far-right British agitator Tommy Robinson as a “hero”.
Her short speech to a half-empty room – sandwiched between folks who dismiss the existence of transgender children and claim the assault on Congress sparked the worst US police brutality since the civil rights movement – might be dismissed as a much-derided politician desperately seeking a new audience abroad. Truss, the free market zealot whose reign was crushed by the markets, remains one of our least popular politicians.
Yet it is only 17 months since she was elected Tory party leader. And her Trumpite ravings about a supposed deep state, “leftist groupthink”, and liberal institutions frustrating democracy, will resonate with many party faithful.
The sorry state of the Conservative Party, which has ruled Britain for more than two thirds of the time since the granting of universal suffrage, was seen again with the suspension of Lee Anderson, after his grotesque claim that “Islamists” had “got control” of Sadiq Khan, who had “given our capital city away to his mates”.
The London Mayor rightly responded that Mr Anderson was “pouring fuel on the fire of anti-Muslim hatred”, sparking a hasty withdrawal of the Tory whip. Yet until last month, this unapologetic bigot was deputy chairman of the Conservatives. Rishi Sunak gave him this post in a desperate bid to shore up support in the “Red Wall” – although he quit to rebel over the risible Rwanda policy, ironically designed to appease the hard right. According to Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden, the party’s issue was his lack of apology rather than Islamophobia.
Meanwhile, former home secretary Suella Braverman published a vile article headlined “Islamists are bullying Britain into submission” in The Daily Telegraph on the day Anderson made his racist outburst. And her one-time sidekick Robert Jenrick – whose leadership bid makeover includes ramping up anti-migrant rhetoric, shorn hair and shedding pounds – flew to Texas to pose for pictures beside the border wall before claiming “we can learn from Donald Trump and the Republican Party”.
Such is the descent of some Tories into the gutter that this twerp thinks it helps his cause to align himself with a politician who undermines democracy with baseless claims of election fraud, has been found liable for rape and faces the first criminal trial of a former US president.
Behind this lust for Trump-style populism lies a floundering party bracing for defeat at the ballot box after 14 dismal years in power that have divided and weakened the nation. It is far easier to lash out at minorities rather than accept responsibility for their own failures. While nothing can be taken for granted in modern politics, their mood of doom was intensified by two terrible by-election defeats this month. There is talk that at least 100 Tory MPs might quit rather than face voters.
Brexit and Boris Johnson have driven out key moderates already. Their latest Prime Minister looks clueless and weak, offering little to an electorate despairing over the state of public services while the right shouts for tax cuts. Meanwhile, Reform UK, seeking realignment of the right, carefully stokes the Tory misery as rival factions fight to control whatever rump of a party might emerge from the anticipated post-election ruins.
Sunak’s approval ratings are worse than Sir John Major before that landslide 1997 loss to Tony Blair. The party relies on older voters as its culture-war posturing and ceaseless civil war repulse a majority of voters too young to collect their pensions – generations more comfortable with diversity, modernity and multiculturalism while concerned over housing and mental health.
No doubt the sneering right will blame “liberal elites” and “globalists” if defeated. But the big question confronting the Tories is whether there are enough moderates left to resist their toxic politics of division, grievance and pessimism. Or will they continue their slide to the wilder extremes of the right, following their Republican cousins into the sort of “clown show” populism that repels sensible conservatives who really care about their country and democracy?