At the next general election, the Conservatives will be making a very big ask. They will be seeking a fifth consecutive term in power, a privilege that has never been granted to any party since the Great Reform Act of 1832. Assume the election is held in the spring of 2024. Imagine that the Tories receive the answer that they are looking for. We could then be contemplating 19 uninterrupted years of Conservative prime ministers.
For those who shudder at this future, the consoling news is that the Tories are working extremely hard to ensure that this does not happen. It is not entirely their fault that they are presiding over the most severe squeeze on living standards since the 1950s. They are to blame for deciding that this is the appropriate time to be cutting welfare support and hiking taxes. Voters can be willing to make sacrifices when persuaded that it is in service of a noble cause, but the only guiding principle of this government is to keep a disgraced law-breaker in office. There is no sense of a strategy to address the many economic and social challenges confronting Britain. Nor any expectation, even among Tory MPs, that the government will suddenly reveal an invigorating mission in this week’s Queen’s speech.
Levelling up has not graduated from slogan to substance. Promises of a huge house-building programme have collapsed on contact with resistance to planning reform. The energy security plan blinked at the big questions. The failure of Brexit to deliver the opportunities claimed for it is now so evident that Jacob Rees-Mogg has been told to go looking for them. Don’t hold your breath. There is no discernible ambition to tackle the chronically poor economic growth that has been a feature of this era of Tory rule. » | Andrew Rawnsley | Sunday, May 8, 2022
