Finally, we have a government prepared to stand up to that under-scrutinised bane of British society: care workers. Our home secretary, James Cleverly, has gleefully announced an order banning overseas care workers from bringing “dependants” to the UK. Some naysayers may question the wisdom here, what with the national shortage of care workers, and with foreign staff in particular subject to gruesome exploitation, with some being paid effectively as little as £5 an hour and charged thousands of pounds in unexpected fees. I hear that, but you can’t put a price on being able to gaze into the eyes of an overworked, underpaid care worker as they tend to your loved one’s needs, knowing vast oceans separate them from their own beloved.
Spite, alas, does not pay the bills, and here lies the fatal flaw in the government’s strategy. Last week, the Sunday Telegraph’s editor penned a grief-stricken piece headlined “For the first time in my life, I’m now beginning to think Britain is finished”. Apologies for sounding unsympathetic about someone clearly in a right old miserable state, but if you are a Conservative convinced your country is quite literally doomed after 14 years of Tory rule, is it not time to ask yourself some searching questions? Blaming our national existential crisis on us having the wrong flavour of Conservative government doesn’t really make sense either, given that shapeshifting is inherent to the Tory DNA: we’ve seen shrink-the-state Thatcherism, “national conservatism”, unabashed rightwing populism, full-fat economic libertarianism and, well, whatever the hell our current variant is. Not only have these programmes failed on their own terms, but they have left Britain in an undeniably parlous state.
And here is why the Tories are in such a mess. No brand of Conservative philosophy offers solutions to the British malaise. The combined legacy of these eclectic rightwing experiments is an unprecedented squeeze in living standards, stagnant economic growth, crisis-ridden public services, a growing housing nightmare and political turmoil. These ideologically crafted disasters have been accentuated by scandal (Partygate being the most emblematic), and Liz Truss’s decision to turn British citizens into guinea pigs for unhinged policy ideas dreamed up by questionably funded rightwing thinktanks. It was this latter mistake that many people think led to the breakage between the Tory party and the electorate, but it was also a signal of the Tories’ desperation.
They have no ideas left. So, absent of ideas, they have chosen to hit their favourite red buttons once again, in the hope that this time, it might just work. Migrant-bashing makes sense on paper, as it has been conducive to past Tory electoral prospects. The bad news is that research consistently shows a pronounced decline in the salience of anti-migrant hostility, even as overall numbers of immigrants have risen. Scaremongering about headline immigration figures might occasionally play to the Tories’ favour, but as Cleverly’s recent doomed proposal shows, when you give concrete examples, the story changes. Ask Britons if immigration is too high, and more will say yes than no: but ask them about specific examples – social care workers, healthcare workers, teachers and lecturers, students, even those fleeing war – and more will say we need more, or that current numbers are right.
The same goes for another big red button labelled Bring Back Boris. Once, he was uniquely positioned to ride the Brexit wave and stem the bleeding as Conservative voters flocked towards Faragism. That made sense when Britain was deeply polarised about the EU. But that was half a decade ago, and aside from polling consistently showing far more Britons believe the impact of Brexit has been bad rather than good, Johnson’s sparkle has somewhat dimmed since he lied about flouting rules during the pandemic.
The other red button is simply labelled “any old culture war will do”. Transphobia has become the classic of this genre, but alas, though the existence of transgender people has undeniably taken over the lives of a few thousand very vocal online activists to a disturbing degree, making the lives of a tiny marginalised minority harder has not registered as a priority for most. When Rishi Sunak resorted to a transphobic gag while the mother of murdered trans girl Brianna Ghey was visiting parliament, the spitefulness of this crusade was spelled out in primary colours except to the terminally malicious.
And here, really, is the crux of the Tories’ problems. Their economic project has been discredited, so they instead spend their time bemoaning how “leftwing extremists” have taken over institutions under their watch. What they are really objecting to is how younger generations have become more progressive and have very rudely ignored Tory instructions to show spite and cruelty to anyone deemed an outsider. They also don’t understand that British millennials are the first generation to defy the tendency to shift rightwards with age, not because they’ve been brainwashed (somehow, in a country dominated by a hysterical rightwing press), but precisely because Tory economic prescriptions have offered them insecurity instead of freedom.
Even if our ruling party could come to terms with such a reality, and offer a more socially liberal, paternalistic breed of conservatism, a shrinking hardcore of the electorate won’t allow them to do so. Indeed, by threatening to defect to the Reform party, come what may, the Tories are held hostage to their right flank. In opposition, they will double down on this approach, spurred on by media outlets such as GB News. The party is becoming increasingly detached from generations who, with every passing year, constitute a growing share of the electorate. So just watch them, hitting their red buttons with ever more fury and gusto, all the time realising their whole world is crashing down around them, but never quite understanding why.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
