Boris Johnson was corrosive to British democracy in many ways, but one of the most obvious is often overlooked. He was so vulgar, so crude in his dishonesty, with his flagrant disregard for integrity and basic decency, that other disreputable politicians could present themselves as honourable by comparison.
Our current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is a striking case in point. Sunak owes his premiership not to talent or political agility, but to circumstance. He was handed the exchequer because his predecessor, Sajid Javid, refused to sack his advisers and subordinate himself to Johnson’s then right-hand man, Dominic Cummings, and Sunak was considered more pliant. The pandemic then gave Sunak a surge of ill-deserved popularity, because the furlough scheme – similar to that in other rich nations – left his name associated with free money.
But a charlatan is camouflaged by circumstance for only so long, and his political ineptitude meant he couldn’t even beat Liz Truss, who proceeded to win the Conservative leadership and crash the economy and the party’s electoral fortunes.
Yes, he inherited the most spectacular government implosion in British democratic history – though he was a willing participant, not a bystander, in all that – but he has no answer to the social crises stoked by his party’s malign 13 years in office. Instead, he plans to descend into the gutter, hoping the stench will sufficiently disorientate the electorate to prevent the opposition from replacing him.
This is no surprise to committed Sunak-watchers. In his first, doomed leadership campaign, after all, he boasted of taking public money from “deprived urban areas” to help wealthy Tory towns; he pledged to use counter-extremism programmes to target those accused of “vilification of the UK”; and he has mocked transgender people.
But in a briefing to the Conservative-supporting Times newspaper, reported under the headline “Rishi Sunak aims to divide and rule after poll setback”, an “ally” underscored the prime minister’s intentions, informing readers that he intends to weaponise migration, trans rights and crime to turn around the Tories’ electoral fortunes. This is indicative of Sunak’s character and desperation, but is consistent with the oldest traditions of the Tories.
This is a political party that has always represented the interests of Britain’s wealthy elite, but knows that it cannot win elections by presenting itself as doing so: in a democracy, after all, the rich represent a tiny slice of voters. This is why so many Tories fiercely rejected the expansion of the electorate: in the 19th century, the future Tory prime minister Lord Salisbury sulked that “first-rate men will not canvass mobs, and mobs will not elect first-class men”.
As such, the politics of divide and rule has long been a key weapon in the Tory armoury. Migrants have been a particular target. When the Tories introduced the aliens bill in 1904 – which particularly targeted Jews fleeing persecution in the east – the then Liberal MP Winston Churchill correctly wrote: “It is expected to appeal to insular prejudice against foreigners, to racial prejudice against Jews, and to Labour prejudice against competition.”
In the late 1970s, Margaret Thatcher stoked prejudice by declaring that “people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture”, and held out “the clear prospect of an end to immigration”. David Cameron’s administration, too, presented migrants as a scapegoat for austerity-ravaged public services, with his home secretary, Theresa May, resorting to deceitful claims that she could not deport an illegal migrant because he possessed a cat.
Today’s Tories, of course, intend to deport scores of refugees and migrants, while describing them as the “invasion on our southern coast”, wilfully conjuring up imagery of weapon-toting armies. A recent tweet by Sunak, presenting Labour as being in league with “criminal gangs” to flood Britain with illegal migrants, is a gruesome addition to a longstanding tradition.
The same goes for LGBTQ+ people. The Tories and their media allies waged a culture war against gay people in the 1980s, presenting them as would-be sexual predators and the brainwashers of children. In justifying section 28 – which in practice banned LGBTQ+ education – Thatcher warned that “children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay”. Today’s Tories plan to compel schools to inform parents if their child changes their gender self-identification – placing many young trans people at risk of bigoted parents for the sake of indulging moral panic.
Expect to see other divide-and-rule tactics. As Cameron’s government sought to turn the private sector against public sector workers – with lurid claims of “gold-plated pensions” and high salaries – today’s administration seeks to pit striking workers against the rest of society. Poor people – particularly benefit claimants who are disabled or low-paid workers on tax credits – are another obvious target.
How depressing, then, that in Keir Starmer the Tories have an opponent devoid of any obvious principled core, who will do little to defend the targets of Conservative ire. Sunak’s desperate ploy – however rooted it is in a devastatingly effective Tory tradition – is unlikely to succeed, such is the nadir his party finds itself in. That will provide little comfort to the marginalised communities on the receiving end, and will leave our already morally corrupted democracy in a more toxic mire than ever.
• This piece was amended on 28 July 2023, substituting ‘Thatcher’ for ‘Churchill’ in the headline; as the main text makes clear, Churchill was a Liberal MP when he made his comments about the 1904 bill.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
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