Has Britain ever had a government with so little support and yet such an appetite for expanding its powers? Less than a quarter of the electorate plans to vote Conservative, according to the polls, making this one of our most unpopular governments ever. Behind this stark figure looms an even deeper dissatisfaction, built up by 13 years of scandals, lethal policy failures, broken promises and out-of-their-depth prime ministers. Whatever the Tories offer between now and the election – probably a repeat of this week’s tax cuts based on dubious public spending forecasts – a decisive majority of voters may have already made up their minds against them.
The more the government’s authority shrinks, however, the more it acts as if it has a huge mandate. It seeks to crush or ignore opposition in ways that previous, much more popular administrations such as Margaret Thatcher’s or Tony Blair’s rarely dared. The verdicts of the supreme court, the operational independence of the police, the right to vote, strike or protest, the rule of domestic and international law: these are merely obstacles, it seems, to the government’s primary task of giving the Conservatives as close to a monopoly of power as our already highly centralised political system allows.
