Traumatic events bequeath traumatised legacies. We know this in our personal lives. The same is also true for nations and their politics. The tragedy and farce of the past months are not over. There may be further convulsions, especially if Boris Johnson returns. But even if he does not, these months will leave searing effects as British politics endures a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Many countries continue to live with much darker horrors in their collective psyches. Modern Germany is still shaped by an unbending rejection of the Nazi past. United States foreign policy remains indelibly marked by the disaster of Vietnam. In Russian history there was a period, lasting from 1598 until 1613, that is simply known as the “time of troubles”; Vladimir Putin constantly tries to bolster his authoritarian rule by warning that such a time must never come again.
In Britain, we too must see the wider civic damage of the Johnson and Liz Truss eras. We need to ask non-partisan questions about the longer-term effect of prime ministers toppling, ministers coming and going, and the experience of watching an economy on a knife-edge. This requires us to step back and think about how the events of 2022 may shape those who will govern for the rest of this decade and beyond.
One thing can be said with confidence. The Conservative governments’ implosions will come to be seen as “never again” moments, and not just within the Tory party. The chaos of 2022 will join events from earlier times, such as the Iraq war, the 1981 budget and the 1956 Suez crisis, as crucial warning waymarks that shape the choices of succeeding administrations. This year of multiple prime ministers and chancellors will be a cautionary tale for a long time to come.
The scar tissue from all this will shape future politics, not merely the week ahead. Here are just five areas to consider where the impact is likely to be long, powerful – and perhaps unexpected. All are intertwined. Few offer easy hope that this Tory time of troubles will trigger anything approaching the Damascene conversion to evidence and reasoning in public policy that many of us would like to see.
The Conservative party
Although Jeremy Hunt still invokes compassionate and one-nation Conservatism, those traditions are fatally weakened. The Tory party has moved decisively to the right, channelling much of the worldview of Ukip. In spite of Liz Truss’s fall, a possessive individualism deriving from the Thatcher era remains the default ideology of much of the party. Big financial interventions over Covid and energy prices, and the market attack on the mini-budget tax cuts, have done little to change this. Tories who argue that taxes should rise, such as the journalist Daniel Finkelstein this week, are vanishingly rare. Those who hope the party of Michael Heseltine will somehow re-emerge from the ashes of the Truss debacle will be disappointed. If Johnson recaptures the party next week, the prospect of the Tories splitting, as the Liberals did in 1918 and Labour in 1981, will increase, with lasting consequences.
Fiscal policy
The arguments around Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget have not been resolved. Logically, the batterings experienced by the Truss government’s tax cuts should favour a return to orthodoxy in policymaking, rather than radicalism. Yet the Tory party (and the Daily Mail) are unconvinced. Indeed Labour may take the lesson to heart more seriously than the Tories. So the otherwise rational case for higher taxes and more spending at a time when needs are so large is still looking for a political home. Meanwhile libertarian Tories have become convinced that economic orthodoxy is always being weaponised to try to do Brexit Britain down. The trauma of 2022 will have long consequences, including perverse ones.
Brexit
You might think that the mini-budget trauma would now allow more pragmatic approaches to Brexit to emerge. As Mark Carney pointed out a few days ago, in 2016 the British economy was 90% the size of Germany’s, but now it is less than 70%. Now that tax cuts and doubling down on inequality have bombed as a solution, there is fresh logic in forging better post-Brexit economic links with the EU. That, at least, is the view of the historian Anthony Seldon, who told me this week that the mini-budget humiliation is “the end of the Brexiter view that everything can be blamed on what Lord Frost calls the ‘hectoring classes’ and on the ‘blob’ of stupid people who cannot see the truth”. Intellectually, Seldon may be spot on. But don’t hold your breath for a more pragmatic approach to Brexit.
Parliamentary democracy
The rapid churn of governments, ministers and policies in 2022 is unprecedented. It has its origins in the Brexit vote, but the volatility shows no sign of ending. The challenge this poses for unreformed parliamentary democracy cannot be overstated. The postwar era, in which Britain alternated almost seamlessly between liberal capitalist government under the Conservatives and social democratic government under Labour, but in which there were nevertheless important elements of continuity and respect for parliament and other institutions, has long gone. The historian Peter Hennessy told me this week: “If the shoutiness, coarseness and malice of the Brexit era continues to be the normality of politics, the 2020s will be seen as a wasted decade and the pessimism will deepen.”
Public trust
The humbling of Truss may prove the humbling of the British political class more generally. It challenges the claim of ministers to lead wisely, explain clearly, and deliver competently. To borrow a chant often launched at referees from the football terraces, this year has been British government’s “You don’t know what you’re doing” moment. But it will shape confidence in future governments of all colours too, because trust is already so low. The expert on the Tory party Tim Bale says: “Along with the expenses scandal, these events will do a great deal of damage. The open question is whether the government mishandling of events will simply have a negative impact or whether it will encourage a more positive approach to reforms such as proportional representation.”
When events like these occur, it is tempting to think that the public and the politicians will have a lightbulb moment about the importance of government and the state in providing stability, security and fairness. Hennessy, who called his book on Britain after 1945 Never Again, is nervous about whether it will happen in 2024, although he thinks Keir Starmer is capable of leading the country. Such caution is glumly understandable. The biggest question after the implosion of the Truss government is whether the public is willing to trust any politician any more.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian associate editor and columnist
