It is, at the level of British politics, as if Vesuvius were in the county of Kent and with each passing day smoke and ashes spewed with greater fury from its mouth. Only in this case the volcano is the general elections scheduled for approximately one year from now (deadline, January 2024), Pompeii is Westminster, and its frightened inhabitants are the members of the Conservative Party.
As the end approaches, strange things happen (“we die with those who die,” wrote the poet T.S. Elliot), and quite a few are happening on the British right. Yesterday, Suella Braverman, the recently dismissed head of the Interior, published an incendiary farewell letter on –now Lord Cameron– sat at the Cabinet meeting as the new head of the Foreign Office alongside several of his former ministers and subordinates (Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Oliver Dowden, Grant Shapps…) when he was the tenant of Downing Street, and now they are his peers. Surreal,
Everyone is wondering why, and the answer lies in Sunak’s acceptance that, barring a miracle, Vesuvius is going to take down Pompeii (the latest poll points to a Labor majority of more than two hundred seats and the annihilation of the Tories), and in the latest seismic movement within the Conservative Party, not used to losing, which has been in power for 13 years and sees it disappear.
Forecast of a historic defeat. “Throwing passengers overboard does not seem like the best tactic when the ship is heading towards the rocks; Better to move the helm and change direction,” a Tory MP commented yesterday. But Rishi Sunak has already altered course a few times, and in the end there are always the same cliffs, summarized in exhaustion after five prime ministers in the last seven years (Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and the current one), the crises of the cost of living, immigration, the deterioration of public services, and Brexit.
Sunak and those who advise him are like those football coaches who do not consider the league lost despite being twenty points behind (Labour’s advantage in the polls), but have decided to save what furniture they can. They assume that the coalition that Boris Johnson forged in 2019, with the promise of Brexit, is unrepeatable, and that it is going to lose the vast majority of seats in the north and center of England that it took from Labor (depressed post-industrial regions with socially conservative voters and Eurosceptics). By getting rid of Braverman and bringing back Cameron, the prime minister appeals to the traditional Tories in the south of the country, more well-off and more highly educated; fiscally conservative and eager for a tax cut, but only if finances permit; reticent about immigration, but without hostile and inflammatory language; not necessarily Europeanists, but not addicted to English nationalism either.
The Conservative Party faces two enemies in the election, Labor in the so-called red wall (those seats in the north of England), and the Liberal Democrats in the prosperous countryside counties surrounding London (the blue wall). The former are more numerous, but their defense is much more difficult, so they have chosen to entrench themselves in the latter. There Cameron appears as the voice of reason and common sense lost since Brexit (history is usually kinder to former leaders than many deserve), even though he was the godfather of austerity and formulated the British the disastrous question of whether or not they wanted to remain in the EU. But you don’t have to see much to be king in the land of the blind, and compared to the May-Johnson-Truss trio that came after…
Realignment. Sunak has opted to get closer to the center to avoid a debacle, recognize (without saying it) that the majority of Britons regret Brexit and reposition himself (first he presented himself as a technocrat, then as an anti-establishment rebel, now as a moderate). In reality, the Tories have been mutating and searching for their identity since they destroyed Margaret Thatcher, and – despite winning several elections – they have not found a philosophy to replace Thatcherism and live in a state of permanent civil war. Within them there are more tribes than in Afghanistan, and Sunak’s is the latest attempt to keep at bay an advance of the extreme right-wing Eurosceptic and xenophobic party that began with the rebellion against the Maastricht treaty in Major’s time, putting pressure on Cameron. until he called the referendum, prevented the soft Brexit that Theresa May sought, surrendered to Johnson and gave leadership to the hallucinogenic libertarian Truss. Now inspired by Trump, he continues to proclaim the “benefits” of not being in the EU and demands that the European Convention on Human Rights be abandoned if today the Supreme Court does not approve the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Cameron, socially liberal, brings talent to a Cabinet in which there is no surplus, and Sunak is going to delegate all foreign policy to him to concentrate on domestic policy. But he also comes with the burden of it (like business with China). What he would like is to rewrite his legacy.
“We die with those who die, they depart and we go with them; they come back and bring us with them” (T.S. Elliot). The Conservatives are not resigned to die, and Cameron has accepted the offer to return.
