The New York Times, 21 October, 2022
LONDON — Until very recently the British Conservative Party was able to claim, with a great deal of credibility, that it was the most successful political party in the Western world.
The party of Benjamin Disraeli, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher has governed Britain for most of the last 200 years. Through much of that time the Conservatives have been synonymous with good sense, financial sobriety and cautious pragmatism. Despised by progressive elites, allergic to ideology, provincial rather than metropolitan, the Conservative Party rejoiced in being the stolid party of the boring middle ground. Not anymore. Today, the Conservatives are synonymous with chaos.
Liz Truss, the latest Tory prime minister to crash and burn, must bear her share of the blame. There are sound reasons for why she was forced to resign after just 44 days, the shortest term in history. It was a foolish notion to suppose that she could sack the most senior Treasury official, reinvent the laws of economic management and defy the collective wisdom of the financial markets. There was going to be only one result.
But the bigger truth is that the hapless Ms. Truss is a symptom rather than the cause of Britain’s chronic crisis of governance, which has reduced the country — once respected around the world — to a global laughingstock. The Conservative Party chose her, remember, even though she was obviously not up to the job. You didn’t need the foresight of Nostradamus to know she would fail. For the fiasco of her premiership and the disastrous state of the country, the Conservative Party must collectively take responsibility.
Oscar Wilde once wrote that to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose both looked like carelessness. For the Tories to lose two prime ministers in the space of three months shows, more than carelessness, that they are out of control. The government is already on its fourth finance minister this year; one of them, Kwasi Kwarteng, crashed the pound and ruined the party’s reputation for good financial management.
Like the Republicans in the United States, the Conservatives are detached from reality. In a generation, they have become a party of monomaniacs, incompetents and ideologues. Like a thoroughbred that has run one race too many, it needs putting out to grass. After a decade or two in the wilderness, perhaps the party can recover — though let’s not rule out the possibility it is finished once and for all.
That’s still a way off. In the wake of Ms. Truss’s resignation, the party announced plans to hold another leadership election, its second in three months. As with the contests that anointed Boris Johnson and Ms. Truss as prime minister, the choice will be made jointly by Tory lawmakers and party members. Even if, by some fluke, a half decent candidate won, it would not help their fortunes. The party is so riven by internal feuds, personal hatred and ideological disagreements that it has become ungovernable.
This is a perilous time. Britain is facing perhaps its biggest economic, political and even constitutional crisis since World War II. It’s daft to expect that the Conservative Party, which has done such damage over the past decade, might at last be about to govern sensibly. Two years could pass before the next general election. But Britain needs one now.
Admittedly Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour opposition, lacks charisma. Though far from brilliant, he conforms to a recent pattern of global leaders — Joe Biden in the United States and Anthony Albanese in Australia are two examples — who are reassuring even if they don’t set the world on fire. His frontline lawmakers, too, look more competent than the Tory shambles. Nor are they scarred by defeat or compromised by failure.
A growing number of Tory voters, let alone the rest of the country, are prepared to give them the time of day. That’s why a general election is in the national interest. It might seem foolhardy to expect the Conservative Party, staring down almost certain defeat, to call an election. But one of the glories of the traditional Conservative Party used to be its readiness to place country before party.
This doctrine was set out by — who else? — Winston Churchill in one of his last acts before standing down as prime minister in 1955. “The first duty of a member of Parliament,” he told an audience at his constituency of Woodford, “is to do what he thinks in his faithful and disinterested judgment is right and necessary for the honor and safety of Great Britain.”
This rhetoric may be orotund, but the argument is irrefutable. It would have been well understood by the patriotic and fair-minded Conservative Party that governed Britain with such wisdom 70 years ago. Today’s Conservatives, by contrast, cling to power for power’s sake. Besides doing further damage to the long-term reputation of their own party, their obstinacy is ensuring the ruination of Britain.
Mr. Oborne is a British journalist, broadcaster and former political commentator for The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail.
