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Today is my last day at ConservativeHome. After one general election, two Editors, three leadership races, four Prime Ministers, five Chancellors, seventeen party chairman, and several thousand Newslinks, this is my last ToryDiary. These three years have been the happiest of my life.
When I got the job, I was kicking my heels as a teacher, paying off my overdraft in a career I hadn’t sought. Within a week, I was at the top of Blackpool Tower, hobnobbing with those I’d idolised since I was fifteen, and shaking hands with the Prime Minister. It was surreal, and a tad different to the Tudors with Year 9.
The surrealness never stopped. Ukraine, Partygate, Truss, the Queen, Sunak, October 7th, Götterdämmerung, Starmer, Badenoch, Trump – there has always been something going on. I long to live in precedented times. But however disorientating it has been, however many times I have blinked awake at 5 AM to bash out a TD or see through a Newslinks, it has never not been fun.
That has largely been because of the marvellous team that I’ve been privileged to be a part of. Thanks are in order. Skip ahead, if you must. Thank you, Angus, Sara, and Abigail, for your friendship (and for telling me where to stand each year at conference). Thank you Mark, Lord Ashcroft, and the Total Politics team. And thank you to Harry and Andrew – two great heroes, now two great pals.
Most importantly, thank you to the three stewards under whom I have been honoured to work. Thank you to Paul, for plucking me from obscurity, training me up, and keeping faith with me through every ludicrous headline and e-mail typo; thank you to Henry, for keeping the show on the road; and thank you to Giles, for arriving on a sticky wicket, and proving a true gentleman and a superb friend.
And thanks, of course, to our readers. It’s always a shock to discover I’m not howling into the void, so thank you to anyone who has enjoyed my missives. Reading the comments is always a delight. My father is perplexed as to the great power some seem to believe he wields over CCHQ. I will miss being written off as Young Billy a few dozen times a week. C’est la vie.
There’s plenty of other thanks that I could and should bestow. But before it all gets a bit Return of the King, I’ll end the self-indulgence. But as lovely as my three years have been, I can’t say that I leave the Tory Party in a better state than I found it. If only you knew how bad things really are.
***
When I have, of late, written TDs lamenting Kemi Badenoch’s performance, it is not because of a personal vendetta (or because I can’t think of anything else). I don’t like being critical. It isn’t very good for my career. Her team are people that I like and respect. If I have ever been too harsh, I’m sorry.
But reality cannot be fooled. My first duty is to be honest. ConservativeHome is not the Tory Pravda. We are independent of the Conservative Party, but supportive of it: a critical friend. In being that, I can get the spirit wrong, or be blinded by friendships, grudges, or ignorance. I am my own worst critic.
Yet looking back at my time as our resident enfant terrible, I’m proud of my record. When commentators more than twice my age wouldn’t admit that Truss would be a disaster, I did. I said Ukraine’s future would be decide in Washington whilst the armchair generals still had their fingers in their ears. I think Badenoch isn’t up to the job and won’t last. I wish I was a betting man.
Blame a natural tendency towards melancholy or a misplaced youth spent on the Dominic Cummings blog. I just try to stare the bleeding obvious in the face, consider the worst possible outcome, and acknowledge when the Emperor has no clothes. The arrogance of youth? Guilty as charged.
But in the spirit of another precocious Tory William, half of you won’t be here in 30 years’ time. The reality of our decline seems so much more real when you’re spaffing a third of your income each month to live a shoebox in Zone 4. I am William, 25 ans. Too many in our party, I fear, are Simon or Linda, 70 ans. They just don’t get how bleak the future looks.
The social contract is broken. Before me lies a future of personal immiseration, demographic revolution, and global war. I just want the same lives my parents had. I want a Britain that is vaguely civilised, not a bankrupt, self-loathing, and crime-ridden Yookay. Cue the Kinks. “All the wars that we were won and lost don’t seem to matter very much anymore…”
When I see my country going to the dogs and my party slumping to electoral oblivion, it makes me bloody angry. I can’t bear Britain in decline. I just can’t. When I condemn Badenoch’s inactivity, it is only because she seems to lack the passion to fight, and fight, and fight for the party and country we both love. For all her penchant for steaks, she just doesn’t seem to be hungry.
I’m not sodding off to Reform. I want the same thing that we all want – a Conservative government with the mission, mandate, and manpower to reverse our national stagnation. I hope that occurs under Badenoch. I hope that those policy commissions finally materialise, that Farage implodes, and that she sweeps Starmer away in 2029. But do I think that looks likely right now? No.
Too many in our party don’t quite realise just how much we’re hated. MPs are blinded by survivorship bias. Labour’s travails lull them into a false sense of smug security, rather than waking them up to how volatile politics has become. They write Reform off as a passing fad, and assume that since we’ve made it through 300-odd years, that we have a divine right to exist.
We do not. We are dying on our feet. Our support amongst the professions that once provided our backbone has collapsed. Support amongst the under-45s has collapsed. Across swathes of the country, our infrastructure is non-existent. Three decades ago, we had over a million members. Today, CCHQ refuses to publish the numbers, out of shame. Our brand is mud. We are irrelevant.
Our party has become rotten. Not only are we skint, but we lack the talent pipeline and institutional memory required to rebuild. Far too many of our MPs and officials aren’t half as impressive as they think they are. Too many stopped thinking a long time ago. Creatures of the bubble, they are trapped by it. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Badenoch is right that we talked right and governed left. But we also governed stupidly. We forgot our voters, fell out, and pissed on our promises. Crucifixion on the Boriswave cross would be a fitting reward for our conceit. As we navel gaze, Reform eat our lunch, for doing exactly what we refuse to: attracting attention, having clear stances, and going on the attack. It’s easy if you try.
Even with Farage’s Donald difficulties, the space is open for a party pledged to smashing the status quo. That isn’t us. A Shadow Cabinet with Priti Patel in it isn’t ready for a real reckoning with why we lost or the seismic shift required to win again. Close your eyes; sod the focus groups; trust the comms. Delusion is so much more comforting. But as dire as things look, I won’t give up.
Hope lies in the young. Amongst the next generation, this a clear consensus on how Britain is failing, and on what needs to be done. The crown lies in the gutter; the work has begun on picking it up. Alan Rusbridger doesn’t know the half of it. The future belongs to those with eyes to see and the will to act – who understand how the great questions of our day will be decided. A hard rain will fall.
This will not be your father’s Tory Party. But as our Project 2029 grinds into life, readers should not despair. Our position is perilous, our crisis existential. If any of us had any sense, we would have long since fled. But that we haven’t is the first step towards revival. We are only doomed if we let ourselves be. Nothing is written. “Does it ever really matter? Yes, it really, really matters”
All that is for tomorrow. I wish ConservativeHome, the team, and all our readers well. Thank you for all your support. I doubt this will be my last association with our party. Wherever my career takes me, I don’t plan on being just a spectator.
Happy times and places, one and all.
The post Living on a Thin Line appeared first on Conservative Home.
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