Behold the final casualties of Brexit

And he that rolleth a stone. As Tories stare into the electoral abyss, facing dissent, doom-laden opinion polls and now the return of Nigel Farage as leader of the nativist Reform UK to further drain their support, the more reflective among them will be forced to acknowledge a simple truth. The Conservative party has become the last casualty of Brexit.

Do not misunderstand me. The Conservatives are not in their current hole specifically because of the policy itself. Since the last election, the pandemic has been more significant. Equally, contrary to what Rishi Sunak’s rightwing critics wish to claim, they are not heading for defeat because they were insufficiently right wing but because, after 14 years, voters have concluded the country is led by serial incompetents and in a worse state than it was a decade ago. 

No, Brexit has wrecked the Conservative party because of the political choices its revolutionary guards forced upon it. They reshaped the Tories, undermining their base, elevating ideology over pragmatism, distracting them from the issues that matter most to voters, purging their most talented leaders, fetishising one cohort of voter over others and, above all, causing it to elect leaders utterly unfit to run the country.

To pick just a few. Brexit uncorked an insatiable populist politics that most Conservatives do not really wish to emulate but which they hoped to co-opt and tame. Instead, it has preoccupied and consumed a wing of their party and now their vote. This also caused them to see their future in the so-called “red wall”, where Leave voters switched from Labour in 2019. But this group was an extra string to the electoral bow, not the whole violin. In chasing a caricature of these voters the Tories narrowed their appeal, writing off and neglecting a cohort of graduates, city dwellers, liberal moderates and the southern supporters who are far more important to their future. Defeat in the red wall will cost the Tories power; collapse in the south will herald a wipeout.

Brexit also undermined the broad church balance between the party’s three main strands: the more socially liberal moderates, the free market small-staters and the traditionalist, socially conservative figures we might once have referred to as Empire Tories. Liberal-minded Remainers were, until recently, marginalised, pushed out of government (and even the party) in favour of generally weaker ministers. 

It fostered two unconservative instincts among Tory MPs. The first is that the end justifies the means. The second is the Trumpist tendency of depicting core institutions of British democracy — notably the courts and civil service — as enemies of the people. Rules, laws and essential bodies could be bent or attacked for the cause.

Brexit also killed the party’s economic model. Once its growth strategy was built upon a low-tax, competitive, open-trading model that was none too picky about its business partners. Yet the promised Brexit bonuses have not materialised. Stalled growth increased pressure on the public finances. And voters have noticed. Towns have not levelled up; food is not cheaper; immigration has risen; and public services have deteriorated. Now the Tories have been skewered by the difficulties of reconciling irreconcilable Brexit pledges.

Crucially, Brexit led the Conservatives to pick manifestly unsuitable leaders. Boris Johnson did win an election, partly because centrist Tories feared Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn. But he also proved himself a lazy, chaotic, dishonest and neglectful administrator who believed rules were for little people. Liz Truss was similarly but differently ill-qualified. Tories knew this but chose both because they met a factional need. The party’s collapse is directly linked to both leaders’ failures.

Sunak, an original Brexiter, rules on sufferance for the twin crimes of fiscal discipline and belatedly turning on Johnson. His need to pacify his right flank and shore up the core vote has distorted both his leadership and the campaign. On the day the Labour leader majored on defence policy, the Tories were talking about trans rights. Reform UK is polling at around 10 per cent. Yet to avert a drubbing largely bequeathed by his predecessors, Sunak is chasing those voters instead of former Tories in the centre ground.

Rather than neutering the populist support, the move on to Reform’s agenda has emboldened it, as Farage’s re-entry shows. It is further bolstered by support from rightwing media groups building audience by promoting anger and betrayal myths.

The consequence of chasing Brexit, then, is that the party of law and order became a party that broke the rules. The party of the contented has become the party of the angry; the party of prudent finance became the party of fiscal recklessness; the party of stability became a party of chaos, political purism and iconoclasm. A broad church has fallen prey to an increasingly narrow sect. And in all this it has ceased trying to be a unifying, national party and instead prioritises a subset of mostly older voters. And this will not end with the election. Many Tories dream of a rapprochement and realignment with the Faragists.

Sunak did try to push back for a while, filling his cabinet with Cameronite ministers — including the man himself — and moderating the excesses of his Leave ultras. But he has been undone by what went before. Desperation has now set in. His party looks out of time, a final victim of the cause he championed.

robert.shrimsley@ft.com

Letter in response to this article:

Irony is Labour may now reap the benefits of Brexit / From John M Jones, London N19, UK