On Tory Party Psychopathy

In their 1994 study of the Tory party membership, Patrick Seyd, Jeremy Richardson and Paul Whiteley came to the surprising conclusion that despite the success of the Thatcher years, the membership were, in the main, distinctly non-Thatcherite and much less extreme than the "swivel-eyed loons" referenced 20 years later. Well, if a certain YouGov poll of party members is anything to go by, we've gone way beyond even that. In case you haven't heard, 63% would rather have Brexit if it meant Scotland leaving the UK, 61% if it meant severe damage to the UK economy, 59% if Northern Ireland left, and 54% prioritise Brexit over the continued survival of the Conservative Party. The only thing that is not an acceptable price to pay is Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10. Interesting. Okay, so what is happening. How have we gone from a party whose official mythology paints it as level headed, and pragmatic in the pursuit of power to, well, outright psychopathy?

Stephen Bush suggests we need to look at things through Tory members' eyes. For them, for a variety of reasons, Brexit is an unalloyed good that might cause some difficulties at first but midwife considerable upsides eventually. The prospects of things getting that bad so lumps of the UK fall off aren't entertained with much seriousness, and so we get the answers we get. Yes, there is some truth to this. And yes, there is more going on.

In 2019 a lot of Tories don't feel particularly attached to the union. Unless they happen to be Scottish Tories. This is partly a consequence of the Tory implosion in 1997 where they were eradicated and from 2001 had to get by with just a single MP until the Davidson/May renaissance in 2017. For much of the last 20 years the Tories have been a de facto English nationalist party, a position that was actively cultivated by Dave in his talking up of the SNP "threat" before the 2015 general election. You might remember the SNP were opposed to his austerity scheme and derailed the roll out of the bedroom tax in Scotland, in turn reinforcing the divisive idiotics that the SNP headed up a nation of idlers subsidised by England. And since the referendum the Scottish government have positioned themselves as implacable opponents of Brexit. Scotland here then is less a valued part of the UK, and more an obstacle to levers' hearts' desires. A consequence of this is Northern Ireland. More or less forgotten by Westminster until May needed DUP support, it's almost as if The Troubles were expunged from national consciousness until we were forced to consider the politics of the place again. But it's not so much the new found relevance of the DUP that annoys, but again the presentation of the border as an obstacle. Rather than address it, as per May's dreadful deal, or pretend it isn't there thanks to the technical fixes Boris Johnson keeps banging on about, Tories are increasingly happy for it to just go away. By narrowing the Tory horizon to England and, at a push, Wales, should we be really surprised?

It must be noted we're not dealing with the same Tory membership as those who held out against Thatcherite values. When May could do no wrong, hard to believe now I know, the Tories basically consumed UKIP. They ate the vote and they ate the membership. Anecdotal reports rolled in to Conservative Home and off the lips of worried MPs how associations were starting to see the reappearance of people who had decamped to UKIP. Matters were made worse more recently as Mr Magic Pockets Arron Banks urged kippers, and anyone else who was listening, to ditch their party and join the Tories to deselect remainy MPs, put pressure on May, and influence the outcome of any coming leadership contest. No wonder they're quite happy to see the party crash and burn then. For them, their relationship to the Tories, their membership is even more transactional than Labour's support. And with the arrival - and success - of the Brexit Party, there's somewhere to go if they burn the house down.

This doesn't capture all the Tory membership by any means, and it's hardly the case the bulk outside of UKIP returnees are any better politically or, for that matter, much different in terms of demographics and values. They too are mostly white, disproportionately retired, and better off than most when it comes to fixed assets, share ownership and other income. The key difference is unlike the membership of the mid 90s, these are far less likely to be involved in community activities and charitable ventures than their forebears. One reason why membership ballooned to almost three million in the post-war period was the party provided a means for social networking for the ambitious and the upwardly mobile respectable, associations had dozens if not hundreds of clubs and bars between them where 'better' people could drink away from the hoi polloi of the working men's club and the spit 'n' sawdust. Charitable good works were also very important. One could mix with other like minded souls and discharge patrician obligations to the less fortunate. The mid 90s membership surveyed by Seyd et al were aged remnants of these cohorts, of which now few persist. Long-term members who've been around since the Thatcher years are more likely to identify with and still hold sacred the values the blessed Margaret allowed to prosper. Senses of social obligation aren't as great, and members are not embedded in the same broader networks as the older generation. And as for the new lot with their transactional mindset of Tory-because-Brexit and mercenary attitude to the party and its success, the psychopathy we're seeing is yet another symptom of the party's long-term decline. A process, of course, Theresa May has done well to accelerate.

The present Tory party membership then is more socially isolated than previous generations of activists. This is reinforced by the lumpenising effects retirement has on a membership comprised more of older men than anyone else, and crucially the anxieties one experiences when you are dependent on supplementary share income on top of one's pension(s). Economic anxiety isn't about being poor. It's always about already having property and wealth, even if those holdings are quite modest. Brexit appears to be attractive because in an uncertain world, the nation remains permanent. Reasserting itself by leaving the EU again promises the better, easier society of yesteryear when we were in charge of our destiny. Promises of certainty always go down best with those who don't feel it, and feel disarmed and out of sorts with the world. Therefore, risking the union or the economy doesn't matter because they think they're relatively insulated from anything going wrong, but they keenly feel it where Corbyn is concerned because he represents a direct threat to how they perceive their interests. More than that, he condenses everything they find objectionable about modern Britain, and why a Corbyn Brexit is not acceptable to them.

In sum, the Tory party have lost their collective mind, but it's the outcome of long-term changes that, at various intervals and unknown to them, has been shepherded along by successive party leaders. When things are this bad, when the very existence of the party itself is disregarded in cavalier fashion, you know we're in new territory. Whether the Tories die remains to be seen, but it's giving off every indication that it's chill with the prospect.