How the Tories Can Win

As is often wryly observed, the Tories play politics on easy mode. With a press happy to back them, and a media culture always more oriented toward obsessing over Labour's struggles and foibles, it's not difficult to see why. And as we enter this general election we see the Tories enjoying double-digit leads in most polls and a sense of entitlement from Boris Johnson and friends that they're simply going to walk it. Talk about de ja vu. And so we should properly consider their position and their strategy. After all, victory is not just about organising your own forces - but by disrupting and disturbing those of your opponents too.

The first thing worth remembering is the Tories are in long-term decline. There are three interrelated aspects to this. First, the class structure of all advanced capitalist societies are undergoing a profound change in which immaterial labour is the increasingly dominant characteristic of work. i.e. Whether you are a low paid worker putting in the miles at an Amazon warehouse, a shop assistant in a high street Next outlet, an IT worker, a teacher, a social worker, or a manager your labour is qualitatively the same: the production of knowledge, services, care, data, and relationships. To use the clumsy body/mind division, we've moved from the kind of work where you are a body to one in which you are a brain. It's the kind of work that mobilises your social and intellectual competencies, one where you employed because of the type of person you are. In one sense this is nothing new. This has characterised the hidden and dismissed domestic labour women have undertaken and are still largely responsible for, but what is novel is its generalisation to the workforce at large. This has a number of implications for the balance of power re: capital vs labour and the types and transformation of alienation, but one key consequence is a shift in values away from conservatism to tolerance and social liberalism. And so those political scientists who witter about class voting being replaced by values voting have got it wrong: values voting is symptomatic of class voting or, rather, class cohort voting. The younger you are, the more likely you are to be engaged in immaterial labour of some description, and therefore the more likely social liberalism is your cultural default. The Conservatives on the other hand rely on either retirees, sections of the managerial middle class, the petit bourgeoisie, and older workers who are much less likely to be engaged with immaterial labour. The problem the Tories have then is their base is shrinking and the new class of workers, or the socialised worker, are rising.

However, it's more than a question of simple non-congruence between the Tory party and socialised workers. After all, there has always been tensions and lack of fit between workers generally and Conservatism, but nevertheless significant minorities of workers have traditionally been anti-Labour and voted Tory. I know, it's where I'm from. No, what harms Tory chances is the fact their voter coalition, which is heavily dependent on petty property ownership, measure their wealth in terms of property prices and, for a small but important layer, derive income from renting out property. The Tories are not about to build houses anywhere near to the level of demand when their chances of getting into office are dependent on keeping these people sweet at the expense of other people who are never going to vote Tory anyway. And so young workers are locked out of property ownership, which has some quite serious long-term consequences for the Tories. We often talk about how people are supposed to become more conservative as they grow older, but this is not some essentialised characteristic gushing from the wellspring of wisdom. It is a concrete social process inseparable from property acquisition. If your conservative party is dependent on property ownership but is putting up barriers to its acquisition, you are not reproducing your voters. And this is without talking about the consequences of a decade of cuts, the pitiful rights at work, and all the rest building up a head of anger and bitterness that will ensure millions of people, regardless of how wealthy they become, are never going to support the Tories under any circumstances.

In this sense, the Tories are trapped because their constituency is in decline. And matters are not helped by by the split in finance capital, traditionally a core Tory constituent but one whose EU markets-facing arm has given up and is now pouring money into the Liberal Democrats or, until a couple of days ago, the People's Vote campaign. It's doubtful any Tory would write about their predicament in these terms but they know they have serious problems. Plenty of Tories have expended speechifying and ink on how to reach out to the young, which is sublimated code speak for arresting their long-term decline. Some of it involves addressing the property problem, and other suggestions range from the idiotic, the comical, and the bizarre. Boris Johnson feels this crisis in his bones too. Unlike any other Tory leader of my life time, his embrace of new technologies, redolent of Harold Wilson's white heat of technology, is more than just show and cosying up to the frontier of capital: he hopes to project a forward facing image linking his dynamism to that of the green industries, the digital industries, and the space industries. However, this is a problem to be faced in time. And so there is only one route to another five years in government: putting Theresa May's voter coalition back together.

As we saw in 2017, May was able to scrape up a coalition of voters with the characteristics described above on the basis of delivering a hard Brexit (yes, leave/remain is symptomatic of the values divide by class component and cohort as well) and, to a lesser extent, talking up the spine tingling shivers Jeremy Corbyn sent down their collective spines. Johnson's strategy is about doing the same, except with unseemly haste. Appearing desperate to get Brexit sorted so the Tories can get on with the domestic agenda, a sound bite I'm already tired of hearing sundry MPs emit, is about getting these people on board as well as scooping up those suffering with Brexit fatigue. And let's face it, who isn't? Though the irony is should Johnson win and get his deal through, we'll here no end of it when we get down to the brass tacks of the trade deal and the campaigns for re-entering the EU. Yet while the opposition is ostensibly divided between Labour and the LibDems, this should be enough. It is, if you like, a 40% strategy. Contrary to Blairist dogma, elections aren't always won on the centre ground.

Of course, there are two vulnerabilities here. By putting all his eggs in the Brexit basket, Johnson can potentially conjure up a good vote that will get him over the line provided the Brexit Party doesn't spoil his party. And what do you know, there are indications that nice Mr Farage is happy to oblige. The second big difficulty is as much as Johnson wants this election to be about Brexit, May found to her cost how other issues can rudely intrude. And they can so again. For all the trumpeting of turning on the spending taps, Johnson's domestic agenda is weak sauce. When your top line is recruiting back the 20,000 coppers you spent the previous decade sacking, you know there isn't much in the tank. Indeed, as widely reported a fracking lobbyist has been hired to write the party's manifesto, which is sure to be seized upon by the other parties. True, Johnson might say he wants Brexit done but he's got to show his voters what his domestic agenda will look like, and his timidity makes him vulnerable. More plod, more crack downs on crime tickle the traditional Tory fancy, but the Australian being boring strategy might not work when your opponent is seeking to inspire.

And so the Tories are set to mono-maniacally bang on about Brexit, and throw the usual smears Labour's way. As such it's a numbers strategy, of turning out Leave voters and not bothering trying to win anyone else over. It's classic Johnson: the perceived easiest route to something. And it could well work if Labour prove unable to squeeze the LibDems. Our job is to make sure it fails, and fails miserably.