Thread by @RussInCheshire

Here's what's gone wrong for the Conservative party.

They didn't adopt austerity in 2010 because the economy needed it. They adopted it because it allowed them to do an ideological shrinkage of the state, while blaming Labour. Austerity wasn't economics, it was pure politics.

Austerity fucked the country for the simple reason that if you starve the economy of money and hope, you end up with a hopeless economy and no money. Investors knew this, so abandoned us. OECD average investment is a third higher than it is in the UK. We starve ourselves.

Cameron was (as Obama observed) a lightweight. Osborne, a sadist. Between them they caused huge economic and social harm, and were happy to nod along when their racist moron wing blamed everything on the EU. For temporary political benefit, they let liars tell lies.

But this just empowered UKIP, which had grown out of the ashes of the BNP, and Cameron was too focused on avoiding splits in his party to stand up to his right flank. Pressure for Brexit grew, Cameron wouldn't fight it cos he didn't want to have blue-on-blue fights.

So instead, the party simply rolled over. They adopted the mad preoccupations of a bunch of right wing cranks, and started explaining that things had gone to shit because of the existence of Belgium. That the EU had ruined Britain so much, everyone wanted to live here.

Outside Tories and UKIP, pretty much every economist, politician, academic, professional body and trade body ON EARTH thought Brexit would be terrible. We'd floundered for years before joining the EU. We'd flounder again unless we had a leader who was honest with the public.

So we chose Boris Johnson. Fuck me.

The ultimate political opportunist, spinning endless webs of bullshit. But Tories can't avoid responsibility for him. He's the toadstool, but they're the rancid mess he grew out of. They could have stopped him at any stage. They didn't.

They bought into his crap for short term political expediency (yet again), and he sold the country a false prospectus, which they had to sign up to, or quit.

So the moderates quit.

Having given up on truth, all the Tories could do was drift further into fantasy.

At a local level, saner members left the party, wiser members died off, and all you had left was a shrinking membership of deluded extremists, and a moronic policy (well done William Hague) of letting those political fantasists choose the PM.

Brexit was Done. Boris Johnson said so, so you can take that to the bank. But somehow, problems persisted. Who knew!

So a new foreign bogeyman is needed. Asylum seekers! Blame them. More division. More racism. More populism, exploiting problems rather than fixing them.

The populists persuaded themselves all THIS was the fault of foreigners or Gary Lineker. They weren't responsible for anything, so acted increasingly irresponsible. Scandal erupted on all sides, and all Johnson could deliver from No 10 was more bullshit.

If you let go of sound economics, let go of truth, let go of reality, let go of responsibility, this is the outcome.

Austerity led to Brexit.
Brexit led to Partygate.
Partygate led to Truss.
And they all led to what will be a generational electoral collapse for Tories.

I don't especially want the Tories to do well, but I also don't want Britain to have a major political party that swims conspiracy theories, flirts with racism, welcomes climate crisis, and rejects verifiable reality.

Unless they turn their backs on this shit, they're toast.

Not that I expect a single Tory to read this, but if they do: for the love of god, jettison the Bravermans of this world. They're electoral death for you, and PROFOUNDLY toxic to a political atmosphere that - long term - can only survive if we acknowledge the truth.