"The politics of support have trumped the politics of power to such an extent that the Conservative Party has broken with almost everything it might once have seemed to be its function to defend". Richard Vinen on "The Conservative Nation" since 1974. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
Lots to think about in this essay. How did the "politics of support" go from being a vehicle for "the politics of power" to subsuming it altogether? A leadership class drawn from PR/the media, with very short careers & little prior experience of govt, must be important here.
Or is it inevitable in democracies - in which "power" depends on the organisation of electoral "support" - that the boundary between them will eventually collapse: that parties will stop thinking of campaigning as a means to power & start regarding govt as a tool for campaigning?
The ability of a campaigning organisation (Vote Leave) to take over a governing party is obviously striking here. And Cummings is a curious case-study: a campaigning figure who professes an obsession with the working of govt, but who was quickly spat out by the machinery of power
Vinen suggests that the transformation in Conservatism since 2016 has been more dramatic than under Thatcher, who thought within the continuity of the Cold War. As I've argued in the past, 1990 may be a more important dividing line in UK politics than 1979 newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…
Vinen also emphasises changes in party organisation: "all parties are now driven by their members in ways that can sometimes make MPs and ordinary voters seem like spectators to the political process". We should think very hard about the implications of this for our democracy.
Lots more food for thought in here. Vinen is always such a thought-provoking writer, and the article is worth reading whether or not you are familiar with Andrew Gamble's work. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
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