Thread by @redhistorian

In 2019 I wrote a piece for the @NewStatesman on "The Closing of the Conservative Mind". I argued that Conservatism had become intellectually rudderless & incapable of serious thinking about policy. Johnson's rise was a symptom of that crisis, & it will survive his fall. [THREAD]

https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1482310328436285440

2. Johnson's lack of direction is not a glitch in his politics. It's intrinsic to them.

Policy decisions are about choice. But Johnson is a "cakeist": he's never believed choice is necessary. You can cut taxes AND boost spending. You can have a hard Brexit AND frictionless trade

3.This is where Johnson's "boosterism" differs from, say, "Thatcherism".

Thatcherism (love it or hate it) was a serious policy programme. "Boosterism" is a state of mind:a vague call to "believe in Britain".

It's politics as faith-healing, driven by the power of personal belief

4. As a politician who denied the necessity of choice, Johnson was in some respects well suited to a party that doesn't know what it believes in, & is holding together a wildly divergent electoral coalition. But "to govern is to choose"; & those choices are growing more pressing.

5. Covid disguised the tensions within Johnsonism, because it suspended the necessity for choice. Confronting an unprecedented health emergency, spending could surge, taxes fall & other questions be put on hold. But those questions will recur, & Johnson offers no star to steer by

6. Johnson does, of course, have a slogan: "levelling up". Yet the long-awaited policy document has been repeatedly delayed, while ministers try to decide what it means or how to achieve it. After two years of promises, "levelling up" remains an aspiration in search of a policy.

7. Where the government *has* been consistent is in the accruing of power, and the assailing of institutions that might obstruct it. Yet it seems much more comfortable in amassing power than in thinking about what to do with it.

8. Strikingly, when the govt *has* made choices it has either been forced to retreat (eg planning reform) or exposed deep fissures in its electoral coalition (the Health & Social Care Levy). As inflation rises, those choices - and the strains they impose - will become more stark.

9. The problem for the Conservative Party is that no alternative leader can do ambiguity better. Liz Truss seems to share Johnson's mindless boosterism, but she lacks his ability to use humour and pantomime to evade definition. And she'd be operating in a less forgiving climate.

10. Any other leader - Sunak, Hunt, Patel or Baker - marks a choice of direction, for a party that's become unaccustomed to making choices or to thinking seriously about policy. So the temptation may grow to ramp up the culture wars and let the legislative agenda shrivel further.

11. Twice before - in 1827 & 1866 - a party fractured after a long period in government, because it was forced to make a choice of direction after years of postponing choices. In each case, Peel and Gladstone ultimately built something new. Who today has the skill to do the same?

12.Six weeks before Johnson became PM, I wrote that the Tories risked becoming "a zombie party, whose destructive power is no longer guided by a living intelligence".

Johnson is only a symptom of that malaise. Fixing it will tax his successor to the limit
newstatesman.com/politics/2019/…