Douglas Murray:
There is still time for Boris Johnson to return to the principles that will save the country from calamity
Government debt this week topped £2 trillion for the first time. At over 100 per cent of GDP, we are now in the midst of a financial disaster such as this country has not experienced since the Sixties. All of it under a Conservative government with an 80-seat majority.
Of course the Government’s supporters like to point out that nobody saw the Covid crisis coming and these are unusual times. Yet as the weeks of economic inertia drag on, I find myself less and less impressed. All times are unusual, and no government ever came into office only to be given a clear run to do everything it wanted to do. Tony Blair, entering No 10 in 1997, never expected that his political legacy would be tied up by 9/11 and endless, ongoing, wars in the Middle East. But there it is. It is the nature of events. Every government has to meet unexpected challenges.
Boris Johnson came into office hoping to get Brexit and a few other things done. Perhaps he hoped to please his partner by making a big show of saving the whale on the side. Yet here we are at the fag-end of his ninth month in office with unemployment and government debt rocketing. And nor is that the only problem. Rather it is just the most extreme example of what life is always like in government.
As ever the test is not what events are thrown at you but rather how you react to them. For conservative voters, what is most concerning is that there is barely a problem this Government has encountered that it has not responded to with a Left-wing solution. Whether it is public spending or initiatives like yet another anti-obesity-drive, the answer time and again is that whatever the problem, the solution can be provided by state largesse. Thus their ability to run up levels of debt more ordinarily associated with Labour governments just before a landslide defeat. Is any of this a sign of conservative instinct?
Even on issues that should be a cinch for any natural conservative, this Government has been inert at best. You might have expected that a Conservative government would be able to stand up for British history. No such luck. When Left-wing anarchists began tearing down our statues, the Government remained largely silent, barricading itself inside as surely as it next had to barricade up the Cenotaph and the statue of Winston Churchill.
You might think that a Conservative government would find it easy to defend our borders. But it seems to require Nigel Farage to make an issue of this for ministers to take notice and head down to the Channel just to stare at the water for an hour or two.
And you might have thought that a Conservative government would have done what Conservatives have always been best at and raised up people of ability whatever their economic or social background? Yet, before ministers’ hasty U-turn, the exams fiasco of this summer threatened to do exactly the opposite. While students at our best schools – especially private schools – were given the most generous results, students who are high-achieving and ambitious but unfortunate enough to be at our worst schools were disproportionately likely to have missed their grab at the first rung of the ladder. It is not good enough for a government to apologise or shift blame for this onto a botched algorithm. The students whose lives were most affected were the smart and aspirational people who this country has always needed and who, at its best, we have always produced.
Of course, the whole world is now in a slump thanks to coronavirus and it is important not to be dogmatic when adapting to unusual events. But an element of directional principle, at least, is necessary: a demonstration that you know by instinct the direction in which you should go. As the Chancellor’s Eat Out To Help Out scheme has shown, the British public can in fact be coaxed out of their homes and persuaded to get back to aspects of life as normal. But so far that seems to be the only such scheme that this Government has come up with to encourage us out. Elsewhere it is all mixed messages and the tyranny of the caution-istas. Today we see whole cities threatened with another shut-down not because of thousands of deaths, but because of a couple of dozen non-lethal positive tests for Covid.
Some people – in the public sector, in particular – appear to be deeply relaxed about the idea of remaining away from the office for the rest of their lives, so long as their pay packages keep coming in. A Conservative government ought instinctively to wish to reacquaint these people with responsibility and risk, not to mention the principles of economic reality.
On issue after issue – abroad as well as at home – the inability to assert the most basic tenets of conservatism is now howlingly plain.
At the UN Security Council this past week, this country consistently demonstrated that it wishes to sit out the debate over whether Iran should once again be allowed to start buying armaments from China and Russia. The US urged the UK to stand alongside it and enforce the snapback provisions in the flawed Iran nuclear agreement. Margaret Thatcher would have known instinctively that this country’s best interests lie in ensuring there is no hint of a gap between this country and our most important strategic partner. Yet this Government has in its spare moments chosen to side with France and Germany and abstain from supporting the US at the Security Council. Why would this country leave the EU only to hold on to the worst and most discredited aspects of European foreign policy?
When the British people voted to leave the European Union, we did so hoping that we would be able once again to find our own way forward as a country. To have strong alliances with our most valued partners, but to be able to head out into the world again with the can-do spirit that has made this country great across the centuries.
After three and a half years of painful unfixability, the electorate finally broke the Gordian knot of Brexit by electing this Government. Yet since December we have had precious little given to us to return the trust that we put in them. Throughout the pandemic, the Government has hidden behind technocrats. When our history has been attacked it has been silent or beseeching. When people take advantage of our fundamental decency and system of rules, it fails to stand up for us.
All these things, and much more, can be fixed. But that can only be done by Boris Johnson and his Cabinet reacquainting themselves with the instincts and principles which got most of them into politics in the first place. None of them can be happy about the way in which this country is going. It is time they found their instincts again – for the country’s good, as well as their own.
On issue after issue, abroad and at home, the inability to assert the most basic tenets of conservatism is now howlingly plain