To mark the opening of the Tory Party conference, we are publishing the following extract from the booklet, Where is Britain Heading?, produced by Left Horizons in June.
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The political representatives par excellence of the capitalist system are historically the Conservative Party, the most successful right wing party in Europe, with a perspective that was formerly measured in continents and centuries. Today, they are in chaos and are incapable of thinking beyond the next election.
The ruling class has always projected a public image of honesty and integrity for their politicians, not least because they are being watched carefully by the ‘great unwashed’. Their political representatives were ‘honourable’ men and women (although mostly men) who had ‘standards’ and who would resign on important matters of principle.
This new breed of Tory MPs and Prime Ministers, however, are parvenus, upstarts. They have no ‘honour’, no honesty, and no shame. Ministers might be branded as bullies and liars, even by official inquiries, but they mostly just brazen it out.
They are motivated only by the interests of the most recent (and the most generous lobbyists) they have been wined and dined by, and display no long-term consideration for their own party, the economy or the country as a whole. No one better represents this new breed of Tory politicians than Boris Johnson, a compulsive liar, blusterer, political opportunist, and chancer.
Decline and chaos within the party
And just like in the first century, when the ‘Year of the Four Emperors’ signalled civil war and chaos in the Roman Empire, this last year, the ‘Year of the Three Tory Prime Ministers’ signals decline and chaos within that party.
All aspects of Tory government policy today, without exception, are dictated by MPs’ connections to vested interests in business and the financial sector. Policies on transport, health, food, energy, and just about everything else, flows from company boardrooms, via covert meetings with ministers and civil servants, into government policy and departments. The Tory government is the political committee of the capitalist class and the two are fully and completely integrated. From the point of view of one section of the ruling class, Brexit was a disaster, but that doesn’t alter the general position.
All aspects of public procurement and expenditure are linked to outsourcing and private contracts. The quality of all goods and services bought in by the government, from medical supplies to Royal Navy Frigates, is aimed only at maximising profit for private companies, at taxpayers’ expense.
Nothing better summarises the philosophy of modern Toryism that the ‘fast track’ procurement that was put in place during the Covid crisis. Companies were favoured on the basis of a recommendation – we could say a nod and a wink – from MPs, peers, or top civil servants.
Fast-track gravy train for Tory friends and associates
Tory peer Lady Mone, for example, was lobbying for her firm to get a PPE contract even before it was incorporated. Her company still managed to get two contracts worth over £200mn, and for PPE that turned out to be worthless. Companies were set up specifically to ride the fast track gravy train and billions were siphoned off, never to be returned.
What we have to understand is that this process is not really unique to the Covid crisis, it is merely the logical conclusion of a process that pervades all local and national government outsourcing, including the NHS, Education, the provision of social care, Defence, road building, infrastructure procurement, and so on.
To be sure, the government can be said to be the political committee of capitalism under any capitalist government, including Labour governments, but it has never been as blatant and open as it is at the present. We see it particularly in the plague of outsourcing and privatisation right across the entire public sector.
Outsourcing lucrative contracts is the raison d’être of government
The primary purpose of all outsourced contracts is not to provide a product or service for the benefit of the public. It is profit, full stop. What products or services are provided, are invariably based on the cheapest materials, inferior designs, and such careless planning that the end results are meagre, second-rate, and not long-lasting. This is true right across the board: from pot-hole repairs to Covid PPE, to the quality of new housing, to food standards, and to a host of other examples.
In a sense, the modern-day Tory Party is perfectly suited to their role, which is to conduct a policy of managed decline. Education is suffering; there is a growing list of outstanding school and college repairs that need to be done. Public services have been cut to the bone, so that even barristers and civil servants are forced to take industrial action. Not least, there is a growing crisis of staffing, morale, and clinical integrity in the NHS, an ‘omni-crisis’ that the government refuses to acknowledge, let alone address.
And all the while, energy companies, subsidised by the government, are ripping off gas and electricity users. Water companies are pouring thousands of tonnes of raw sewage into rivers and onto beaches, while shareholders laugh all the way to the bank. Billions that should have been used to modernise and improve water treatment has gone into bank accounts offshore.
Brexit an unmitigated economic disaster
There is probably no better example of the short-sightedness and folly of the current Tory leadership than their embrace of Brexit. By 2019, the Tories had, in effect, become what used to be UKIP. Brexit was not even a policy Johnson particularly supported – he had two speeches written on the EU at one point, one for Leave and another for Remain – before opting for the one that was better suited to his personal ambitions.
Brexit has meant the introduction of customs controls between the EU and the UK, where previously there were none. It has meant additional paperwork and bureaucracy for every exporter, importer and haulier, and daily checks of tens of thousands of goods moving in either direction. Far from reducing ‘red tape’, Brexit has multiplied it and nowhere has this been more obvious than in relation to food imports from Europe, which have occasionally stalled, leading to price increases and shortages.
Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster for the British economy, the worst peace-time blunder by the Tory Party in modern history. The Northern Ireland trade protocols signed by Johnson, and – typically – abandoned by him weeks later, have been the cause of increased sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland and issues, including the collapse of the NI Assembly, as yet unresolved.
Johnson’s so-called ‘oven-ready’ deal has also created frequent episodes of chaos in Channel ports and for many exporters and hauliers the bureaucracy of trading on the continent has proved too much. Europe was for obvious reasons – proximity being the most important – the UK’s most important trading partner.
Worst political representatives of capitalism in its history
All things considered, the current Tory leadership are the worst political representatives of British capitalism in its entire history. It is hardly surprising that leading Tory ‘grandees’ – those with some attachment or knowledge of a different past – tear what little hair they have left.
Whereas the Tories in the past represented the whole of the ruling class – landowners, bankers, and manufacturers – it is arguable that today they have lost the confidence of a part of the capitalist class, particularly those connected to industry. The likes of May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak (and even Cameron, who launched the Brexit referendum) have catapulted a once great party to what may turn out to be an existential crisis in the near future.
The ambience of calm and efficiency that has been cultivated by Rishi Sunak – and almost anyone would have improved on the chaos of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – is only tissue thin. There is bound to be an election next year, and unless there is a dramatic shift in public opinion, at a time when the mass of the population are experiencing the biggest cuts in their living standards in their lives, the Tories look likely to lose it.
In the recent local government elections the Tories lost over a thousand seats, triggering a wave of discontented whispering in the ranks. Two different ‘dissident’ conferences took place, the National Conservatives (‘NatCons’) and the Conservative Democratic Organisation. The former is linked to the right of the US Republican Party and was addressed by a Trump-supporting Senator. The Tories do not have the appetite for a challenge to Sunak’s leadership at the moment, given the plethora of leadership changes in a few years, but if Sunak loses the next election, as looks likely, the Tories will begin fighting like rats in a sack.
We live in a period of great political storms and stresses
Recriminations among Tories could mean the development of serious splits in the Party, as the ‘moderate’ wing, including its supporters in manufacturing and industry, is increasingly alienated from the Johnson/Rees-Mogg wing and the ‘NatCon’ lunatics on the far right. A part of that right wing, inside or outside the Tory Party, could well move in the direction of modern fascism, particularly as a reaction to a labour movement that showed serious signs of becoming more influenced by revolutionary ideas.
We are living in a period of great political storms and stresses. Every single political party will be tested by events and will be subject to contradictory strains and pressures. Splits and divisions are inevitable in all of the main parties, and the Tory Party will be affected like all the rest.
For a complete hard copy of the booklet, Where is Britain Heading, contact the editor, at editor@left-horizons.co.uk
