Burning Britain to the ground: The Tory party and the politics of arson

The weekend political column

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The next Tory leader prepares to wrap herself in the flag (CREDIT/THE TIMES)

Kemi Badenoch, the current favourite to become the next leader of the Conservative party, has to face a tough question all who seek to lead the right must answer:  How much of the country are you prepared to set on fire?  All of it? Most of it? Or just enough to leave a cloud of yellow smoke hanging over the nation?

The fifth Tory government we have had since 2010 says that, after so much destruction, burning the place to the ground is the last thing on its mind. Today’s ministers pretend to offer the stability of a post-revolutionary regime, and a break from the maniacal chaos of the Brexit years.

“I’m not an arsonist, I’m a Conservative,” Badenoch assured the House of Commons last week.  And, on the face of it, Badenoch and the other members of the Sunak administration appear to be just that. Rather than have a trade war with the European Union, Rishi Sunak reached a compromise on the border in the Irish Sea that Brexit created when it partitioned the British Isles.  The last two prime ministers, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, opposed him. But their former supporters would not follow their old leaders and the rebellion was a paltry affair.

Badenoch’s appearance before the Commons apparently represented a further diminishing of Brexit’s revolutionary fervour. Only last year the government had agreed to automatically delete 4000 pieces of EU legislation from the UK’s statute book at the end of 2023. Employers and trade unions said that business could not cope with more mayhem.    The civil service said it did not have the capacity to rewrite so many regulations.  

The Tory right did not want to yield an inch because it never does. But Sunak conceded ground. He compelled Badenoch to infuriate her chauvinist base by scaling back the scope of the legislative purge from 4000 to 600 regulations. As no one can become leader of the Conservative party without winning the support of party members, and as party members are very right wing, political journalists concluded that Sunak had led his rival into a trap.

She put her best face on it, and seemed almost proud of the boast that she was not an arsonist, whose ideological purity demanded that purifying fire consume the country.

Her words rang false, and only the inability of her party to face up to the consequences of Brexit allows her and many like her to get away with the pretence. Privately a few moderate Tories, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, want to limit the damage Brexit has caused and is continuing to cause. But they would be finished if they ever said as much in public. All who want a career on the right in politics, in journalism or in influence-peddling think tanks must maintain that Brexit is over and done; that it was a one-off event rather than an enduring and debilitating process that will carry on burning Britain down until it is reversed.

“I voted for Brexit, I believe in Brexit and I know that Brexit can deliver, and is already delivering enormous benefits and opportunities for the country," the prime minister declared in 2022. Everyone on the right says the same, even as public support for the worst economic error of our lifetimes drains away.

Like the Vestal virgins tending the sacred flames of ancient Rome, they must keep the fire of Brexit alive for fear of what will happen to them if it is extinguished.

The rest of us must live with the consequences. By weakening the pound, Brexit has forced up import prices. By creating a labour shortage, it has pushed inflation up further. These are not one-off effects. In the autumn, the government will finally institute checks on all goods entering the UK from the European Single Market. The costs of meeting the new bureaucratic burden will raise prices again.  Meanwhile many European food producers won’t bother exporting to the UK at all, thus restricting supply and raising price further. The latest estimates put the cost of Brexit to the UK at £100 billion a year. We are not in a post-Brexit era of stability, however dearly our leaders would like us to believe it.

Meanwhile a close examination of Badenoch’s testimony to the Commons shows she did not abandon her right-wing admirers. First, she appeased them by saying that she, too, wanted “to show the benefits of Brexit”, which would indeed be nice to see. Then she showed her willingness to join a new front in the war against progressivism.

Her efforts to scrap EU laws were being thwarted by the Net Zero target, she explained. . “The principles I’m starting from are what we can do to reduce the burden on business. Commitments have been made by my predecessors around workers’ rights and environmental regulations.”

Note the implication that, freed from the constraints of her woke predecessors and the liberal blob, Badenoch would be happy to meet the dream of the right by tearing up workers’ rights and environmental protections.

I would be careful before dismissing her crowd-pleasing as the bluster of a politician heading into a long and well-deserved spell in opposition.  Right-wing political operators have noticed a tension in public attitudes respectable Conservatives and progressives don’t like to admit exists.