Where are the Tories?

We don’t really own Chagos Arch, I said. We can’t even give it away, I claimed. Lawyers without clients are the worst fools imaginable, no one needed to be told. But here we are, and there Starmer, Hermer and Sands are, still at it, still seeking to pointlessly humiliate Britain for no discernible gain. They’re not even in it for the money. 

So what is the official opposition doing in return for their hourly rate? Nothing. Save for that one new eternal truth of British politics, which is Rob Jenrick tweeting. Whatever his cabinet shadow cabinet role is, whatever its boundaries are, because she daren’t stop him. We’ll come back to him in a minute, but first her. Where’s the great engineer?

Dr-but-for-racism Badenoch  is busy insulting the remaining staff she has left because they’re useless. It worked amazingly well, and to prove this I quote, from WhatsApp. In part I do so because earlier today I was editing a piece by Paul Goodman which amusingly blamed the hated app for Pretty Much Everything That Has Gone Wrong (the piece is really good, you should definitely buy our March issue to read it). But I’m going off on a tangent, so back to my Matthew Parker Street correspondent:

I’ve got huge sympathy for Badenoch. Since her election as Tory leader I thought that our demographic — the lazy and nasty — was finally going to get some real representation. But she’s letting us down. Really, either take the two year breather or don’t. Insulting people working harder than you is not good psychology.

Even if, like me, Kemi is too poor to go on holiday (albeit, unlike me, she’s too proud to admit how badly off her household is), there’s no excuse for this sort of rage.

Where the bile could be so much more usefully aimed at is this astonishing looming betrayal of British interests over the BIOT. There is, at the time of writing, a press release from Priti Patel. It contains the words, “learnt absolutely nothing … epic failure … pathetic gesture politics” and isn’t about her time at the Home Office. But again, I too am losing focus, back to the hate. We should not be giving away British territory, and you don’t need to be Northern Irish to feel that with particular urgency.

We can whine about it, or say clearly that we’ll take sovereign possession of British territory again

Jenrick, in his magnificent tweet, echoed some of the toothier voices found online: “This disastrous deal is nothing short of traitorous” he thundered. Nothing to disagree with there, but nothing’s going to be done either. Not one further word is going to be added by the Tories which sincerely follows through on the logic of this claim and threatens to give any substance to it. In short, it’s all so terribly #14Years. This is how they got to where they are now, which is a strong third in the polls; this is not lessons being learnt.

I’m serious and they ought to be too. They should seriously threaten Starmer, and Hermer, and of course Sands (who’s basically foreign because he speaks French, so naturally should be treated the worst). It hardly matters what they threaten them with, but there should be actual, specific, deeply personalised threats — to money, rank and liberty. These should be detailed, made by the official opposition, and they can’t be vicious enough.

Jenrick is a keen student of American politics. “Lock them up” cheered right wing voters up just by the saying of it. It made a tonal difference. Frankly for both American parties’ supporters the delicious thought of sending their political enemies to prison, however slight the chance in truth, was a deeply cheering ambition to hear that your leaders too might hold.

Why not follow through on your words then if, like me, and the bold Jenrick, you think what Labour is doing in the Indian Ocean is actual-factual treachery? “When we get back in, we’ll lock you up, should you give away our precious American base”. What exactly is the problem with saying this second, run-on thought out loud, unless you didn’t believe in the first one, about it being “traitorous”? I assume we all think this is true treachery? I do. So go for it!

Then there’s what we should threaten to do should Labour get away with it now. That’s even simpler. We should threaten to annex the islands, formally and outright, and to hell with irrelevant, unenforceable international law. We should, on Day One of Year One of Kemi, guarantee to stop paying all this mad money Starmer wants to bung Mauritius. Again, why not? If this is what we believe, why not say it? There’s absolutely nothing that could stop us, except ourselves.

We’ve got to, even in jest, stop kidding ourselves that there are alternatives. There are two choices and two choices only. We can piss and whine and that’s that. Or we oppose. And say clearly, and mean it, that we’ll turn the clock back and take back sovereign possession of British territory. I repeat, if they do this, there is nothing anyone can or will do about it. So why not? Why not just threaten that, if you’re the official opposition doing your job and opposing?

Unlike in the 80s, there is an alternative. And the alternative explanation is that the Tories don’t mean any of this. Which is why they won’t promise to do anything, never mind one day actually do it. To themselves they are true.

The other way the beat has changed since the 80s is that there’s literally an alternative now. It’s in first place. Precisely because it has no governing baggage it doesn’t even have to make promises, or threats, to stay there. All that’s needed to ensure the current amazing political sorpasso we’re in the middle of continues is for Nigel Farage to be able to sit back and wait for Kemi Badenoch to keep on doing nothing. I think she’s got what it takes.