Why incompetence isn’t damaging the Tory brand

The Tories are known for their ruthless efficiency, be it in dispatching leaders who aren’t working out or in making difficult decisions in government. From Winston Churchill, to David Cameron via Margaret Thatcher, the Tory brand is built around having the strong leadership to sort the country out.

This is a simplistic, right-wing reading of history, which I strongly disagree with, but it tells us something about how the Tories sell themselves to the electorate. They want to be seen as a competent party of government. Socialism may sound nice and lovely for everyone, but it leads to queues at shops and strikes in factories. Toryism may not be cuddly, but it keeps the lights on and food on the table.

This may be how the Tories would like to be seen, but it isn’t how things have worked out for Boris Johnson’s government. England had the largest increase in deaths from Covid-19 in Europe, the economy suffer Biblical devastation in April with the growth rate at negative 20%, whilst the A-Level results scandal went from a debacle to a disaster and forced the government into an embarrassing U-turn.

Tory incompetence

Things are not going well for the Tories. As usual, Gary Younge said it best when he tweeted: “I expected the Tories to be this mendacious, elitist and corrupt. I genuinely did not expect them to be this incompetent.”

Despite all of this, the Tories remain ahead in the polls with 42% saying they are likely to vote Tory in a hypothetical election and 37% Labour at the time of writing. This level of incompetence should be poison to the Tory brand, but it isn’t.

The new Tory brand

This is because the Tory brand has changed. They’re no longer the party of “making tough decisions” and not being compromised by things like human emotions, which was their brand up until Cameron left office. Now they’re more of a culture war movement than a party that sells itself on a record of competence in government.

The Tory Party has become a movement for people who love Brexit, are patriotic and hate immigration. They are a movement that is anti-woke, anti-BLM, anti-London, anti-craft beer and anti-dance videos on TikTok (or whatever it is 20 somethings are into these days). You can see this when Johnson recently demanded an end to the "cringing embarrassment about our history" by which he means an end to anyone questioning a version of British history where Britain is always the hero, which is fixed in the mind of Tory voters across the country and is free from any nuanced understanding of our national history. 

Around 40% of the country want a pro-Brexit, pro-flag waving, anti-immigration party, or hate the woke lefties enough to support the Tories no matter what. This has given them a floor in the polls of roughly 40% that the Tories don’t fall below regardless of how weak Theresa May was or how out of depth Johnson is. This 40% of mainly old, mainly outside cities, mainly non-university educated, mainly pro-Brexit, mainly white, conservative voters’ desire for a government that reflects their values and sneers at their opponents’ won’t be shaken by incompetence, especially when the government can point to boatloads of immigrants arriving to fire their supporters up.

Labour’s response

What does this mean for Labour? Appearing competent or saying that Labour would run the country better is a good start as there are some voters who will be won over by this. This involves Labour articulating a vision of how the country will be different with them in charge, something that has been sadly lacking from Keir Starmer. Instead, Labour have simply pointed out that the Tories have messed up after all of their recent mess ups which has, unsurprisingly, not moved the polls. 

What’s more important is that Labour needs to find a way to avoid being drawn into a culture war over statues being torn down or songs being sung at the Proms. If Labour are going to break the Tories’ 40% floor then they need to be able to outline their vision for transforming the country and improving everyone’s lives without being drawn into debates on social issues that remind the Tory 40% which side they are on.

Land of hope and anti-wokeness

A recent example of this is the arguments over singing Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia at the Proms. This is a largely manufactured controversy that serves only to convince cultural conservatives that they and everything they love is under attack from young woke people.

As a sidebar: even in the wokest corners of Twitter, I have never heard anyone object to Land of Hope and Glory or care what is sung at an outdated celebration of British nostalgia, such as the Last Night of the Proms. We’re all too busy worrying about how many people will die when the Tories force us to go back to our office jobs because they don’t want Subway to fold.

It’s not an enviable position Labour is in, having to walk on eggshells to avoid triggering a lot of Boomers who are very sensitive about cultural issues and believe that young people (by which I mean everyone under 45) are trying to create a Brave New World: a society without history where everyone is constantly zoned out on legalised drugs. However, the country shows no sign of tiring of culture wars.

Labour needs to find some way of neutralizing these issues whilst articulating how it would transform the country into a place where everyone can have a job, a measure of dignity and doesn’t live in fear of a killer a virus - or at least believes that the government is doing everything in its power to safeguard its citizens. If Labour can’t do this, they won’t be able to close the poll gap, regardless of how incompetent the Tories are.

"Boris Johnson at Conservative Party Conference" by conservativeparty is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0