The Tories in 2023: less a government than part of the supply chain
Further record migration numbers reflect a view of people as commodities
Reports that forthcoming immigration figures are set to show another record net migration figure, perhaps up to nearly a million (so once more overwhelming the previous record), seems like a tipping point for the present Conservative Government with its post-Brexit electorate.
Checking out some reports from the National Conservatism Conference in London last week suggests that those who see themselves as conservative and who value the nation are far from impressed: not just by the immigration situation but generally. Despite several Conservative ministers attending and speaking, the view towards them seems to have been at best sceptical and at worst (and quite widely) withering.
There is a clear rift in the Cabinet, with Home Secretary Suella Braverman openly expressing her wish to reduce numbers but being comprehensively outvoted by the rest. It seems clear that this Conservative administration is quite happy with further huge, unprecedented increases in population at a time when house prices in many areas have soared well beyond the reach of ordinary people; particularly young people.
How did the Tories get from Boris Johnson’s ‘Get Brexit Done’ election victory of 2019 to this point when they have clearly pushed aside their new post-Brexit electorate in favour of business lobbyists and a grasping university sector which is more interested in the fees from foreign students than the prospect of educating our own young people?
I think this is partly about Conservatives reverting to type: returning to the comfort zone which their main figures are most comfortable in – the City of London and the wider world of wealth, business and property investment, GDP figures and conferences on how to maximise the world economy. Johnson’s idea of ‘levelling up’ depressed post-industrial areas of the North and Midlands reminds me of Ed Miliband’s short-lived ‘One Nation Labour’ idea in the 2010s: hardly anyone in the Labour Party either understood or believed in it; and it’s the same here with the Tories.
However I think there is something deeper here, which is a view of the world and the purpose of government that is deeply etched into our system of government perhaps more than into the Conservative Party – and that globalisation has pressed into a sort of hyperdrive.