'Stirring up apathy' ; or, why so many people still 'love' the Tories (1)

You would have thought that a government which was responsible for thousands of avoidable deaths would reap some 'payback.' You would have thought that a government which had incurred an entirely self-inflicted wound by divorcing the country from its natural economic region would also incur the ire of voters. You would have thought that a prime minister who advertised his closeness to the most egregious person ever to occupy the White House would cause at the very least some doubts to arise in the mind of the least politically engaged person. If you have come to these entirely rational conclusions, you would be wrong. After months of 'level pegging' with Labour, the Conservatives are showing a clear lead of 5%. Why is this so ?

One has to bear three important factors in mind, which have become so fundamental that they could almost be regarded as eternal political verities. The first is that most people, however unconsciously, for barely acknowledged reasons of deference, feel instinctively that the Conservatives are 'the natural party of government.' (I know that the phrase originated with Harold Wilson as a description of the Labour Party, but it was never true of Labour). Despite the Conservative Party having become more 'meritocratic' over the past forty years, this attitude of deference to perceived 'superiors' still persists. It co-exists with a more obvious and pervasive attitude of cynicism toward most forms of authority, but people's social attitudes have never been consistent or logical. The practical consequence of this assumption is that most voters are prepared to forgive the Tories almost anything, and the bar is set very low. They are prepared to forgive ideological somersaults: for example, a party which has always opposed 'red tape' and regulations on business suddenly embraces these as essential because of its ideological fixation with Brexit. Indeed, the Conservative Party has had the longest continuous history of any centre-right party in the world for precisely this reason.

Reinforcing this natural propensity to give the Tories the benefit of any doubt is the growing attitude of cynicism toward all politicians, closely associated with the breaking of connections between voters and political parties, in which political parties represent certain policies to voters, rather than representing voters' priorities. This phenomenon has been noted by the political scientists Colin Crouch and Peter Mair, in 'Post-democracy' (2004), and 'Ruling the void' (2011) respectively. Peter Mair particularly notes the progressive disengagement of working class voters from politics in the Global North, coinciding with the 'neoliberal' turn of social democratic and socialist parties. Pervasive cynicism with politics helps parties of the centre-right because it is also accompanies a widespread sentiment that politics cannnot change anything, and so, therefore, the politicians who promise change are lying. Cynicism, apathy, disengagement, and pessimism about social progress all engender very good electoral prospects for the Conservative Party.

The third factor is that people, for entirely understandable reasons of security and solace, tend to support the governing party during a crisis. I am not referring only to the pandemic here. The experience of many voters ever since the global financial crisis of 2008 has been one of continuing crisis and extreme uncertainty. The Conservatives offered a compelling (but false) narrative (the global crisis was the Labour Party's fault), and then deflected discontent with austerity by launching Brexit. Not surprisingly, when the Tories excuse their negligence during the pandemic by constantly asserting that it is 'unprecedented', people are prepared to believe them. It is an error to suppose that, in a state of continuing crisis, people opt for the left. As historians of the left, such as Donald Sassoon, in his 'One Hundred Years of Socialism: the west European left in the twentieth century' (1995) show, the left was successful, not in the 1930s, but in the 1960s, during a period of comparative affluence and full employment. The Conservatives offered safety while instead causing even more crisis, but then offered a solution which was worse than the problem.

(To be continued).