Less normal
I like to think there was a time when if you had been a complete failure as a politician you retired to the back benches, apologised, interested yourself in your constituents problems, gracefully stood down at the next election and went back to your old job.
You did not lecture your successors on what they were doing wrong, re-write your record, lie about your achievements and the reasons for your downfall, write endless articles for thousands of pounds a go; not least because no one cared what you thought because you had proved yourself to be incompetent and your opinions wrong.
Was there really a time like that or am I looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses?
Because just this week we have had both Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss commentating on Rachel Reeves budget. Really, why do they get to have an opinion? Who cares? What specialist experience do they bring to the debate, except how not to do it?
Yet they get paid handsomely to comment on something which they have shown themselves to be completely incapable of managing.
I think most of us would die of shame before we did such a thing. But this generation of politicians, especially Tory politicians seem to have a level of self belief that is bordering on the psychotic.
They just cannot be “more normal” even if they tried, it is not in their nature.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
Kwarteng is something of a Johnson sans the ability to get away before the snake oil is discovered.
Something about the dilettante about him - clearly he understood the ideological basis behind classic small state economics, but had zero nous to marry any idea of that with the reality of the situation we were in.
Truss, well… there aren’t enough doubters, naysayers and turncoats for her AGC opponents. She’s gone full-Heritage Foundation. Kwarteng did, at least, recognise the huge steaming turd they’d left in the economy. For Truss, well enough will never be enough.
Jenrick has styled himself on the latter as he understands the selectorate to which he must appeal.
The biggest failure of the Tory party may well be its abandonment of the people that make up the middle classes, professionals, self-employed business owners etc.
They have some mad Young “Turning Point” people and the old headbangers as their membership - the huge majority of the middle-ground demographic of the electorate sees nothing there that looks and feels like them or their interests.
Whatever people make of McSweeney and Starmer’s relentless focus on making a bridge to the centre, it was the smart play in FPTP - something the Tories always used to manage.
Those politics feel like they’ve gone.
As well as who pays the Johnson/Truss/Kwarteng axis to write opinionated drivel there is also the puzzle of who, barring a few gammons, would read it. Certainly not anyone whose mortgage was stuffed or who had someone die in a care home from covid.