The problem, not the solution

The last thing we need now is a Tory recovery. Proper conservatives should dread such a thing as much as Labour’s serious faction dreaded victory in the March 1983 Darlington by-election. They longed for the most crushing defeat possible, because it would have provided the pretext for a well-planned putsch against the doomed romantic party leader Michael Foot, chosen in an emotional spasm in 1980. But, to their fury and dismay, Labour won in Darlington. Michael Foot was saved and duly led his movement to ruin, with some dignity, a few months later.

Just as I said a year ago in an article for this magazine which has never been rebutted, let alone refuted, by any Conservative thinker, the Tory party is now a train-wreck, not a train, an obstacle to the cause it pretends to serve. The reasons are both mathematical and political. Only an unimaginable miracle could give it a parliamentary majority ever again.