Friday 15 March 2024
Rotten in every plank
We tread a stage, God knows, crazed and rotten in every plank; and, Heavens! what an abyss beneath! Yet see how they tread it! — as if it were rock — living rock — adamant: down to the earth’s centre and foundation, adamant.
Sheridan Le Fanu - The Fortunes of Colonel Torlogh O'Brien (1847)
The Conservative party drift towards electoral defeat seems to have much to do with its failure to be conservative. Much of that seems to be a failure to do anything significant about government incompetence at all levels, including quangos.
The pandemic response, immigration, GP services, the wider NHS, crumbling roads, HS2 and Net Zero adequately make the point about incompetence. How does any conservative party tackle that lot? Without powerfully charismatic leadership and mass media with a glimmer of integrity, it can’t. Without that, voters seem likely vote Labour, the party which pretends official incompetence is not the issue.
But it is.
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6 comments:
Can’t argue with that.
The incompetence issue is actually quite scary. In isolated pockets it could be rooted out, but it seems to be pretty endemic, and the worry is that without positive exemplars a third-world standard could become the accepted norm. In terms of your quote, people sometimes used to say "At least they could bring the army in if things get really bad". But even that's gone now. The army would, in a different way, be just as poor at sorting rubbish collection or maintaining civil order or whatever.
Perhaps it's a "bottom up" thing; we simply can't recruit decent staff from those who declining educational standards have rendered useless as a work-force.
Most telling are the figures on working from home. After a polite request, why don't managers get tough and sack people? That's what would have happened in my workplace. Either the managers are just as demoralised and useless, or the "bottom up" problem is in play. They realise that after some gruelling court cases and trial by twitter, they simply couldn't recruit anyone else to do the job on the salary they offer.
I suspect the problem is not one of Leadership. It's a problem followership - by the Conservative Parliamentary Party.
Most Conservative MPs treat their role as members of an exclusive club. They are quite happy to tell their minions to do fashionable things but do not engage with delivery of those things. Similarly they are reluctant to get behind a dynamic (and flawed) Boris Johnson because he might have 'expectations'. Liz Truss was, of course, selected by Conservative Party members outside the Parliamentary Party and therefore suspect. So they elected one of their own who is unwilling to rock the boat. A boat that needs a damn good rocking.
If they fail disastrously at the next General Election and council elections they will only have themselves to blame (and only incidentally harming the country too).
James - good :)
Sam - yes a third-world standard could become the accepted norm. A corrupt, low trust culture where people take what they can and offer nothing in return if they can get away with it. The decline in standards is certainly quite scary because we adapt to things not getting done and not being good enough. Potholes in roads could be a more sinister symptom than we care to admit, especially as it is certainly not the only symptom.
DJ - I'm sure you are right, most Conservative MPs do treat their role as members of an exclusive club. Liz Truss is unlikely to have been worse than Sunak, but as you say she was outside the club and therefore suspect. Her fate does lend considerable weight to the exclusive club analogy though.
Watching from afar (New Zealand) I see my homeland disintegrating before my eyes.A country which began the Industrial Revolution and transformed the lives of most modern countries for the better.
Reading history,it is notable that all great civilisations collapse,generally by invasion by a
lesser civilisation.
This time the collapse is because those whose job it should be to direct and govern after election seem to have given up any attempt to do so.
The physical invasion is happening by default or at the invitation of those in a position to actually prevent it.Perhaps they think that they will be immune to any consequences of their failure to act.
The new dark ages are approaching
John - I agree and sometimes I wish I could have been watching it from a distance. The only antidote I see is to accept change as inevitable and hope that more optimistic possibilities are exerting an influence too. Which may be the case, but usually I'm inclined to doubt it.
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