Populism is one of those political words that conceals as much as it illuminates. While I’m sure there are academics who could give me some rigorous definition of it, like most political insults it is thrown about with relative abandon, and often signifies nothing more than dislike of this or that policy.
But one version of it I’ve found useful when writing about the Conservative party is its current habit – on issue after issue – of speaking loudly while carrying a very small stick.
This is how we have ended up in the weird position of many commentators talking about the government in blood-curdling terms; not just populist, but sometimes “far right” too, when its actual record is anything but, for the most part. Rishi Sunak’s main priorities were banning smoking and reforming A-levels, hardly policies to set the heart racing.
At the same time, voters to whom all the rhetoric (and individual policies such as the Rwanda scheme) is supposed to appeal are left cold by the substance of the government’s programme. Even if ministers had managed to get a plane in the air before the election, would that really have offset their overseeing the highest levels of net immigration in modern history?
The prime minister’s proposal of bringing back national service is in exactly the same vein. Labour will be able to fire up younger voters with the threat of conscription, while voters who support national service will be disappointed to learn it’s not conventional conscription at all (only about 4% of 18-year-olds would be able to do the military component – and not one of them in combat roles).
With the result of the election an all but foregone conclusion, attention is already starting to turn to what happens to the Conservative party afterwards, and understanding this gulf between rhetoric and reality will be essential to making any sense of the battle to come. Because despite what the tone of much of the coverage might suggest, it is actually more complicated (and much more interesting) than a straightforward clash between moderate centrists and rightwingers, at least in the medium term.
There will, of course, be the usual struggle between realists and utopians that afflicts parties that lose power. Free from the responsibilities of office, every wing of the Conservative party will be at liberty to make bold claims about what it would have accomplished if only its ideas had been given a chance. But the split between the utopians and the pragmatists won’t necessarily map directly on to the split between rightwingers and centrists.
Guardian readers won’t need me to tell them about the right’s proclivity to descend into fantasy politics. But moderates aren’t immune to it, either: the politics of being sensible can too easily stray into the politics of the easy short-term decision, even as the long-term costs (political and real) become increasingly unsustainable.
There is, after all, nothing especially “realistic” about refusing to face up to unsustainable projections of Britain’s public spending obligations, importing hundreds of thousands of people a year into an acute housing crisis or talking a big game about Britain’s place in a more dangerous world without making plans to spend a substantially higher share of GDP on defence.
Rightwing MPs have bad answers on all those issues and more, of course, and are just as prone to failing to walk the walk on their key issues; many are the law and order hardliners who have fiercely resisted the construction of a new prison or asylum processing facility in their constituency.
That doesn’t, however, mean they’re always wrong. When Robert Jenrick says that half measures on immigration don’t work, or Miriam Cates that our current taxation, childcare and welfare systems are skewed against families, they have a point. Even if you don’t agree with their answers, they are at least acknowledging the real choices and trade-offs involved in making policy – choices that successive ministers have tried for too long to sweep under the carpet.
A Conservative party that engaged more seriously with the real consequences of its policy preferences would lead to a more coherent programme for government, a better choice for voters and more honest politics.
But it wouldn’t necessarily be a Conservative party that progressive or liberal commentators actually liked any more than the present one. Politics is not a two-dimensional spectrum where the measure of a good party is simply how close to the “middle” it is.
I’m often asked whether the Conservative party will move to the right after the election or eventually tack back, towards the sort of politics it offered under David Cameron. This seems like a misleading binary: was Boris Johnson’s red wall-winning 2019 offer, with its promises of higher spending and focus on so-called left-behind areas, more “rightwing” than the southern-focused, austerity-centred one of 10 years before?
What about a using the power of the state to rebuild Britain’s domestic industrial base, versus favouring the free movement of capital and labour and letting the market sort it out? Restructuring the tax and benefit systems to better support families, versus trying to maximise workforce participation and wring every last drop of GDP out of each potential worker?
On a host of questions, it isn’t immediately obvious which option is more “rightwing”, except the vibe given off by the people who advocate it. For that reason, the eventual battle lines of the great Tory reckoning might surprise outsiders.
Liz Truss and Danny Kruger are both on the “Tory right”, for instance, but their economic priorities and principles could not be further apart. A “moderate” One Nation MP might easily favour different policies over an equally “moderate” Treasury drone.
And the eventual winner, should one emerge, will be the person or faction who can build an agenda in which every faction plays a role – on the winner’s terms.
It’s too early to know what such a settlement will look like. But there are parts of each faction’s agenda that tessellate better than others: deregulation to unlock housebuilding, for instance, or a focus on training, productivity and wage growth as essential to weaning our economy off its dependence on imported labour.
That will take a while to work out. In the immediate aftermath of the election, recrimination will be uppermost in many Conservatives’ minds. The ones who conquer that instinct fastest will have a head start on defining the future of the party.
Henry Hill is deputy editor of ConservativeHome
