Zero Seats Is a Start

The Conservative Party will lose on July 4^th. Polls are predicting a vote share[1] low enough to see them hold less than 100 seats. A Starmer coronation seems inevitable and is the least the Tories deserve. Zero seats should be the aim, nothing less than the destruction of a party that believes nothing, does nothing and will never achieve anything. A vast morass of glorified lobbyists, sex pests and dullards who seem happy to trundle along into oblivion. Let’s just hope the chasm is wide enough to accommodate such collective density.

Of course there are those (Peter Hitchens, arch-contrarian) who make the case that Keir Starmer is much worse than the Conservatives, the latter being a tepid palliative compared to the revolution Starmer could enact. Such a horror truly would be awful. What could be worse than a country with decrepit infrastructure[2], increasing crime[3], stagnant productivity[4], the young locked out of buying a home[5], huge NHS waiting lists[6], record high immigration[7] and a tax-and-spend crazed state that prioritises the senile[8] and lazy[9].

Hitchens’ only response is to suggest Starmer will be much worse. At this point who really cares? The cliché of conservatives who don’t conserve is still true, even more so now. When there is no capability to conserve, the only remaining instinct is to destroy. When people are backed into a corner they lash out. That commentators and politicians cannot understand this is all the more reason to desire their destruction. We are already locked in the death grips of NGOcracy and bureaucratic inertia. At both his worst and his best Starmer is largely ineffective, maintaining his ingratiation with the system that birthed him. The former DPP will only revolutionise the country in so far as he will continue Tory policies.

The whole interlocking interface of broadcast media, politicians, civil servants and lobbyists is to insist on the continuation of the same, lest we be tempted by a growing wave of extremism. “Regulation, institutional norms, information transparency, processes, are more important than brilliant people. Because it is only those things that stand in the way of bad actors destroying systems”[10]. This is the mantra of this ideological caste. Things may be crumbling around us. Our middle class may be increasingly underpaid and overtaxed. We may fear to leave our homes due to anti-social behaviour and have nowhere to go because our highstreets are empty. But so long as the system remains intact, we’ll be ok. It is impossible to imagine a nation beyond fiscal incapacitation and cultural rot. To even break with the model of state spending ratcheting up inexorably and the tax burden being shouldered by the middle class is to commit heresy[11].

If this is the sensible direction then destruction looks preferable. Better to burn ineffective institutions to the ground and cast their occupants into the streets than reform at the edges. “The different factions hate each other but agree that they don’t actually want to change much. Their true interest is the media coverage of power rather than power itself, and, as you can see now as they stagger around 20 points behind, they’d rather fail and lose than listen to voters and take on incumbents to get things done”[12]. There is no reforming this, except in the direction favoured by those who hold the levers of power. A political class obsessed with image and bureaucracies obsessed with feeling good about the things they do as nothing gets done. These things need exterminating.

There is always an assumption that change can be done painlessly. That with the right policies and processes all the various interest groups and voting blocs can be appeased. Through compromise the stakeholders can be brought on board. In reality, important decisions are farmed out to committees and enquiries. Blame can never be apportioned as decisions can never be attributed to one actor or group. Controversy is avoided as is accountability. Recent scandals (COVID, Sub-postmaster prosecutions) are indicative of this pernicious ethos. Both had processes and systems that allowed “bad actors” to flourish.

Change always involves pain. And its lack is producing even more pain as stagnation becomes metastatic. Change now needs to be cleansing and all-encompassing, truly revolutionary as the case for conservatism becomes a distasteful joke. “The 2024 election reveals a system at an advanced state of decay but not yet at the point of collapse: yet neither the economic forecast nor the international situation present much hope that Labour will wrest the country from its tailspin”[13]. Zero seats is a start toward more widespread disruptive/destructive potential. Better to watch things burn quickly than see them slowly disintegrate under their own contradictions.

[1] https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/uk-opinion-polls

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/d348bebe-4fa4-4bf4-bbf6-72dab6d0f8fd

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1030625/crime-rate-uk/

[4] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/labourproductivity/articles/ukproductivityintroduction/januarytomarch2024andoctobertodecember2023

[5] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a82461bed915d74e6236b5d/First_Time_Buyers_report.pdf

[6] https://waitinglist.health.lcp.com/

[7] https://www.statista.com/statistics/283599/immigration-to-the-united-kingdom-y-on-y/

[8] https://collapsepatchworks.com/2024/05/31/stability-to-stagnation-on-the-british-gerontocracy/

[9] https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/idle-britain

[10] https://samf.substack.com/p/what-dominic-cummings-gets-wrong

[11] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckkkk90lw50o

[12] https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/4-the-startup-party-time-to-build