{"id":2411,"date":"2022-08-10T13:28:02","date_gmt":"2022-08-10T12:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/?p=2411"},"modified":"2023-11-02T01:57:42","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T01:57:42","slug":"choosing-johnsons-successor-a-tory-attack-on-our-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/choosing-johnsons-successor-a-tory-attack-on-our-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Choosing Johnson\u2019s successor: a Tory attack on our democracy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
Boris Johnson resigning as PM<\/figcaption><\/figure>This is part of a general trend to move power from Parliament to No.10 which has accelerated since the referendum. It includes the illegal prorogation of parliament in 2019, the use of \u201cHenry VIII\u201d powers to sideline parliament in the massive task of replacing EU-derived legislation and Johnson\u2019s repeated bendings of the ministerial code.<\/p>\n

These things have consequences:<\/p>\n

It risks increasing alienation from politics. \u201cFirst past the post\u201d means there are many parts of the country where people feel their vote doesn\u2019t matter. The Tories have found a way to make this much worse. Brexit might already be a consequence of this because of the people who voted Leave out of frustration at being ignored.<\/p>\n

It pushes things to the extremes. Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss need to appeal only to their own party rather than connecting with the rest of the country. That\u2019s particularly serious as there\u2019s now more support for Brexit in the Conservative party than there in the country. EU-bashing and Brexit might help one of them get elected, but they are not in the national interest.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a big contrast with Conservative MPs chose John Major to succeed Margaret Thatcher in 1990. My sense then was that Conservative MPs realised that Thatcher had lost the support of the country, which was likely to be reflected in the next General Election. Major was a much-needed correction. Johnson has also lost the support of the country, and his party are now doing their best to find someone worse.<\/p>\n

Two models of leader<\/h2>\n

From a psychoanalytic angle is that we\u2019re navigating something difficult, but mostly unconscious.<\/p>\n

What we need is the sort of wise, mature and grounded leadership epitomised by Angela Merkel, earning people\u2019s trust in a way that enables them to face difficult times.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s also a pull to something much more primitive \u2014 to a leader who people imagine can \u201csave us\u201d by seeming to meet our unconscious needs, even if they bring those to the surface by stirring up people\u2019s anxieties. They meet a need, both for the portion of the country that loves them and the portion that loves to hate them.<\/p>\n

The Tory leadership election should worry people because lots of these elements are in play. It will surface someone extreme, with a mandate but no legitimacy, attractive (for opposite reasons) to the portion of society that loves them and the portion that loves to hate them. We\u2019re getting a lesson on what enables authoritarian regimes to come to power.<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t an easy solution, but naming the problem is a start.<\/p>\n

One of the things we can do is to call out the Tory leadership election as \u201cfake presidential\u201d. If it leads to a snap election, we need to call that out as bare-faced opportunism, playing on the ability of \u201cFirst Past the Post\u201d and an election called at the Prime Minister\u2019s whim to get a vote that lacks legitimacy.<\/p>\n

We can also talk about the EU. The European project was born out of a desire to prevent a return to the authoritarianism that caused so much suffering in the first half of the twentieth century. If there were already things in the UK pulling in that direction, then they will have shown as a not-entirely-rational belief that there was a \u201cneed\u201d to get out of the EU. Leaving has taken the brakes off. It\u2019s time to speak about the way Brexit has set in motion a chain of events undermining our democracy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also time to remind Tories of some words of wisdom from their most famous leader, Winston Churchill, that an MP\u2019s loyalty should be first to the country, then to their constituents, and then to their party. <\/p>\n

\nThis article originally appeared on Liberal Democrat Voice<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The problem with the present Tory leadership contest is that it looks worryingly like a presidential campaign. We\u2019ve seen televised debates among the contenders, news of them, their campaigns, promises and policies. It sounds as if the winner will have a mandate to take the country in a new direction, though the voters are just the 0.3% of the population who happen to be members of the Conservative Party. Where is the public outcry?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[311,249],"tags":[338,43,337],"class_list":["post-2411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-authoritarianism","category-boris-johnson","tag-authroritarian","tag-boris-johnson","tag-conservatives"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2411"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2415,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions\/2415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}