BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN
They strut through Portcullis House with the preening confidence of minor clerics in a newly-installed theocracy. The air, thick with the scent of over-brewed Fairtrade coffee and the damp wool of second-hand suits, hums with a whispered mantra: “Two terms, at least. Probably three. A realignment. A job for life.” Among them, a particular specimen – let us call him ‘Gavin’ (ex-BBC, never had a proper job in his short and pointless life) – is emblematic of the grand mal delusion currently gripping Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition-in-Government. Gavin, a Special Adviser to a Minister of State for something nebulously ‘Future-facing’, genuinely believes the electorate has undergone a Damascene conversion to his brand of managerialist socialism. He is a living testament to the triumph of hope over history, and of self-regard over sense.
Gavin’s day is a liturgy of illusions. He attends ‘grid meetings’ with ex-public school ugsters called Katherine and Pru, where the central topic is not national renewal, but how best to frame Sir Keir’s latest eye-wateringly boring, focus-grouped pronouncement on ‘Sustainable Growth Partnerships’. He drafts memos titled ‘Narrative Architecture for the 2028-33 Fiscal Envelope’, believing this gobbledygook is statecraft. He chuckles with colleagues about the ‘zoological conservatives’ on the backbenches, those sad, prehistoric creatures who still believe in things like border integrity and fiscal responsibility. In his mind, he is not a temporary functionary in the long saga of British governance; he is a pioneering architect of the New Jerusalem, conveniently located within the M25 and serviced by a high-speed rail link. The security pass around his neck is not a pass; it is a talisman, a guarantee of perpetual relevance. He has confided over a craft beer in a Westminster pub that he ‘sees himself moving into the SpAd role at Defence in the second term, before taking a safe seat in ’33.’ The grandeur of the fantasy is matched only by its fathomless naivety.
Little does our Gavin know, as he meticulously updates his LinkedIn profiles (he keeps one on the burner phone alongside his Pornhub age-pass email account), that he is shackled to a millstone of such staggering unpopularity it would make Eden blush.
Sir Keir Starmer, the human embodiment of an unread PowerPoint presentation, is no sun king heralding a new dawn. He is, by any objective measure, shaping up to be the most underwhelming, uninspiring, and disliked Prime Minister in living memory. His genius is one of absence: an absence of charisma, an absence of conviction, an absence of any identifiable core beyond a desperate desire to be in the chair. The nation did not flock to him; it slumped, exhausted, away from the circus of the previous years. To mistake that recoil for a ringing endorsement is the height of political illiteracy. The public views him with the same enthusiasm they reserve for a lukewarm bath previously used by Owen Jones or a slightly delayed train – a damp, but profoundly unsatisfying reality.
And herein lies the fatal flaw in Gavin’s deluded calculus: he believes Britain has been transformed. He believes the red wall, now sporting a hastily-applied coat of Labour magenta, has seen the light. The reality, which will soon crash upon his and his colleagues’ heads with the force of a North Sea gale, is that this country is not, and never will be, socialist. At least 70% of the British people, by instinct and inclination, believe in the value of their own hard work over state distribution. They are suspicious of grand ideological projects, especially those peddled by a metropolitan clique who view the provinces as a problem to be managed. They desire strong defences, controlled borders, and the freedom to spend their own money. They tolerated this Labour administration as a time-out, a dull interlude for national breath-catching – not as a permanent revolution.
The reckoning is coming. It will be vicious. It will be merciless. It will be a spectacle of such glorious political schadenfreude that future historians will pore over the footage with glee. The ‘realignment’ will be revealed as a mirage. The ‘secure jobs for life’ will evaporate like morning mist on the Surrey Hills.
Gavin and his ilk, who spoke of ‘ten years of renewal’ and ‘embedding change’, will find themselves unceremoniously ejected from their glass-and-oak sanctums, their security passes deactivated, their memos for ‘Narrative Architecture’ lining the bottoms of parliamentary wastepaper bins. The Inquiries will commence (yes, the likes of Mr Watson, all receipts kept). They will be left blinking in the daylight of the real Britain, a nation that briefly lent them its votes but never its heart, wondering where their theocracy went.
For the British people have a magnificent, ancient habit of correcting their errors with brutal finality. The Labour staffer’s delusion of permanence is merely the prelude to a most magnificent and deserved fall. The Squires, who have watched this brief, bizarre interlude with a mixture of amusement and horror, will be there to witness it. And they will not be shedding a tear. They will be raising a glass of something decent, on their own land, and toasting the eternal, unshakeable good sense of a nation that always, eventually, comes home.
Dominic Wightman is the Editor of Country Squire Magazine, works in finance, and is the author of five and a half books including Conservatism (2024).