New Statesman: The rise of the new Toryism

In the multiparty electoral systems of Europe, formerly dominant conservative parties have yielded ground to the right. Everywhere politics is trying to deal with what Tony Judt called “one long scream of resentment” and everywhere the pivotal question is immigration. The reverberations began in February 2000 when Jorg Haider’s far-right Freedom Party of Austria entered the government. Its nasty rallying cry has become sadly common: to be against Überfremdung (over-foreignisation). Today, the National Front has replaced the Republicans as the repository of the right in France.[...]

The Conservative Party is not far behind. Go back to the 1951 UK general election, won by Winston Churchill. If at the time you had known the income and the occupational status of a voter, you would have been able to predict who they voted for. By 2019 the predictive power of social class had disappeared entirely. Somewhere hidden in his surface clowning, Boris Johnson has absorbed this point and responded to it. To anyone schooled in the more doctrinal left, the British Conservative Party can seem versatile to the point of emptiness. It is a party that has gone from a split over free trade in 1846 to late-Victorian imperial preference, to tariff protectionism under Stanley Baldwin, to rampant free-market capitalism under Margaret Thatcher, to a departure from the single market she helped to create. [...]

Johnson’s brand of conservatism might be best understood as an English Gaullism. Serge Bernstein’s definition of Gaullism – neither left nor right, affirming sovereignty over the nostrums of class, a strong state and exceptionalism in foreign policy – sounds much like Johnson’s peculiar adaptation of conservatism. The closest to the usual tradition you can get is to say he is responding to circumstances that, as Edmund Burke wrote in Reflections on the Revolution in France, “give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect”.

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New Statesman: The crisis chancellor trying to save Britain from economic cataclysm

Sunak has many talents. He has a razor-sharp and inquiring mind. He swiftly masters briefs, and is an assured – if not sparkling – media performer. He is polite, personable and popular far beyond the bounds of the Conservative Party. He is believed to be Westminster’s richest MP, but has no airs and graces. Insiders say he has restored morale at the battered Treasury, earned the respect and affection of his civil servants, and brings the best out of the bright young people around him. “If you can find someone who doesn’t like him and think he’s capable of the job I’d be surprised,” a former aide told me at the time of the Budget. [...]

His public image seems carefully curated. His website and social media posts are full of platitudes and pleasing photographs, but reveal little of substance. He seldom talks about himself. When he does, he tends to retell the same few stories – his debt to his industrious parents, his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Star Wars movies, his addiction to Coca-Cola, his love of Southampton football club and its legendary star forward, Matt Le Tissier. [...]

His parents were not political, but embodied traditional Conservative values. They worked hard, prospered and bought a modern detached house in a leafy cul-de-sac in Southampton’s affluent Bassett district. They raised two sons and a daughter, of which Rishi is the eldest. His father, Yashvir, was an NHS doctor with a surgery in the Upper Shirley area of the city. His mother, Usha, ran a nearby pharmacy until she sold it in 2014. As a teenager Sunak helped her with the accounts and learned, he said, how changes in taxes and national insurance contributions affected small businesses. [...]

Sunak voted three times for May’s doomed Brexit deal, and faced another fateful decision after she resigned last summer. He was close to two of the contenders to replace her – his former boss Javid, who had moved to the Home Office, and Michael Gove, whom he had supported in the 2016 leadership election. Both courted him, but he chose to back Johnson despite his hard-line promise to “crash” Britain out of the EU without a deal if necessary.

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New Statesman: The pattern of life might return to normality but the crisis will change our politics and culture forever

On 11 March, MPs of all parties crowded in the Commons chamber to hear Rishi Sunak deliver his first Budget as chancellor, despite one of their number, the health minister Nadine Dorries, having already been diagnosed with Covid-19. And six days later, Boris Johnson would tell both MPs and the British public to avoid unnecessary social contact in order to combat the disease.

That recklessness reflects another neglected political truth: that politics is a social business. The major reason Jeremy Corbyn (who was elected to the Commons in 1983) was able to become Labour leader was that many MPs who did not share his politics had over the years come to like him because of his kindness and willingness to drop everything to turn up at an event, give a short speech and support his colleagues. [...]

Yet far more alarming than the fall in Tube passenger numbers is that the numbers commuting by bus have only fallen by 10 per cent. The nine-point gap isn’t because people who travel by bus are healthier or less prone to listen to government advice. It’s because, on the whole, those who travel by bus are less wealthy and less able to work from home. No amount of well-meaning advice from the government or conscientious action by the rest of London will matter if the capital’s poorest feel compelled to continue working and to circulate, though they might be ill or emerging from a long period of near-quarantine.

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TLDR News: Johnson's 'Power Grab': The Cabinet Reshuffle Explained

Yesterday Number 10 announced some pretty major changes to the makeup of Johnson's Cabinet with the most significant change coming in the form of Javid's resignation. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer was replaced by Rishi Sunak, a chancellor some speculate will be more loyal to Johnson and Cumming's plans. Is this a standard reshuffle or an attempt by Johnson the gain greater control over Number 11.