They’re dead but they won’t lie down

This week: why it’s Brexit’s fault the government of the undead keeps going; better things to say instead of “Edinburgh is west of Bristol”; and England’s centre of gravity continues its march south.

Two apparently contradictory observations about this government which both, I think, hold true. 

First: the sense that the game is up is becoming overwhelming. This is, it seems likely, the third terminal phase of a government I’ve lived through now (which is, now I come to think of it, a ridiculously small number, given that I’m nearly as old as St Tony was at the time of his ascension). There’s always a danger of rose-tinted glasses, I know, but still I feel confident in claiming that this is, by far, the worst. The end of the Major years brought rolling scandals and a feeling the state was falling to bits; the Brown ones a sense of economic crisis and a governing party itching for a war with itself. Now we’re facing all of those things at once, a fractious and scandal-prone party overseeing a period of economic and social decline. This is why I’m minded to believe the polls and tempting fate be damned.

And the scandals of the ‘90s look so quaint compared to today. David Mellor had an affair, during which he may or may not have been wearing a Chelsea shirt? A couple of backbenchers were paid to ask parliamentary questions for £2,000 a throw? What’s all that compared to Boris Johnson taking an £800,000 loan, arranged with the help of a man who he would shortly appoint as BBC chairman? Or Tory chair Nadhim Zahawi getting caught owing millions in back taxes, despite having been briefly and nominally in charge of tax policy? As things stand, the former prime minister, current party chair and current deputy prime minister are all facing independent investigations, at the same time. It all makes the Prime Minister’s two fixed penalty notices, for breaking the law by attending a party and not wearing a seat belt, seem pretty quaint, too.¹

Jonn Elledge @JonnElledge

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But don’t feel too sorry for Sunak: to investigate the Zahawi affair, he’s appointed a man whose daughter happens to be head of the Number 10 Policy Unit. It feels a lot like the Prime Minister cares less even about the appearance of corruption than he does about having an easy answer to difficult questions. I imagine we’ll soon be hearing a lot about how it would be wrong to respond before the investigations have concluded.

So: the government stinks of decay, and it’s entirely possible it’s already past the point of no return. But then there’s the second, apparently contradictory thing: no one imagines it won’t finish its term. The earliest anyone seems to be expecting an election is autumn next year. Quite possibly, Sunak could hold off calling one until the following January. This administration might still have two more years left to run.

The reason for this, of course, is that it won an 80 seat majority just three years ago, which means it’s almost impossible to imagine parliament voting to dissolve itself right now. In normal times, in the absence of a divisive national referendum and a deadlocked parliament and hard-right party standing down in Tory seats, a party as in-fight-y and scandal-ridden as the Tories would not have been able to get that result nearly 10 years into its term. But these were not normal times, and it did. Normally, what’s more, a big majority would mean an infusion of new blood and fresh faces, but the weirdness of that period meant the party didn’t get that either. Instead, it got Lee Anderson and Jonathan Gullis.

In other words, it is, once again, all bloody Brexit. It’s not enough that it divided families, or wrecked the economy, or mucked up our holidays. It also gave us a zombie government: too weak to renew but too strong to die.