This week in Tory: Cheese Sandwiches with a side of reactionary Nationalism

Another week, another predictable set of disasters and embarrassments for the Conservative Party (although, to be honest, I’m not sure they’re self-aware enough to be embarrassed at this point).

It’s best to take these events in turn, with some smaller events not being discussed to prevent this article from being 10,000 words, such is their frequency (e.g. Lee Anderson once again making a fool of himself at the Home Affairs Select Committee, the shambles of PMQ’s, Matt Hancock’s bizarre interview, and so on and so forth).

Whenever the Cost of Living appears as an issue of debate, it’s noteworthy (although increasingly less surprising) to see just how incredibly out of touch Conservative politicians tend to be. Indeed, this week is no exception with another real zinger, this time from Ann Widdecombe, being added to that list, who said to those who can’t afford to make even the most basic of food items, a cheese sandwich, simply shouldn’t expect to have a cheese sandwich, speaking as if a cheese sandwich is so sort of gold plated luxury. How on Earth has it come to this?

To start with, however, it’s worth reflecting on where we are with the Cost of Living crisis and just how this crisis was manufactured as this will give added context to the absurdity, arrogance, and elitism of Ann Widdecombe’s comments. The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics make for grim reading: Inflation at nearly 9%, half of households using less fuel and heating through the bitter winter months, real terms average pay down by 2%, and real terms growth in pay down 3%.

The impact of these statistics ripple to every corner of regular life as well. Even before the Cost of Living Crisis, the over a decade of Tory rule had put millions of people on the brink: exploding usage of foodbanks, poverty skyrocketing, a housing crisis, and an NHS no longer fit for purpose. In this respect, the Cost of Living Crisis for so many started when the Tories took power.

Then, of course, came the five minutes of fame for Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, and their kamikaze mini-budget. Inflation sky rocketed, the Pound collapsed, the markets were spooked, and for the millions of people who so desperately needed a break, things were only to get worse.

Indeed, over the last six months following the unmitigated disaster of Liz Truss’s premiership, the number of emergency food parcels distributed to families by the Trussell Trust has gone up by 800,000, reflecting a 37% increase. 800,000, eight with five zeros. Kwasi Kwarteng’s response? No apology. This abdication of responsibility and empathy for the chaos he and his cronies caused is appalling. Recognising the harm he has done and then refusing to apologise speaks to the arrogance and sense of untouchability endemic within the Conservative Party. He saw his budget as a game; a gamble with the lives of millions of the most vulnerable people, a gamble that he knew would never affect him: so hang the world. This, alone, shows that he and the Tories, who have routinely defended his actions (and the actions of their government more broadly), have no place in public service. Their self-serving mentality would make them far more at home in a brothel than in parliament. Still, though, you’ll have the likes of ‘30p Lee’ Anderson (named as such due to his claims that families simply couldn't budget and can cook meals from scratch for 30p a day) effectively claiming an entitlement mentality is what’s causing people to use foodbanks, all while he claimed £32,000 in expenses in the last year on top of his basic £86,000 salary and GB News gig. I do hope he can budget with that.

The legislative response from the government to this crisis has been minimal to say the least. No pay rises for those who need it (hence the litany of strikes), a stagnant economy, and incredibly lack luster financial support packages (unless you’re one of the richest in society, in which case it’s more tax breaks for you!). Rather, their focus has seemingly been on combating ‘wokeness’, culminating in the National Conservatism conference.

It speaks to the self-interested and party first mentality that the Conservative Party have that, rather than tackling the issues effecting, and let’s be frank killing people, they choose to give and share a platform with far-right Nationalists and stoke up fear and division in yet another desperate attempt to divert attention away from their dismal record and instead point the finger, once again, at minorities.

We had the likes of Suella Braverman doubling down on her Rwanda policy, vilifying refugees as criminals and saying that immigration was a threat to Britain’s ‘National Character’. We had Jacob Rees-Mogg openly admit that the voter ID policy was a Conservative attempt at Gerrymandering the electorate. We had the bizarre Left-Wing strawman argument against ‘wokeism’ as described above. The list goes on.

This conference sets a dangerous president. It showed that Conservative MP’s, not just a radical fringe of right wing Nationalists, are paying lip service to increasingly autocratic and dangerous rhetoric. Sharing a stage with US conspiracy theorists who think ‘globalists’ are to blame for all the worlds problems, Nationalists who refer to Germanys nationalism (you know, the one that saw the deaths of 6 Million Jews) as ‘mucking up’, and people like David Starkey who’s previously suggested that people should not "go on about" slavery because it had been abolished in 1833 and that "slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn't be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain would there? An awful lot of them survived".

The descent into autocratic Nationalism is not one that happens overnight. It started most potently with the Brexit debate, vilifying immigrants and taking aim at minorities. Then came the post-Brexit voices screaming even louder that Britain’s isolation should be embraced, that ought to be camps set up for refuges, and automatic deportations must become policy. Now we have openly admitted gerrymandering, crack downs on peaceful protests, and legitimacy being granted by our lawmakers to a previous fringe who wouldn’t be out of place in the British National Party.

This slip and slide doesn’t end here, it will keep going if we let it. If we continue to allow our lawmakers to neglect the needs of hungry children, the medical requirements of pensioners and the most vulnerable among us, the workers on zero hour contracts, the young who can only dream of one day owning a home, and the millions who cannot afford to heat their own homes, then we are at staring down the barrel of becoming victims of out and out fascism, and this not a term I use lightly.

A vote for the Conservatives is a vote to permit this; a vote to ensure our emerging generation will have no future, a vote to guarantee poverty spirals further out of control, a vote to give credence and permission to the re-emergence of reactionary Nationalism.

The political narrative in this country needs resetting and this can most chiefly be achieved with one action: voting the Conservatives out and ousting their vile rhetoric from our country.