TORY DERANGEMENT SYNDROME IS HERE

The way of visceral politics leads to madness

Friends, Britons, countrymen...lend me your engagement time. I have come not to praise the Conservative Party but to berate them for their incompetence. The fecklessness that MPs do lives after them, the good is oft voted out by the electorate.

OK, enough of that. Contrary to the smears sometimes made of me by some bitter, twisted men I am not a die-hard Tory loyalist. No one who has followed me on social media or listened to what I've said on various podcasts can honestly say I've not criticised them or not been angry and disappointed by what they've done. I'm a National Conservative and I align myself with politicians cut from the same cloth. That's not the same as a die hard "Tory Boy" who accepts the party line without question.

As far back as 2016 I was talking about a political classism that was a problem affecting the party as a whole. I likened it to a 1937 French film called "La Grande Illusion". It's set in WW1 in a German POW camp and the main characters are French prisoners. The hero is an engineering officer who comes from a humble background but has worked his way up to become a commissioned officer. The senior French POW is an upper class Colonel, a man of refinement and taste who was born to be in charge. The lower class officer wants to escape and foil the Germans whereas the upper class officer finds he has more in common with his captor; a similarly refined and aristocratic German Colonel, than with his fellow Frenchmen. In the story this upper class Frenchman must make a choice: His country or his class?

You can see the parallels between that story and the state of Western politics over the last 20 years. A British politician who has certain tastes and predilections is going to find themselves having more in common with their counterpart in Brussels, Berlin or Paris than with their own countrymen who they're supposed to represent. No one exemplifies that in British politics more than former Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg.

And the Conservatives were riven with this problem as well. Not only that, many prominent Tory MPs found themselves having more in common with their Labour counterparts, members of the mainstream media and other prominent left wing thought leaders than with their own party members or even constituents. As time went on from about 2016 onwards this became more and more apparent to the public.

This detachment from the national character and party first principles fuelled the growing disillusionment and eventual anger the public displayed towards the Conservatives and yet they continued to double down on dabbling with the progressive, high status politics of the Left. Everyone and his dog could see where the problems with the country lay but they saw a floundering Conservative government failing to achieve anything whilst all the time some of their MPs, supposed conservative journalists (I'm looking at you, Iain Dale and Peter Oborne) and decidedly non-Conservative commentators were calling for the party to embrace progressivism as if that was a core Conservative value.

All this has come crashing down on the party's heads with the 2024 General Election. They lost by a massive amount; the worst result in the party's history, an almost wipe out, etc, etc...

So here's where something strange emerges; I'm calling it Tory Derangement Syndrome. Where to begin with this? Some years ago the writer and commentator Peter Hitchens called for the destruction of the Conservative Party on the grounds that it was a hinderance to a genuine conservative movement from coming into being. Only by utterly wiping them out could such a new party emerge. That meant no one voting for them and cutting their funding. Cut to 2024 and an online movement begins called "zero seats" which pretty much is what Hitchens was calling for all those years ago. I happen to know who coined this term and a more shifty and dishonest character you could not hope to meet. I have suspicions that zero seats was less of a genuine attempt to destroy the Conservative Party and more a test of loyalty and obedience for the online Right: If you learned the words and said the words you were in the circle of trust.

But zero seats failed. The expected defeat of the Conservative Party happened but they kept 121 seats and are now the official opposition. They live to fight another day.

Hitchens himself, in the build up to the election, did an apparent volte face and said in many interviews that the threat of a Labour government was so great that if necessary voters should vote Conservative if that keeps Labour out. His position was more nuanced than that; he never endorsed or backed the Conservative party and nor did he change his low opinion of them but in his view if a Conservative, LibDem or Reform candidate was best placed to defeat a Labour one then you should vote whichever in order to stop Labour from winning.

It has been interpreted by some on the Dissident Right that Hitchens played his part in buggering up the zero seats plan. The truth was zero seats was almost destined to fail because it set its goals too high and that a total abandonment of the party by voters was never going to happen. One aspect of constituency politics, which I like, is that a decent local MP stands a good chance of winning because they're connected more to the voters. Many Tory MPs were returned because they're popular with their local base.

But the hatred of the Tories by the Dissident Right has triggered some wild responses in the aftermath of zero seats' failure. Hitchens is now to be thrown under a bus for his wavering from the cause: A cause he had once inspired. Now the hit pieces are appearing, taking what he actually said out of context and picking at his character for having said what he did. Such is the way of hit pieces...

When the usual, boring Left wing activist accounts masquerading as journalism run anti-Tory pieces; such as the apparent vanishing of the Conservative's own X account for a few hours, the Dissident Right are lapping it up and spreading the news with glee. They didn't even bother to fact check the story nor question the claim that the Tories had nuked their own account (because they're such failures and are in full retreat that they have to wipe their own online presence...so the narrative goes) or even take a look at the source (the decidely Left wing Politics UK) and think "hang on a moment..."

Tory Derangement Syndrome has progressed from denouncing the apostate and believing the Left when it's an anti-Tory story to overlooking the obvious flaws of the Reform Party and ignoring what the new Labour government are doing to wreck the country. The Conservatives are a clapped out wreck of a political party, Reform are a dodgy and cheap boy racer which is in danger of falling apart and Labour are a bulldozer with a wrecking ball and a .50 calibre MG mounted to it. Now is a time of sober reflection but visceral politics has no room for sobriety, nuance or context.

Both the progressive Left and the Dissident Right have embraced visceral politics and it's warping their brains. For a group that has been staunchly speaking up for fact checking and detail over the years the DR have abandoned all that to play the same game as the Left. Occam's Razor is just not used anymore. One example of this lack of self-awareness combined with conspiratorial thinking and visceral anger happened this week: Apparently Carl Benjamin, Calvin Robinson and Connor Tomlinson have been suspended from being members of the Conservative Party. They are all miffed at this and have taken to social media to air their grievance at the party. They attribute it to a purge of right wingers from the party but hang on...that's not the full picture, is it?

The three of them have spent over a year heavily criticising the party and endorsing Reform and, crucially, backing the zero seats campaign. At no stage in the last couple of years has the Podcast of the Lotus Eaters endorsed the Conservative Party and in fact have condemned it. As a man of the cloth Calvin should know Matthew 6:24. No man can serve two masters. You're either in the Conservative party and thus make that your allegiance or you align yourself with Reform or even don't become a member of either so you're not in a position of having to serve two masters. It could be there's a cabal of progressives within the Conservative party who wish to purge people like the Lotus Eaters from the membership or...using Occam's Razor...they were suspended because they're part of a popular online podcast and YouTube channel which advocated for Reform and zero seats for the Conservatives. Disloyalty has consequences.

If you're going to try entryism to subvert...or steer...a political party to where you think it should be you can't be indulging in visceral politics. It requires a level of people skills, charm and engagement most on the DR haven't got. It's not easy but then again, nothing of value is ever easy to attain. It takes hard work and effort; another thing the DR lack. You certainly don't sign up and telegraph your hatred of the organisation you've just joined and then wonder why they don't want you in their ranks.

The Conservatives are beaten, battered and barely alive. Everything they've done has been discredited. Now they're off to figure out what they're going to do next and the factions are squaring up to take control of what's left. Has it got a future? I don't know. I don't even know if it will be worth supporting them any longer. There are many variables at work here to accurately call. I'm more focussed on worrying about what Labour are doing. But I notice that the DR are joining in the radical Left in stomping on the Conservatives as they lay comatose and broken on the ground. It's easier to do that than take on Labour. Bully the sick, dying man is a lot easier than taking on a madman with an axe who wants to destroy everything you care about. That's the thing about bullying; it's the coward's method of exerting control. Now where did they learn that bullying is good from, I wonder......?

• Nick Hughes