The Debatable Land

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The Debatable Land
Down the Tory Rabbit Hole

Down the Tory Rabbit Hole

The Conservative party conference confirmed that the party is looking forward to Götterdämmerung.

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Alex Massie
Oct 05, 2023
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The Debatable Land
Down the Tory Rabbit Hole
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The Tory party’s conference slogan reminds you to vote for the Labour party

As a general rule, I try and avoid party conferences. Invariably, these show a political party at its worst: the group think, the self-righteousness, the smugness, the unavoidable creeping sensation you have wondered into a cult’s annual general meeting - all of it is dispiriting. Yet, unusually, I rather wish I had attended the Conservative conference in Manchester this week. For here was something else: a party determined to demonstrate its own obsolescence. The message sent by the Tories in Manchester was a simple one: Götterdämmerung is coming and we deserve it.

This was a macabre spectacle in almost every significant regard and, as such, a bleakly enjoyable one. A party conference where everyone present hates everyone else is a target rich environment offering entertainment at bargain prices. This is how it ends; with a farrago of nonsense advertising the governing party’s fatigue. They are, in a sense, ju…

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