EXCLUSIVE: Extracts from The Conservative Effect 2010-24: 14 Wasted Years? (Seldon and Egerton)
Do the external shocks of the 2010-24 period warrant a get out of jail free card for Conservative underperformance?
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Over the last year I’ve been working on an edited book with my colleague Sir Anthony Seldon analysing the last fourteen years of Conservative government. Our aim was to produce the first authoritative and academic verdict on the continuous governments of the period. The book centralises around two guiding questions: what has changed (good and bad) as a result of Conservative government? And to what extent could this period be considered fourteen wasted years? In doing so we recruited top academics and political experts in each of their fields to cover the core policy and political developments of each government. The following is the full list of our team and their areas:
Introduction: What Difference Do Governments Make? - Anthony Seldon
1 Thirteen Wasted Years (1951–1964)? - Peter Kellner
2 External Shocks - Tom Egerton
3 The Economy - Paul Johnson, Carl Emmerson and Nick Ridpath
4 Foreign and Defence Policy - Michael Clarke
5 Health - Rachel Sylvester
6 Education - Alan Smithers
7 Environment - Dieter Helm
8 Parting the Unions - Brendan O’Leary
9 Social and Health Inequalities - Michael Marmot and Clare Bambra
10 Science - Jon Agar
11 Culture - John Kampfner
12 Government, Parliament and the Constitution - Meg Russell
13 The Conservative Party - Tim Bale
14 The Realigning Party System - Paul Webb
15 Elections and Voting - John Curtice
Conclusion: Fourteen Wasted Years? The Verdict - Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton
The Conservative Effect is published in just ONE week (27th June). You can preorder here: with Cambridge, Waterstones or Amazon.
While conclusions vary depending on each contributor, and as editors we have not endeavoured to force a consensus view, the findings in the chapters are staggering. With that said, any political history, particularly one so contemporary, must take into account the caveats which will dominate future debates. It’s a common adage that history judges with a lighter touch.
My chapter was the primary focus of this debate – dissecting whether this government was a victim of unfortunate global shocks, or whether it should be held responsible for inadequate crisis management mixed with poor governing strategy. For the rest of this piece I’ll share some exclusive snippets on my thoughts and conclusions around the ‘external shock’ argument. It is likely to dominate the historical debate over this period for many years to come.
[Quoted text, snippets not in order]
Before dissecting the record of the Conservative governments of 2010–24 any fair analysis must account for the exogenous shocks which have dramatically shaped the government’s hand. However, crises can also obscure contemporary historical judgement, portraying false dichotomies of rise or fall, success or failure. Besides their use in legacy-shaping they are also live political arguments deployed by governments to avert responsibility and depoliticise. For this reason, caution is needed. Any exploration into external shocks may be seen by some as an attempt to create ‘get out of jail free cards’ for governments. Others may view it as an intriguing, but ultimately worthless, historical thought process. It is not. Instead, analysing an entire government’s record with an eye to crises, particularly the constraints and opportunities created by them, is the only fair way to reach a conclusion and learn lessons for the future. So, how do the external crises of 2010–24 compare to what previous governments faced?
Not every exogenous factor deserves the classic ‘caveat’ status when judging the 2010–24 period of Conservative government. What has made this period highly abnormal is the rate at which international crises have filtered into the British political system. However, while many ofthese external shocks have produced difficult policy choices, none have terminally intertwined with the British political system as happened in the 1970s: the shocks have also occurred, apart from the Ukrainian war and subsequent inflation crisis, during a period of favourable monetary conditions and stable energy supply.
The prelude of the 2008 GFC was a difficult start for any government to inherit, placing the very global market system in doubt and forcing the government to prioritise stability as every structurally significant UK bank shuddered with fear. It is easy to forget the degree of danger which faced a UK economy heavily reliant on the globalised capitalism of the City. The crash caused a large loss of GDP and capital, and contributed to a period of wage and productivity stagnation. However, the monetary innovation of QE, and the doggedly low interest rates guaranteed by central banks which persisted, were opportunities for Cameron’s government – enabling cheap borrowing (and spending) and thus a less constraining economic recovery. When the GFC combined with the Eurozone crisis, further emphasis was placed on economic stability in the face of national defaults. This spectre of European debt disintegration had significant impacts on the governing period – namely the fast and fruitful Lib Dem-Conservative coalition negotiations in a country under acute market pressure and averse to crossparty negotiations. Largely ignored, however, is how the Eurozone crisis created the opportunity for Osborne and Cameron to strategically craft the national-debt default narrative which enabled austerity measures. Those measures have aged badly, and in part contributed to the UK’s weakened state heading into further crisis – such as low growth, health vulnerability (see Chapter 9) and energy infrastructure.
The Conservative Effect is published in just ONE week (27th June). You can
preorder here: with Cambridge, Waterstones or Amazon.
Whatever underlying feelings of democratic deficit felt by the UK population before 2008, the following eight years exponentially increased it. The GFC, with its UK taxpayer-funded bailouts, helped to sow the seeds of popular resentment against the establishment – hardly helped by other timely stories of expenses scandals and bankers’ bonuses – that is without mentioning the inequalities fuelled by QE or austerity. The Eurozone crisis damaged the aura around the superiority arguments for EU mechanisms, while also fuelling a degree of economic immigration making Cameron’s pledge impossible. On immigration, the 2014–16 crisis only increased the salience of borders and sovereignty: summarised in a Vote Leave campaign centred on control.
The high politics of Cameron’s failed renegotiation, the timing of the vote, Johnson and Gove’s gamble, Remain’s strategic mistakes and Vote Leave’s overall impact all have their significant place in the Brexit vote, but all would have been mostly ineffective without the impact of underlying global shocks on our democracy. The aftermath of the vote is another pain point for the 2010–24 government, seeing four different prime ministers grapple with the negotiations and impositions of Brexit. The party, and country, became divided and politics, as such, stopped working. The economy has, in the short term, been seriously damaged. Theresa May’s government, for all her strategic failings, must get the largest benefit of the doubt. However, seeing as the main trigger for the vote, and the external shock’s role in the result, lies with Cameron and the party, there cannot be much absolution for the government as a whole. The 2010–24 Conservative government’s record will always be complicit with Brexit’s repercussions – good and bad.
Brexit’s delivery in 2020 coincided with one of the hardest shocks the country has had to face: Covid. With a weakened political system, and loss of the UK’s largest trading partner, Britain was not best placed to deal with a dangerous pandemic. The nation faced deaths, economic downturn and countless difficult choices as the government battled against an unknown global pandemic – though it must be said leadership and policy undeniably failed at times. Finances were heavily hit and governing time for anything else practically vanished for a year. The recovery from Covid, however, did offer opportunities for the government after the revitalising possibilities of industrial strategy between a market–government initiative of the vaccine. The after-effects of Covid were not escaped quickly – and it’s questionable if they could have been. Of all the external shocks, this was the harshest. It would have warranted the largest caveat on any of the government’s records even if it had conducted its action and vision in a professional and clear manner. Johnson’s actions (especially post-2021) have ensured that any asterisk is harder to attribute, though easier for the lasting impacts of Covid in health and finances which Sunak has faced.The last two shocks again potently combined, with the Russo-Ukrainian War creating geopolitical instability with its physical nature comparable to that of World War II mass-European warfare. The inflation crisis, silently brewing, was catalysed by the war, with food and energy prices skyrocketing. The government’s hand was indisputably weakened – with borrowing costs increasing and the country in desperate need of expensive policies such as price freezes in a cost of living crisis. But Ukraine also offered an opportunity for the Johnson government to place the UK at the heart of European politics once again, constraining a key enemy in Russia, while also evaluating the Integrated Review strategy against the very real threats it predicted in 2021. To simply explain the shocks of inflation and economic downturns as simple external factors is perhaps being too kind. For Sunak the policy opportunities were minimised, but for Cameron, May and Johnson there were many opportunities, especially considering the favourable monetary and energy conditions. However, by the early 2020s missed opportunities of the early 2010s had begun to hurt the Conservative Party and constrain the government’s options none more so than in times of inflation. The low growth is certainly not explicable just through external shocks, nor the absolute impact of inflation, especially when compared to European inflation rates. The 2010s governments must share part of the responsibility for the position the country had found itself in by the inflation crisis.
In evaluating all six shocks in full against the last fourteen years of Conservative government, one must note the context around paths taken and policies made within the constrained positions each of the five prime ministers found themselves in. When placing the premierships against the compounding crises it must be said that the earlier premierships in the 2010–24 period had more space, agency, fiscal headroom and better geopolitical conditions to make their political decisions and enact policy. Their failures would increasingly strain later governments. However, a crisis can never be simply viewed as a total negative. The best governments and the top prime ministers have utilised shocks to their advantage and remade the state, and sometimes the world, in their image. Some would argue that as Britain slipped to the sixth largest economy, with heavily reduced global power and no longer part of a meaningful economic bloc it is almost impossible for governments to escape the negatives of global shocks or have an impact on the world stage. To a degree this is correct. But in previous periods of crisis-bred economic and geopolitical readjustment, whether between 1945 and 1951 or 1979 and 1997, the most impressive prime ministers have successfully taken the opportunities provided by external shocks. Others, in the 1970s, or late 2000s, were consumed by them. Yet even those that were brought down by external crisis have a legacy they can defend before resorting to the external shock as a caveat to explain what they couldn’t do.
External shocks should not be used as a complete exoneration from possible failure. The era of global shocks did not produce a world of complete political losers – though, at times, even the best have struggled. But it is in times of global struggle when the best are proven.
The Conservative Effect is published in just ONE week (27th June). You can preorder here: with Cambridge, Waterstones or Amazon. Follow Tom on X / Twitter here.