Like many I bought Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time. Like some I read it, or at least tried to. But I don't claim to be one of the few who understood more than the opening chapter. I do remember, however, that Hawking mused on the possibility that the expanding universe would one day contract, leading to the universe collapsing back into a giant black hole - an inverse of the big bang that he called the big crunch.
Has the universe of the Tory party started an inexorable contraction towards its own big crunch? Danny Finkelstein noted that in only 14 years there have been five prime ministers without a change of ruling party. Indeed, if you confine it to the period since 2015 when the Tories have governed alone there have been five in nine years.
To put this in perspective he noted that the last time we had five different PMs without a change of ruling party was between 1721 and 1762. That's over a period of more than 40 years and it was before the development of the modern British political system. And even then it only happended because Henry Pelham died in office.
Calling this destabilising and humiliating for British democracy, Finklestein noted that it has happened because the party has either put in office people who weren't suitable or it could not agree to support the people it installed. Sometimes both.
So what do some Conservatives propose to do about this lamentable position? It is, of course, to have another change of PM. He noted a degree of "pitch rolling" for various potential candidates, loud enough to form a background noise without it being obvious where it comes from, "like a group of schoolchildren humming to annoy the teacher".
There is a danger that this background hum could become much louder if (when!) the Tories do abysmally in the May elections.
Finkelstein feels that Sunak made an error in not defining himself as a contrast to the ethical and ideological errors of his predecessors. Rather he chose to manage his party, rather than the country, leading to "countless missteps" such as the appointment of Lee Anderson. Oddly, he says, this is what his critics most like about him. But they think he wasn't loyal enough to Johnson or supportive emough of Truss's disastrous platform. They blame him for failing to make memories of those fiascos disappear.
So they suggest changing the leader, again. Finkelstein says no Tories are suggesting drawing lines Sunak didn't draw. No putative leader proposes an approach the Tories haven't already tried. Nobody is presenting a team that Sunak has somehow ignored. Instead they hold a "vague...pointless hope" that the party should try rolling the dice again.
Which he says fails to acknowledge a public view that the Tories have had all their dice rolls and that it is no longer their turn. One voter said "It's like we've got alcoholic parents. Everything's crazy and then the next morning it's suddenly 'sorry' and 'let's go and feed the ducks'. You can't help but love your alcoholic parents but you might want to go and live with your auntie for a bit."
When I'm considering how I might vote in the general election - some might say when "even I" - and am considering the attraction of a rather boring auntie with some fairly strange associates - this seems a fitting parable for the situation to me.
Finkelstein says responding to this with another Tory leadership election is bananas. Some say the Tory position can't get any worse. He thinks they're wrong, things can always get worse and an attempted coup would be one way of making it so.
The problem for the Tories is the number of votes leaking to Reform which could leave both of them pitifully represented in the next parliament. I've felt for a long time that the political situation had similarities to the mid 90s when it seemed the electorate had decided long before the 1997 election that the Tories had to go. That was a huge defeat but the Tories could face a much bigger collapse. Maybe not quite on the lines of the Progressive Conservatives in Canada in 1993 who, after nine years in power, lost 167 seats and only retained two. But at the moment even a big crunch on that sort of scale wouldn't totally shock me.
The problem for me is the lack of a grown up alternative for non ideological, socially conservative, free marketeers who believe in sound money. Hmm, that almost sounds like the original SDP...
Hawking posited that the big crunch could be followed by another big bang, in a never ending cycle of creation and destruction. The Tories must be hoping that is what happens to them and there is an eventual rebirth after the cataclysm as it's becoming difficult to see that big crunch being avoided.
Of course some people think the universe won't collapse but will go on expanding for ever... I wonder if they're Tories?
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