Let's raise a glass to 2024, a year that will see the end of Tory rule

Except, for the Conservatives, the heady rush is triggered not by the memory of madeleines (or Old Spice or Terry’s Chocolate Orange) but by a lust for the good old, bad old days when you could safely pursue foxes, say. Or rape your wife.

The last few weeks have seen Tories gorge themselves on their outdated values. They appear to have been infected with a sudden panic, a sense that as the last grains of sand sift through their political hourglass, they must feast on their own oddities, oddities they – in their arrogance – assume are shared by the great British public.

James Cleverly believed his “joke” about slipping his wife some Rohypnol was relatable because “real” men secretly want to control their women, and loathe the “wokeness” of “simps” who respect their partners.

James Cleverly

Meanwhile, Mark Jenkinson thinks “country folk” of all classes yearn to don red jackets and let slip the hounds of war. This, despite the fact polls have consistently shown support for the fox-hunting ban straddles the urban/rural divide.

But perhaps the saddest self-own has been the push to allow wine to be sold in pint bottles: a move for which there was precisely zilch clamour, and which has been roundly mocked by anyone born post-decimalisation. And indeed by most people born before it.

The aim – clearly – was to offer up some sort of last-gasp Brexit dividend no matter how tenuous. And how better to do that than by invoking the ghost of a long-dead leader?

We may have lost freedom of movement, the UK may be on its knees, but, seriously? Winston Churchill would have been cock-a-hoop to see his favourite tipple (champagne) available in his favourite imperial measure.

“The country’s exit from the EU was all about moments just like this,” a junior minister gushed in the accompanying press release. Which makes you think that never in the field of human conflict has so much been sacrificed by so many for so little.

Like sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, the pint of wine was a gimmick of a policy, designed not to to be implemented – the government has yet to persuade manufacturers to produce pint-sized bottles – but to create and cater to the public appetite for xenophobia.

Still, this made it worthwhile for Peter Hitchens, not least because it served as a hook for an unhinged column in which he extolled the blow struck against the “metric commissars” who loathe our traditions.

He referenced the Churchills (senior and junior). He referenced George Orwell (well, of course he did). He bemoaned the Bolsheviks and implied a preference for champagne over cocaine (though, presumably, cocaine would be more desirable if it could be purchased by the pound).

No-deal Brexit

The same political agenda lies behind the knighthood for Tim Martin, the founder of Wetherspoon, who donated £200,000 to the Leave campaign, backed a no-deal Brexit, then threw his weight behind Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.

In 2018, Martin ditched champagne (why did Churchill consume this “foreign muck” in any case?) and German wheat beers for alternatives from Britain and Australia. Martin’s New Year’s Honours knighthood will have come courtesy of lobbying by another Churchill stan, Kemi Badenoch, and despite Martin’s criticisms of the UK Government’s lockdown policy.

Tim Martin of Wetherspoons

The decision has been lauded by Nigel Farage, who last week branded Cleverly “a moron” – not for joking about drugging his wife but for praising the Border Force for the first Christmas in five years without a single crossing. (Farage pointed out the lack of activity had more to do with Storm Gerrit than with immigration policy).

It all reeks of desperation: a party trying to shore up its tattered legacy as it ebbs away. Brexit is all they have to show for their time in power.

And yet, the consequences of our split from Europe are driving away the very people won over by the rhetoric of lost Empire and taking back control.

All the government can think to do is to reprise those Make Britain Great Again themes.

But, while bringing back pint bottles and fêting Tim Martin may make headlines in right-wing tabloids, it is not going to drive down inflation or help voters in red wall constituencies cover their rising bills. Indeed, past honouring of successful business people/party donors has been known to backfire. Martin’s reward comes as Sunak tries to distance himself from Tory Peer Michelle Mone.

Mone, whose husband Doug Barrowman gave hundreds of thousands to the Conservatives, was given a seat in the House of Lords in recognition of her own empire-building, but is now at the centre of a PPE scandal in which the government is implicated.

Army accusation

THE jumpiness of MPs is also leading to unforced errors. How else to explain Johnny Mercer’s attack on the military record of Fred Thomas, the Labour candidate attempting to unseat him at the General Election? Mercer accused him of “serving five minutes in uniform” – as a result of which we all now know he spent seven years in the Royal Marines, rising to the rank of Captain.

Johnny Mercer MP

And that homelessness among armed forces veterans in England has risen by 14% in the past year.

Then there is Miriam Cates’s hyperbolic branding of Labour’s childcare plans as “six months with mummy and daddy, then handed over to the State so mummy and daddy can get back to the Critical National Endeavour of Generating GDP”.

Cates is currently under investigation over claims she has caused “significant damage” to the reputation of Westminster, although how it is possible to besmirch such a pre-tarnished institution has not yet been explained.

She seems to have forgotten her own party brought in the two-child benefit cap (because children born to unproductive parents are a drain on resources).

Cates’s words were QT-ed by foodbank sceptic and death penalty proponent Lee Anderson, who added “State-controlled children” to the mix. Such defensiveness suggests the Conservatives know this will be their last New Year in government for a long, long time.

Come what May

SOME commentators are convinced the announcement of a March 6 spring Budget (with prospective fiscal bribes) heralds a May election. Others believe it won’t be until autumn.

But an election is heading our way. With Sunak assailed on all sides, and Labour (so far) maintaining its double-figure lead in the polls, there are “finally” grounds for hope. Not the kind of hope that buoyed us all in 1997, perhaps – Labour under Keir Starmer has none of the vim and vigour of Labour under Tony Blair (for all his later lapses).

Today’s party lacks vision and charisma and is constrained by its own sense of what will make it electable. Nevertheless, what was true then is even truer now. Things can only get better. I’ll raise a Hogmanay glass – pint-sized or otherwise – to that. Here’s to a 2024 that sees the end of Tory rule. And to a General Election which provides multiple “Were you still up for Portillo?” moments.