Kieron O’Hara

The Extinction Rebellion seems to be going nicely. The BBC likes the photogenic shots of protesters; the ‘Torygraph’ thunders at it; it tickles the tummies of the likes of Polly Toynbee and George Monbiot; ‘luvvies’ fly in from Los Angeles to join it; and hypocrisy and “posh eco-loons” abound for Guido Fawkes to satirise.

Like all good protests, it both highlights and draws attention away from a particularly pressing problem. Climate change is indeed a vital issue, about which little sense is spoken. The protesters, and many on the left, correctly point to the idiocy of denialists on the right, who either pretend climate change isn’t happening, or refuse to accept its clear links with collective human behaviour. It is very worrying when senior figures set themselves up in opposition to the best scientific practice, rather than using their best judgement about how to use science in policy making, which is the politicians’ duty.

However, denialism isn’t only a monster of the right. The left is in denial, twice over: first, by ignoring home truths about the problems of combating climate change, and second, by denying that they are in denial and laying blame at the door of  “big business and conservative politics”.

They also blame ‘spineless’ governments. Ninety-four of my colleagues praised Extinction Rebellion in 2018, supporting “demands for the government to tell the hard truth to its citizens.” This ignores the UK government’s decent record in comparison with its peers, with emission levels 43% lower than 1990 levels. Although this is not, admittedly, a high bar. But even putting that aside, to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025 isn’t really in a government’s gift, without it taking on all sorts of dramatic powers to suppress economic activity and the liberty of private citizens. Quite apart from the potential totalitarian overreach, net carbon emission is the total of millions of datapoints, only a few of which the government has control over.

Green technology can no doubt help, and the left would like to tax the rich, yet this is tinkering round the edges. Ultimately, one clear method for reducing carbon emissions is to lower economic activity across the board. Which is to say we all need to become poorer, or behave as if we are poorer, which amounts to the same thing. Occasionally, activists will put this case, arguing for rationing air flights for instance. But it would go way beyond this – no fashion, duller food, less light, less travel. It would mean less Instagram and Spotify. The cloud – smartphones, data centres, other infrastructure – is at least as serious an environmental issue as air travel.

Governments certainly don’t tell their citizens “the hard truth” about their requirement to consume less, but then neither do many academics, activists or green politicians. Rises in petrol prices for environmental reasons tend to provoke protests of their own, from the fuel protests of 2000 to the gilets jaunes of aujourd’hui. Activists secretly admire their violent audacity, while apparently doublethinking that more radical measures to curb car use than putting 2p on a litre of petrol would have far less effect on the tempers of what they like to call “ordinary working people”. On the contrary, there is no evidence whatsoever of any appetite, beyond a small ideologically-driven core, for restricting freedoms to consume, own and travel, and no evidence that any offer on those lines would fare very well at the ballot box. Brighton’s Green Party split every which way under the pressure of reality when it ran the council for four years, before losing half of its seats.

The tragedy is that climate change is a collective action problem that demands global sacrifice and constraint, while green philosophy is utterly bereft of ideas, as it peddles radical cures that would be worse than the disease. Of the tens of millions of people who died in famines in the twentieth century, many died in or after wars, but the majority succumbed to radical social engineering, whether China’s Great Leap Forward, the collectivisation of the Soviet Union, or the Khmer Rouge’s attempts to create a rural egalitarian society. Bob Geldof berated us in 1984-5 about the famine in Ethiopia, as if Western consumers were responsible, instead of the Derg regime which had reformed and collectivised farmland. Even now, if you want to find hungry people, look in the socialist paradises of Venezuela, Zimbabwe and North Korea. The terrible effects of green radicalism don’t feature as a datum to denialist activists.

It is indeed the success of capitalism that is the root of our climate troubles. Denialists of the right defend it but refuse to think about how it must adapt. Anti-capitalist denialists delude themselves that we can just get rid of it without massive and fatal disruption. Democrats are in denial about the deep unpopularity that serious measures would engender, both (for different reasons) in the rich world and emergent economies.

The right needs to listen to the environmental scientists; the left to the economists. And democrats of all stripes need to revitalise the representative principle over direct democracy, to allow practical leadership to prevail over the current dialogue of the deaf.

Kieron O’Hara is an associate fellow of Bright Blue and associate professor at the University of Southampton. The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

In a remarkably short time, the Internet, and the World Wide Web which sits upon it, have become critical infrastructure for governments, the military, companies and individuals alike.

It can come as something as a surprise, therefore, to discover that the Internet itself is a complex, ad hoc sociotechnical jumble of systems, protocols, standards and hardware, bundled together by the domain name system, information intermediaries, security systems, exchange points, autonomous systems, Internet service providers, registers, databases and standards bodies; some national and some international organisations; public bodies, private companies, and non-profits.

The Internet has two technical requirements: decentralisation, where no-one is in charge and anyone can join; and identification, via the unique Internet Protocol address. The original ideal was openness, with information flowing freely and efficient engineering, with ideological appeal to libertarians, hippies and anarchists. This Silicon Valley open vision creates a network without central authority. As Niall Ferguson and Helen Margetts have argued, this vision is attractive, but problematic. Networks can be disruptive of stability, while the need for identification creates potential threats to privacy.

Wendy Hall and I argue in our recent pamphlet for the Centre for International Governance Innovation, Four Internets, that influential alternatives have emerged. The Brussels bourgeois vision imagines a nicely-behaved, lightly regulated Internet where openness is still prized, but privacy is protected and trolling and fake news suppressed. The Washington DC commercial vision notes the immense innovation that surveillance, oligopoly and ‘walled gardens’ have produced, and advocates markets and property rights. Meanwhile, the Beijing paternal vision fancies surveillance for social control to address issues like security, social cohesion, health and wellbeing, transport or climate change.

These are not the only visions possible, but they have support from major geopolitical actors working to establish their principles among the protocols and institutions of Internet governance. Their coexistence doesn’t mean the Internet is falling apart, but the struggle between them is affecting the way it is run.

Human nature being what it is, there is another, the ‘Moscow Mule’ vision, a spoiler which weaponises the hacking ethos with a paranoid and nihilistic nationalism to use the infrastructure to spread mistrust. It cares not which Internet as long as there is one to troll. Most governments spread some misinformation, but some are dedicated practitioners, with not only Russia, but Iran, Venezuela and North Korea offenders.

Technological trends make this a problem now. For example, Artificial Intelligence algorithms are fuelled by data from the Web, e-commerce and social networks. The European data market is highly regulated and fragmented, unlike the US, where the corresponding advantages accrue to the tech giants. In China, data protection is very different, and its private sector conforms to the Party line. The future of AI in competing regions will depend on the Internet architecture’s facilitation of data gathering and flow.

George Bush once fantasised an ‘Axis of Evil’. Today, there is a scarier axis of nations pursuing aggressive nationalism combined with impatience with due process internally and internationally. The ‘Axis of Incivility’, founded by the US, China and Russia, now includes Egypt, Hungary, India, Iran, Israel, the Philippines, Poland, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The competing visions of the Internet will get entangled in their drive for international recognition, power and coalition-building. The benefits of cooperation, openness, privacy and bourgeois stability, are unlikely to cut much ice; this awkward squad is not looking for win-wins.

Each vision, save the ‘Moscow Mule’, has its merits. Openness has given voice to many. Oligopoly has produced genuinely valuable and free services, and networks of undreamt-of complexity and density. Privacy and social cohesion are public goods. It is not possible to force agreement between differing geopolitical forces and ideologies. It is therefore imperative to develop governance principles that simultaneously accept the range of views about the Internet in society, preserve the open standards that have made it revolutionary and successful, and ensure that human dignity and privacy are respected.

Kieron O’Hara is an associate fellow of Bright Blue and associate professor at the University of Southampton. The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

Like any big political coalition in a two party system, the Conservative Party is the natural home for many ideological strains. Yet, despite the party’s name, its small-c conservative thinkers who have been more or less absent without leave for some time – arguably since Mrs Thatcher’s second term of office, when her focus shifted from addressing existing problems (e.g. curbing union power, reducing the state’s involvement in business, reducing contributions to the EEC) to removing theoretical opportunity costs and implementing ideological visions (e.g. the Big Bang, the National Curriculum). David Cameron’s period of office was hardly conservative, with unwise concessions made to Lib Dem coalition partners and unpredictable referendums on disruptive issues such as the system of voting, Scottish independence (both fortunately defeated) and Brexit (what is less conservative than undoing a 40 year constitutional settlement?).

Partly, this neglect of the ideological tradition of Edmund Burke, David Hume, Adam Smith (who is not the free-market ideologue of Cold War legend), Lord Salisbury, Arthur Balfour, Michael Oakeshott and Roger Scruton has been driven by the needs of government to dominate the 24/7 news cycle with hey-wow initiatives and knee-jerk responses to this morning’s Daily Mail headline. The old saw that the hardest thing for a government to do is nothing, is doubly true now.

On the other hand, actually implementing real change can be hard; so mighty, complex and resistant to change has the state grown (thanks largely to all that governmental hyperactivity) that turning it around will always be a slow and difficult process. Violent rhetoric outstrips actual progress, and it is the rhetoric that features in the media. Grands projets proliferate, with politicians preferring to cut ribbons than fix what is wrong – HS2 and Hinkley Point C are classic examples of the neglect of conservative virtues, pouring billions down the toilet for the sake of an announcement on tonight’s news, irrespective of the uncertainty of future benefits.

Now, suddenly, a conservative Conservative manifesto has emerged. Perhaps emboldened by puerile opposition, confident in victory, Mrs May and her team have dared to ignore the needs of the media cycle, and eschewed (for the most part) the populist gestures of the other parties. She probably also wanted liberation from Mr Cameron’s own expensive crowd-pleasing gestures like the triple lock on pensions, and the refusal to raise taxes.

It begins by acknowledging – and, more to the point, correctly identifying – five major challenges. Three are serious conundrums skated over by the other parties: Brexit, the ageing society and technological change. The fourth challenge, of healing social divisions, is wise if that means reducing social tensions between groups. The focus on intergenerational justice is a welcome example, and a brave and honest one, given the propensity of pensioners to vote, and to vote Tory. One imagines that Mrs May would have been less likely to pursue that line had the opposition been credible. Her response to the fifth challenge, the economy, is her weakest link; she happily departs from liberal orthodoxy, but seems to anticipate more control over outcomes than is feasible.

The drive behind conservatism’s problematisation of change is to keep the world understandable and legible for citizens. This is why immigration can be a problem – the undoubted economic gains from migration are offset by the unfamiliarity and dislocation that it creates. It’s a tricky balance, and Mrs May probably hasn’t got it right. But the blithe insouciance characteristic of the pre-Brexit era is no longer tenable. Demonstrable control over immigration is the precondition for consent to it.

Her willingness to use the state to gerrymander outcomes (“government can and should be a force for good”), rather than rely on free markets to deliver everything, shows she understands the importance of social legibility. Markets, efficient allocators of resources and capital, can be blind to, and deeply disruptive of, settled patterns of behaviour. All things being equal, a free market beats the alternative (and Mrs May’s dalliance with price caps is worrying) but it is pure dogma to suggest that markets always produce the best solution every time (best for whom?).

Her focus on workers’ rights looks sensible, as long as she isn’t tempted to follow the continental style of disincentivizing employment entirely. Workers in all sorts of industries, not only rust belt manufacturing, are bearing the brunt of sociotechnical change, and their interests are no longer defended by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. It is essential that such a large and important group in society is represented coherently, and Mrs May is showing entrepreneurial opportunism to steer Tory policy away from its home ground of economic liberalism and toward traditional Labour concerns. Hopefully it will help the Tories regain ground in the urban North of England, Wales and Scotland, but even if not it’s worth taking the gamble now. By the next election it is quite possible that Labour will be inoculated against the Corbynista virus and be back on the case – 2017 may be Mrs May’s best opportunity to interest these voters in Tory realism. The Tories’ move from liberalism is likely to be only temporary.

To be sure, not every measure is sensibly conservative. Even small matters, like demanding ID upon voting, can change the experience of democracy for the vast majority of people in unpredictable and complex ways. The evidence for harmful voter fraud needs to be far stronger before taking the risk. Similarly, our Parliamentary constituencies should be based on coherent communities, not artificial entities that happen to have identical populations, so it’s a shame that Mrs May is persisting with the principle of equal seats. On the other hand, three hearty cheers for the repeal of the ghastly Fixed Term Parliament Act, reform of postal voting, and the retention of first past the post, paper and pencil voting and the voting age of 18.

While the left channels Gramsci and fantasises impotently about creating a progressive hegemony, Mrs May is taking the opportunity to piece together a conservative one. Practice beats theory every time.

Kieron O’Hara is an associate fellow of Bright Blue and associate professor and principal research fellow at the University of Southampton.The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

Judiciously leaked, a late draft of Labour’s manifesto appeared last week, which at least meant that, unlike the others, people would read it. The leak seemed to do no harm – policy discussion is Labour’s least bad arena, compared to the personal qualities of the leaders or the parties’ organisational skills. And policies there were aplenty.

Cunningly –was this deliberate? – the manifesto was a little shorter than 1983’s, heading off jokes about the longest suicide note. Some reactions were predictable – the Tories and the press launched into it, while on the left many like Aditya Chakrabortty, never knowingly undersold, grumbled that it was “not radical enough”. Larry Elliott, a critic of Blair and sympathetic (if sceptically) to Corbyn’s vision, was keen. Joseph Harker loved the “genuinely progressive” manifesto, and made the clueless, yet offensive, suggestion that Corbyn v May was the equivalent of Macron v Le Pen (if anything it’s Mélenchon v Fillon, a very different bouilloire de poisson).

Nearer the centre, Ayesha Hazarika employed techniques of irony from her stand-up comic career, noting it was “genuinely fascinating” and that “Corbyn’s Labour is now a proper, real-time, leftwing political experiment and we will know the results on 9 June.” Yet although she, Watson-like, was emphasising JC’s ownership of the manifesto, more ominous was her claim that “There’s nothing you can argue against in this wishlist”, a word also used by Jonathan Freedland.

But hold on – for Freedland, this is a wishlist of “admirable hopes and laudable plans” that puts Labour “in front on policy.” Eh? Polly Toynbee, a prominent JC critic, gushed about “a cornucopia of delights”, “a treasure trove” that “could make this country infinitely better.” Will Hutton liked “its bold willingness to confront the way contemporary capitalism is stratifying the labour market into a new mass precariat and conferring enormous rewards at the top, while crucial public services are being starved of resources or compromised by putting the profit motive first”. Greg Rosen thought it was restoring the legacy of New Labour, while Martin Kettle detected warmed-over SDP. Mr Kettle went on to say that “Only those on the centre-left whose hearts and brains have calcified irrevocably against every traditional marker of a government for the common good could fail to respond to at least some of these possibilities”. The Guardian’s leader welcomed it as a bold step.

This is extraordinary, because the manifesto, as well as being a wishlist, is a pretty cretinous one, with virtually everything that could be wrong being wrong. Granted, it is there chiefly to make a point, from people who expect defeat and won’t have to implement all this stuff. But even so …

The NHS will simply absorb whatever money is pumped into it, as it did under Tony Blair, without some creative thinking. Why 10,000 new policemen, when crime levels are only equivocally correlated with police numbers? In the face of an upcoming pensions crisis, why on earth reverse essential increases in pension ages? Why nationalisation and public ownership of utilities, when we know from experience what a poor level of service government agencies provide? Why restore an enormous subsidy for the wealthy by abolishing tuition fees, in the face of evidence from Scotland that it has a negative effect on social mobility? And how could we soak those earning more than £80,000 to pay for all this without severely distorting the economy? Increases in corporation tax will tend to push up prices, lower wages and reduce income for pension funds. A Robin Hood tax will exacerbate any post-Brexit exodus from the city, dramatically decreasing the hoped-for take.

So why is the so-called ‘sensible’ centre-left so overjoyed with this drivel? It’s revealing – Jeremy Corbyn is rather like the Freudian id of the left, a “chaos”, “filled with energy reaching it from the instincts …  no organization, produc[ing] no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle,” to quote the New Introductory Lectures. The soft left has an ego that understands the reality principle, but Corbyn has taken them back to cosy dreamland. The admiration of this manifesto really does show that even those who believe that Corbynism is doomed are Corbyn wannabees, incapable of coupling their social conscience to a realistic view of economics and human behaviour.

Surprisingly few commentators of the centre left were prepared to face down their ids. Andrew Rawnsley forensically trashed the idea that the manifesto was in any way radical, while Kezia Dugdale, who looks like she will have a torrid election night, impressed by reiterating her understanding that increasing the role of the state requires tax increases for everyone, not just the rich.

Labour has a worse problem than 1983. Then, it was clear that the party had swung too far left. Now, if Labour does take a thrashing in June, a debate will begin over whether the problem was the extreme ideological positioning of the party and its hundreds of thousands of clicktivist members, or just the incompetence of the current leader. Ms Toynbee has already begun that debate, drawing the wrong conclusions: “good policies in this manifesto will wrongly go down in history as ‘rejected’ by voters – when all they will have rejected was Corbyn”. In 2015, the pleasure principle overcame the reality principle, and on this evidence it’ll happen again this Summer.

Kieron O’Hara is an associate fellow of Bright Blue and associate professor and principal research fellow at the University of Southampton. The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

The election campaign rumbles on, with the strong and stable™ Tories leading the poll. Incredibly, according to YouGov only 15% of people recognise the notorious Tory slogan.

On the other hand, only 2% spontaneously mention Jeremy Corbyn’s Blairite riff off for the many and not for the few. Perhaps this is because, thanks to Mr Corbyn, the few now seem to outnumber the many. Nevertheless, the progressive forces (who are a very few people indeed) still want to join together in a rainbow coalition to beat the evil Tories. We will be sneered at, says Zoe Williams, channelling Paul Nuttall channelling Gandhi.

Ms Williams usefully set out – possibly for the first time – the beliefs that unite and characterise the progressive alliance:

(1) that climate change is real, but human ingenuity can stop it; (2) that pooling resources for world-class education and healthcare for everybody is not a drag or even a duty, but an honour; (3) that if you can’t afford food and shelter on a full-time wage, you’re not the problem; (4) that everybody will spend some part of their lives economically unproductive, and it’s better to support rather than blame each other.

Hmm. You can certainly believe (1) and not be ‘progressive’; there are plenty of conservative environmentalists, especially around Bright Blue. You might also believe that environmentalists’ tactics of setting targets, restricting economic freedom and frantic scaremongering have been deeply counterproductive. It’s not that the right wants to ignore climate change, but rather that what has been done so far has failed, and we need other options that don’t rely on government fiat or radical schemes to change human nature.

(3) and (4) – sure, but again you can be concerned about the working poor and the unemployed and still worry that an arbitrary transfer of resources isn’t going to solve the underlying problems.

(2) is just odd (though revealing) – paying taxes is indeed a duty, and it is clearly a drag. Furthermore, the problem with the progressive forces is that they seem to believe that pooling resources is sufficient for world class services, and if the services are not world class, then we just pool some more. That idea has already been tested to destruction by New Labour. And as for being an honour, I’d prefer an OBE frankly.

The key phrases are ‘pooling resources’ and ‘support rather than blame each other’. These gloss over the uncomfortable fact that what is proposed is that those who are economically productive, and who may have made long-term plans, funded by hard work, will be asked by the progressive alliance to support not only those to whom they have immediate and pressing moral obligations, but also those less fortunate (no doubt also hard-working – very few people are the shiftless types demonised by the Daily Mail). That requires a job of persuasion by the self-styled progressives – not only to ensure legitimacy, but also to prove that the transfer of resources will have some useful long-term effects. But the progressives don’t want to persuade – they would rather protest, or if they did somehow win power, they would forcibly extract the money.

The point is that most people who find themselves voting Tory are concerned about poverty, worklessness, climate change, education and health, but they may not think that the policies tried unsuccessfully over and over by progressives for half a century are a useful way forward. Yet the progressives themselves make no attempt either to craft a message that will appeal to those people, or to engage with their concerns about the economic unrealism. They’d rather hurl insults.

You can join the progressive alliance if you want to vote Labour, Green, Liberal Democrat, SNP, SDLP or the Women’s Equality party, all of which are, apparently, on the same path (presumably Plaid Cymru can be added to the list too). Most of the smaller parties do not aspire to government at all, with the exception of the SNP, and even they like to position themselves in opposition to the Westminster Tories.

Labour is fundamentally a party of opposition. Since Keir Hardie in 1906, it has had 18 leaders not counting interim caretakers. Of these 18, only four have actually won General Elections. Of those four, two have been consigned to the lowest levels of Socialist hell – don’t mention Ramsay MacDonald or Tony Blair in Islington, whatever you do. Of the two remaining, one – Harold Wilson – has been airbrushed out of history. That leaves one single Labour leader who was both successful (two attempts out of five) and admired: Clement Attlee, although even he was under constant attack from his own left wing while actually leading it.

The Lib Dems (and their predecessors the Liberals) had gone on and on for years about the importance of coalition and proportional representation. When they finally got what they had been asking for, Lib Dem voters seemed unable to grasp (a) that joining a coalition requires compromise, and (b) that it’s best to drop the most stupid and expensive policies. So they deserted poor old Clegg in droves, and the student fees u-turn is still regarded, idiotically, as one of the worst betrayals in political history. Tim Farron’s ambition is to be the main opposition party, and has ruled out a coalition in advance.

An opposition party that doesn’t want to win causes trouble. The Chilcot Report excoriated Tony Blair’s sofa-style government, but there was one villain that he didn’t finger. In 2001, Iain Duncan Smith led, with Corbynista deftness, a Tory rabble that wanted to argue with itself about Europe, which made Mr Blair’s staggering complacency possible. Mrs May’s touch has been unsure, and an opposition that was making a constant pitch for her voters would surely keep her on her toes. But it looks like she, like Mr Blair, will have carte blanche to do as she will. That is hardly the outcome that the progressive forces would welcome, even as they let the Tory voters go.

Kieron O’Hara is an associate fellow of Bright Blue and associate professor and principal research fellow at the University of Southampton.The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

Shortly after the 1885 General Election, the young Joseph Conrad wrote to a friend, bemoaning the result:

Where’s the man to stop the rush of social-democratic ideas? The opportunity and the day have come and are gone! Believe me: gone for ever! For the sun is set and the last barrier removed. England was the only barrier to the pressure of infernal doctrines born in continental back-slums. Now, there is nothing! The destiny of this nation and of all nations is to be accomplished in darkness amidst much weeping and gnashing of teeth, to pass through robbery, equality, anarchy and misery under the iron rule of a military despotism!

This, it is safe to say, is the most OTT reaction to a minority Liberal government in the whole of human history. Yet it is not a million miles away from the weeping and gnashing characteristic of Britain’s left today.

For example, Lord Blunkett argues that Mrs May “seek[s] complete hegemony in which difference of thought and the challenge of normal democratic counterweight to the establishment will not be tolerated.” North of the Border, Nicola Sturgeon has written of Mrs May’s “jaw-dropping” arrogance with respect to the Scots, which is “unprecedented, unparalleled and utterly unsustainable”, and “If we were to look anywhere else in the world and witness a similar situation, we would be aghast”.

As well as destroying democracy, the Tories are out-Thatchering Mrs Thatcher. The leaders of the Greens think the main electoral task is to “stop the Tories from wrecking our country for generations to come”, while their erstwhile head Natalie Bennett wrote that “the Tories have gone further than Thatcher to the extremes of British politics”. This is not a new theme – Polly Toynbee long ago accused David Cameron of “going where Thatcher never dared” and running “the most right-wing of postwar governments.”

Our cultural representatives do not demur. Johnny Marr, the Engels to Morrissey’s Marx, recently wailed that “In Thatcher’s day it was just plain old bleak. It was no future and no jobs. But now they’re trying to make it more difficult for you to even afford train fares, bus fares and education. There’s a lack of genuine democracy”. Dr Lisa McKenzie of the London School of Economics predicted that the “Tory manifesto will be same as it always has been- to look after the rich, sell off public services and kill the poor”, though, surprisingly for an academic, without citing her sources.

This is decidedly odd, even allowing for poetic licence. Mrs May is a moderate figure, somewhat indecisive, socially conservative, with mildly interventionist leanings. She hasn’t even done very much. Between them Mr Cameron and Mrs May have increased public spending in absolute terms, or, as a percentage of GDP, have reduced it to the level of 2008 (as opposed to 1908, or 1808, as many would have you believe). Yet already a theme in this election is whether, and if so how, the ‘progressive forces’ can gang up on the evil ones and somehow keep the candle of democracy alight in the face of these cataracts and hurricanoes.

Owen Jones has swallowed his distaste for Jeremy Corbyn to join Lord Blunkett in calling for everyone to “unite and do our very best to prevent a Tory landslide that would be calamitous for the country” by voting Labour. Tim Farron suggests voting Lib Dem for more or less the same reason, while the leaders of the Greens, as noted above, think voting Green will do it. Paul Mason, on the other hand, wants us to vote tactically for the best-placed anti-Tory candidate. “Our aim should not be a narrow majority: it should be to wipe out hard Brexit Toryism for a generation”.

This seems to be self-defeating. The problem for these parties, surely, is that the Tories have too many supporters (at least according to the polls), so the solution is to siphon voters away from them, isn’t it? Yet the ‘progressive forces’, having written off the Tories as rich, selfish, greedy and evil, are all trying to poach each other’s dwindling stocks of voters instead – the metaphor of rearranging the Titanic’s deckchairs seems remarkably apt. Lynton Crosbie’s Manichaean mantra of ‘strong and stable’ vs a ‘coalition of chaos’ almost writes itself.

I don’t have any particular desire to see a Labour or a Lib Dem government, or even to avoid a Tory landslide. But beyond June 8th, this is a political problem. Many people vote Conservative because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that the Tories provide such basic political goods as support for authority, realistic economic assumptions, national security and defence, and a willingness to protect the private sphere from interference from the state. The ‘progressive forces’ have demonised the Tories so effectively that now no other party dares cater for that constituency. Isn’t this madness?

For the ‘progressive forces’ are no such thing. There is no force, just a load of people who disagree about most things (or, in their terms, a ‘rainbow coalition’) who have conjured up a terrible but non-existent bogeyman (or bogeywoman at the moment) to unite them. If they succeeded in deposing Mrs May, whether in coalition or within a single party, they would have no consistent policies, except to stop doing what the Conservatives have been doing, good and bad.

Currently, those who broadly value our existing political and economic arrangements (including those who, like me, would want to adjust them in various ways) only have one party to vote for, while those who wish to kick the table over have a deliciously wide choice. I can’t think that that is a happy situation in which to find ourselves.

Kieron O’Hara is an associate fellow of Bright Blue and associate professor and principal research fellow at the University of Southampton.The views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.