How Tories' flirtation with extremism is sowing seeds of party's destruction

Political reputations rarely survive for long in the public memory. If you doubt that, consider how many people below a certain age had heard of Jimmy Carter, far less understood his reputation as a good and honourable man.

Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, succeeded him in the Oval Office as a warrior of the far-right, rejected by his own Republican party four years earlier for being beyond the electoral pale. Reaganomics then begat Thatcherism and its attendant woes. How many remember any of that, rather than the avuncular image of later years?

Liz Truss clearly believes that no reputation is incapable of repair though she has gone about it in a manner which invites ridicule rather than revisionism. Ms Truss’s learned friends have sent a letter to Keir Starmer threatening him with a libel action if he persists in saying that she wrecked the UK economy.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch should think again about jumping on Elon Musk's bandwagon (Picture: Justin Tallis) | AFP via Getty Images

Time the great healer

You can understand Ms Truss wanting to re-write the script but it is far too soon. For as long as she is spared, she will make her annual appearance on Remembrance Day as a “former Prime Minister”, and as time passes few will remember that it was only for 49 days. Or indeed that she, allegedly, wrecked the UK economy? Time, rather than lawyers’ letters, is the great healer of reputations.

Her successor but one as Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, would do well to learn lessons from history before she too becomes stained with a reputation that will take a long time to erode. Ms Badenoch’s achievement of the past week has been to earn the good opinions of Elon Musk for her willingness to say whatever accords with his own immediate prejudices.

In this respect, she replaced Nigel Farage in Mr Musk’s affections, and possibly donations. It is quite an achievement for a Tory leader to make Mr Farage a figure of comparative moderation in this unwholesome triangle of the far-right. However, just like Mr Farage, Ms Badenoch will soon learn that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a dangerous assumption, when dealing with unhinged plutocrats whose attachment to democracy is highly conditional.

For whatever motivation, Mr Musk has used his extraordinary social media reach to slander decent British politicians and public servants in grotesque terms. Keir Starmer is “evil”. Jess Phillips is “a witch” and a “rape genocide apologist”. At the same time, he glorified an individual currently serving a prison sentence for contempt of court over false and defamatory remarks about a refugee.

Starmer calls Badenoch out

There are occasions on which decency and national interest should transcend the partisanship of mainstream politics. As leader of the Conservative party, Ms Badenoch had a duty to state unambiguously that these abuses were unacceptable and unwelcome. She should have avoided any association with Mr Musk like the plague. Instead, she chose to jump aboard.

Keir Starmer’s reply exposed her opportunism: “The leader of the Opposition has been a Member of Parliament for eight years, and her party were in government for seven and a half of those eight years. She was the children’s minister. She was the women and equalities minister. I cannot recall her once raising this issue in the House, or once calling for a national inquiry. It is only in recent days that she has jumped on the bandwagon.”

That is where Ms Badenoch demeaned herself and set a very low bar for future assessment of her character. How low is she prepared to go? Is there any attack on British public figures or institutions that she will not endorse, if she thinks there are a few short-term political pickings to be gained?

The question is all the more serious because of Mr Musk’s other role as a leading member of Donald Trump’s inner circle. There are innumerable minefields of policy and diplomacy to be navigated over the coming months and years. The only safe prediction about a Trump-Musk tag-team is that its actions will be deeply unpredictable and, potentially, very hostile to UK interests. Is there any point at which Ms Badenoch would break from that agenda?

Unease among decent Tories

The vast majority of Tory voters – like those for other mainstream parties – are decent people with their own perspectives on life. Most of them, regardless of politics, will feel unease about Mr Musk’s crude, ill-informed interventions and his potential to inflict damage and division on a society of which he knows little and cares less.

Undoubtedly though, there is a market for Ms Badenoch to target, which wants the Tories to become the party of the hard-right and to pander to the worst saloon-bar opinions. They have found a champion in Mr Musk and, for the time being at least, in Ms Badenoch. That, however, holds good only in the extremely short term for there are others vying for that market.

It is possible, I suppose, that the Tories will follow in the footsteps of the Republicans in the US who have allowed their party to be taken over by a cult. Undeniably, it has brought them success, which may encourage them. One look at the Tory press confirms that hatred of a Labour government features far more prominently in these considerations than any risks attached to crude populism.

Then again, there are many decent Tories who would flee from that brand of politics and Ms Badenoch would end up not as the British Trump but as the enabler of Mr Farage. And if Ms Truss thinks she has a problem with her reputation, it would be as nothing to the challenge Ms Badenoch would then have to live with.

I’m pretty sure Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t have given the ravings of Mr Musk house room. And there are still Tories around who might tell Ms Badenoch she is already sowing the seeds of her own reputational destruction – and her party’s death.