Tories have been in power for 13 years, but record leaves them most effective pretending they're opposition

The Conservatives are at their most effective saying it’s somebody else’s fault.

The Conservatives have been in power for 13 years, but maybe in preparation for the next election, now govern like they are in opposition.

Perhaps due to Britain’s dire financial situation, induced in party by Liz Truss’s dire cameo as prime minister, the Tories have resorted to relying on protest, rather than policy.

Ministers now hold press conferences to share updates, rather than actual announcements, and Government documents are longer, but the substance of them has rarely been so thin.

Even the decisions that are made are being delayed, budget cuts deferred to after the next election, pay rises for the public sector coming from existing budgets. It’s not Rishi Sunak’s problem, let someone else sort it.

To an extent, it’s worked, most obviously in the seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, retained at Thursday’s by-election, despite a 7 per cent swing to Labour, and a 21 point drop in Tory support across the country. Mr Sunak suggested the result showed it was time to “double down” on existing policies, which prompts the obvious question – ‘what existing policies?’.

Voters refusing to support Labour did so because of Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ scheme, not because there was an overwhelming desire to ‘stop the boats’. People didn’t want to pay more to drive in a cost-of-living crisis, they were not endorsing a Government whose own transgender guidance in schools was deemed unlawful.

The Conservatives won because they opposed, not because they offered to deliver, a situation that is fast becoming the norm in British politics.

At PMQs, the Prime Minister demands Sir Keir answers his questions, rather than the other way round, and the energy debate sees Labour blamed for not building more nuclear power stations in the ‘90s, rather than what politicians in Government have done since 2010.

During the rail strikes, ministers went out of their way to demand Sir Keir Starmer tell “his friends in the unions” to call them off. Maybe they’d missed that Mick Lynch, the secretary-general of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, spends his time denouncing Sir Keir, or simply forgot there is a Tory minister in charge of transport.

It’s the same with “Just Stop Oil”, an organisation that irritates everyone by trying to save the planet, and one the Labour leader has urged to cease disrupting events, calling them “arrogant”.

When Sir Keir arranged to meet with them to get them to stop, the home secretary accused him of working with Just Stop Oil. When activists did an estimated £3,000-£4,000 worth of damage to the department of Energy Security and Net Zero, Grant Shapps demanded the Labour leader pay for it, naturally in an open letter.

Being accountable for your donors is already a slippery slope for the Tories to get on, but it’s also deeply embarrassing. These are grown-ups, adults, intelligent, educated politicians who know Sir Keir does not support Just Stop Oil, and that they in Government are the ones responsible for policy and managing protestors. Instead, they blame Labour, pretending it’s all somebody else’s fault.

In Uxbridge it worked, turning a by-election into a referendum on one issue, but to win again, the Government might need to remember they are, despite appearances/legislation/interest, the actual Government.