The Tory party has been putting the ‘con’ in Conservatives for the last 14 years. As the sun rises on the first days of this new Labour government, I’m taking a moment to reflect on some of the biggest failures of the previous administration.
There is a lot to choose from, so I’ll focus on what I regard as their top five.
Rwanda: whose plan was this anyway?
The first failure has to be the Conservatives’ notorious wannabe silver bullet that failed to rescue them from huge losses in the polls. The plan to send migrants and refugees to Rwanda breaches UK and European law and – much like the planes – never got off the ground.
While the highest court in the UK deemed Rwanda to be an unsafe country, the Conservatives’ response was to demonstrate their disdain for the most vulnerable within society by attempting to pass a law that sought to rewrite reality and state that in fact Rwanda was now safe.
Rather than investing in our asylum system to deal with the immense backlog of asylum seekers, the Conservatives wanted to strip away the human rights that keep us safe from abuses of power. Yet, this didn’t win them many votes. Shocking …
This plan also came with a hefty price tag of £170,000 per migrant deported, on top of the £240mn of taxpayer money already spent on the plan. In addition, a further £22mn was spent on the Bibby Stockholm, a project that has led to viral outbreaks, evacuations and even deaths.
All of this has taken place in our name, using our money. Who exactly voted for this?
Water companies – the sewage saga
The second failure, begun with Margaret Thatcher’s privatisation of the water companies, has seen a huge fall in quality and services, combined with an exponential increase in cost for customers.
If we look at Thames Water alone, we see an organisation with a monopoly over an essential public service that somehow struggles with profitability. This stems from an increasingly prevalent practice in the UK where private interests use essential services to syphon money out of the system and into the accounts of private individuals and shareholders. Meanwhile, the debt-ridden organisations ask for taxpayer money to finance infrastructure investments while also dumping tonnes of raw sewage into the UK’s rivers and seas.
As of 2023, at least 83 beaches across the UK had been contaminated with raw sewage. The UK has become an island nation landlocked by an ocean of sewage while the last government sat back and did nothing to prevent it, nor hold these organisations responsible.
The NHS
One may believe that the NHS fell victim to short-sighted mismanagement by the Conservatives. But maybe what we’re seeing is a product of deliberate managed decline which seeks to hand the UK’s health service over to private interests.
The fact of the NHS’s decline (whether deliberately planned or not) was laid bare during the Covid-19 pandemic in which an understaffed and undersupplied workforce had to use bin bags in place of fully functioning PPE. The government’s mismanagement of public funds and services was further highlighted when evidence came to light of the use of so-called VIP channels. This saw PPE being purchased for 80% above its value, Tory donors being offered VIP access, and affiliates with little or no experience being given multimillion pound contracts over existing, vetted suppliers.
The Conservatives’ failure to find a resolution after a year for NHS industrial action has reportedly cost the taxpayer £1.7bn. The drawn-out dispute over pay and conditions has left patients, families and staff in a state of uncertainty.
Brexit
Where do we begin? It seems each week there is a new unforeseen cost of Brexit. Whether that be loss of freedom to travel, huge staff shortages across industries, or most recently the literal cost of new food checks finally taking hold. This comes on top of the 5-6% loss in economic output compared to that had the UK remained in the EU.
I could sit here for months listing all the costs of Brexit, but more telling is the silence surrounding the benefits of this new relationship with the EU. Despite claims from Leavers around taking back control, stopping boats, regaining sovereignty, and finding new funding for the NHS, none of these have come to pass. To date, key ‘benefits’ appear to be vague notions of control and the ability to serve wine by the pint. Even the government’s own report on the benefits of Brexit lists ‘reintroducing iconic blue passports’ as a top benefit. 5-6% loss in economic output for a pint of wine and a blue passport feels like a heavy price to pay while shortages increase and prices skyrocket.
Cronyism
Boris Johnson presided over a rise in brazenness and boldness. Once done in the dark, it felt as if there was frank corruption right before our eyes. Whether it be the immense amount of money given to Tory affiliates during the pandemic, Johnson’s infamous Partygate lies, stacking the House of Lords with party donors and affiliates, subsidising private businesses to protect shareholders from the effects of industrial action, or special treatment for failure to pay multimillion pound tax responsibilities, the list truly does go on. Just take a look through the Byline Times’ excellent ‘Cronyism and Corruption’ archives for a full outline of just how pervasive corruption has been within modern UK politics.
Looking ahead
Starmer and his newly selected cabinet have begun the work he promised in his first speech as prime minister. It is important to remember that we must continue to hold this new government to account to ensure the same rot does not take hold once again.
