Either brave or foolish, this blog’s prediction is that Biden will win the 2020 Presidential election. Tuesday’s presidential ‘debate’ confirmed this.

Why the certainty?

The debate. On Tuesday, Trump needed to reach out beyond his core supporters. He failed. Over the top interruptions and failure to absolutely condemn white supremacists, essentially name checking Proud Boys, must surely be the final straw for floating voters. Biden just had to stay upright and not get lost. He succeeded. Trump also allowed Biden to put some distance between himself and the Democratic Party’s left wing by going for Bernie Sanders, and asides from Biden to Trump saying ‘Would you shut up, man?’ played well on television and social media. It came across as a comment from a decent, exasperated man fed up with Trump’s bullying antics. Surely, watching this, a majority of Americans must be worn down with the divisiveness Trump brings to the table.

As an aside, why are debate moderators so poor? We have the same issue in the UK, and there really needs to be a raising of the game to make these gladiatorial clashes worthwhile.

Coronavirus. Appallingly handled. The fall-out is growing and there will be no vaccine to save Trump or the economy this side of November.

The Supreme Court. Nominating Amy Coney Barrett in haste ahead of the Presidential election is a disgrace bearing in mind the Republicans delayed Barak Obama’s nomination nine months before the 2016 election. Any floating voter would see the hypocrisy and the divisiveness this creates. It pleases core Trump supporters but, again, as polls show, it alienates floating voters and energises Democrats to get out to vote as equal rights, the Affordable Care Act and indeed the very results of the Presidential election are threatened.

The polls. These were proving remarkably stable in favour of Biden after some tightening and in actual fact are now starting to move more favourably to him after the debate. He is now largely ahead of where Clinton was in 2016. Most polls are also now weighted for the educational qualifications of voters which was one reason they were inaccurate in exaggerating Clinton’s support in 2016. It is worth noting, however, that Clinton still won the popular vote by 3 million and only lost three key swing states by a collective 80,000 votes. For this reason alone, Biden, just for not being Clinton, should win this election. But RealClearPolitics in polls today has Biden ahead of Trump by 8-9%. Even the normally Trump leaning Rasmussen Reports has Biden leading by 8%. Then there is a poll this week in the key state of Pennsylvania which has Biden ahead by 9%. The betting odds are now 59% v 41% in Biden’s favour, strongly up in recent weeks, and the highest since July.

Of course, there is still a month left and two more presidential debates to go. But it is Biden’s to lose and, barring a catastrophe, I don’t think he will.

There have been no blogs for a while. It has often seemed futile to rail at the dire political leadership in the UK and the US but here you go… Johnson advocates breaking international law over an agreement with the EU he signed less than 12 months ago to win an election, whilst Trump threatens to ignore November’s Presidential election result due to ‘fraudulent’ postal ballot voting. Both leaders are guilty of chaotically managing the pandemic, yet incredibly, Johnson remains ahead in polls and Trump is just a few points behind Biden.

Why is this the case? There are various reasons. Both Trump and Johnson have played a clever game in exploiting disillusionment with past political regimes. Globalisation has been unkind to many; the professional classes as represented by the likes of Cameron, Obama, Clinton et al have been seen as remote, hypocritical and/or patronising. It was time for a change. Traditional alliances, treaties, political correctness and even experts are out. They don’t matter to many mainstream, frustrated voters. However unfair, they feel nothing seems to change. The immediacy of crude nationalism in the form of Making America Great Again and Brexit (ex-Corbyn) is in.

This is a narrative that will maintain its resonance with many voters for years. Liberal commentators can rage at each other using the echo chamber of social media, but Johnson is safe. In the US, although Trump may lose in November, he has reshaped American politics. The Republican and Conservative parties will not be the same for a generation.

But just in case this analysis is wrong, there is an additional weapon these leaders employ. They encourage voters to disengage from politics so chaos, lack of principle and incompetence go unnoticed. They trash the media and try to by-pass it. Trump’s concept of ‘fake news’ is well known, as is his desire to frustrate postal voting, but Johnson is seeking to introduce White House style broadcast press briefings too so he can ignore the conduit of regular, questioning journalism. As in the US, UK history is being re-written with bombast, whether it be the EU Agreement or manipulating facts around the management of Covid-19. Key policy announcements are made outside the House of Common; acquiescent Cabinet Members read out their scripts; expert analysis, certainly any offered by the judiciary, is carelessly denigrated and criticism is labelled simply as enemy liberal whinging.

Johnson and Cummings are set on a revolution, even if the former has arrived at this conclusion by accident. If politics is polarised, filled with outrage and ultimately based on the most charitable premise of ‘tune them out, they would say that wouldn’t they?’, then opposition can be ignored. The public in the UK have been worn out by the Brexit wrangles, all magnified by online anger. Johnson is almost certainly around for a good few years and they just want a breather from knowing or even caring who is right or wrong. Governing without attracting the attention of, or bothering, the voter is the aim. Encouraging disengagement at every opportunity is the method.

Trump’s narrative for the US presidential election has been set. It is Keeping America Great versus violent social disorder driven by a far-left political agenda. It is so depressing and untrue; but highly effective. Incredibly he might just win, and Biden must raise his game. Lightness versus Darkness is unsurprisingly not enough. For Biden, Harris and the Democrats as a whole, this must be the fight of their lives.

As Edward Luce wrote in an excellent article in this week’s FT, there is no Republican Party anymore, just the Trump Party. Most former Republican grandees including the Bushes, Cheneys, Mitt Romney et al stayed away. This week was the humbling of the G.O.P. as speaker after speaker lauded Trump with no sense of healing a divided nation, the architect of which is often Trump himself. The low point in terms of speakers, excepting the almost Dynasty-esq parade of frankly weird Trump family members, had to be a couple now facing criminal charges as they pointed guns at peaceful black demonstrators to ‘protect their home’.

There were no policies in this Republican convention, just Trump’s Will. And his closing speech, set outrageously against the backdrop of the White House in front of an audience neither socially distancing nor wearing face masks, was a litany of misrepresentations. The impact of the coronavirus and its mismanagement was swept away; no mention was made about the legitimate concerns of the treatment of black people by some members of the police; lies were liberally thrown around.

But the threat to the suburbs from ‘chaos and anarchy’, a repeated theme in Trump’s speech, resonates and the drift to the Left of many Democrats is an uncomfortable reminder of politics in the UK when Corbyn’s Labour Party was swept aside by the albeit more moderate but populist Johnson.

An excellent US website to follow is RealClearPolitics.com. It makes sober reading. In top battle ground states at this time, Biden is 3.7% ahead. Clinton was 4.8% ahead in these swing states at the same stage in 2016. The betting odds only have Biden with a 52% chance of victory. In Pennsylvania, Biden has a 7% lead. But Jon Sopel, BBC’s North America Editor, reported this morning that it just doesn’t feel like that. What everyone is agreed on is that the polls are narrowing when anyone but Trump should be a shoe-in.

Biden and Harris need to get out there. They cannot allow themselves to be defined by Trump, boxed in by law and order issues. However frustrated demonstrators are, there is no excuse for looting, every incident of which pushes votes to Trump and the Democrats need to be clear on this. They also need clear, simple messages on the economy and tackling the coronavirus. They must avoid as much as possible talking excessively about identity politics. The vote also has to be got out quickly as some postal voting can start in just three weeks.

Literally anything could happen in the coming two months with three presidential debates ahead and two fairly elderly candidates having to navigate a campaign that would exhaust many younger, fitter politicians. The Democrats must take nothing for granted, not least because America and its allies cannot afford another four years of Trump who, as many moderate Republicans would agree, is the real architect of a dystopian future.

The US presidential stakes don’t get any higher than seeing off Trump and his hugely damaging presidency. Another 4 years of him will fatally wound the US as a global power, challenge the whole concept of democratic accountability and split this amazing nation in two.

Yet the polls that put Biden so comfortably ahead are just starting to narrow. We have been here before. In the face of Trump, Biden (Clinton) couldn’t possibly lose, Biden (Clinton) is consistently ahead in the polls, Biden (Clinton) is experienced and will focus on policies that will improve the lot of the less well off. Surely Biden (Clinton), despite some baggage, is a shoe-in…and yet…and yet…

Many say the VP choice doesn’t make an impact but this time it is different, and Senator Kamala Harris is the right pick. Biden will be 78 if he assumes office, Harris is 55. As a woman of colour, with tough prosecution credentials as California’s former attorney-general, she is hard to lay a glove on. She will energise the black vote in a racially divided nation and yet cannot be portrayed as simply soft on law and order issues. She is centrist and ruthless and that is what will really matter.

This will be the dirtiest campaign yet, the slug fest diluted only by the lockdown, and Biden needs an ambitious running mate who is unafraid and unperturbed by what lies ahead. She will use her role as VP candidate, and hopefully as VP, as a training ground for the top job and good for her. Trump has said Harris would have been his preferred choice as an opponent and describes her as ‘extraordinarily nasty’. Perfect.

Meanwhile the Trump presidency rolls on and voter suppression remains top of his agenda. The US Postal Service is now run by a major Trump donor who is reorganising it as we speak, and cost cutting with the consequence of slowing deliveries down in the face of the largest postal vote election in US history. Trump is attacking the Postal Service daily, saying it can’t cope and that voter fraud will consequently undermine the legitimacy of the election.

As for the pandemic, the death toll heads to 170,000 with over 5 million infections. A further stimulus package remains marooned in Congress. Trump floundered in an interview on HBO, referring to statistical graphs he clearly had no idea about. He is talking about banning Covid-infected Americans based overseas from returning home as part of his anti-immigration rhetoric, and compared Covid to the Spanish Flu of 1918 which apparently ‘ended World War II’ two decades later…Trump makes it up as he goes along and meanwhile people are dying.

So, the US Presidential Election is crucial domestically as well as for allies of the US abroad. Trump needs a heavy defeat so he can’t undermine the result and, if nothing else, to allow some space for the Republicans to regroup on more moderate ground (no mean feat when one considers some of the cleverer nationalist ideologues behind Trump).

Incredibly polls are starting to narrow despite Trump’s performance. Biden, at 77, is not a strong candidate and there is a long way to go. He needs an intelligent, ambitious Rottweiler at his side to keep those polls on side. She might not be the most likeable person but, in Kamala Harris as his running mate, Biden has made a shrewd choice.

Never has the democratic process been under more threat, this time from both liberals and populists. Let me explain why.

The argument that populists are undermining democracy and treating voters as fools is well documented. Populists apparently feign interest in voters’ concerns and rail against the liberal elite but in reality, don’t give a damn. They simply replace one elite with another and, in the process, damage the prospects of the very people who voted for them. Take Trump for example. It is not true that he said if he wanted to stand for President, he would stand as a Republican because they are “the dumbest group of voters”, but it is true that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said in 2017, “He (Trump) just knows Republicans are stupid and they’ll buy it”.

The very people who voted for Trump are now suffering most from his appalling approach to the covid-19 pandemic, which is overwhelming America. The tax cuts he doled out have benefited the rich and now, to top it all, just three days ago Trump gave an interview saying he might not accept the results of the November election, admitting “he does not like to lose”. Some argue that voter suppression is now at the heart of his re-election strategy. He rails against postal voting and same day registration. Arbitrary purges of voting rolls and restricted voting times are now common in the minority neighbourhoods of Republican-run states.

In the UK, the same analysis could apply. The Brexit vote, which we now know might have been influenced by the Russians, has had the most detrimental effect on those who voted to leave the EU. Research from the Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy at Warwick University, outlined in the FT, found that parts of the UK, such as the West Midlands, with high levels of low-skilled and manufacturing employment, have underperformed since 2016. Such areas heavily voted Leave in the EU referendum. Turkeys voting for Christmas but do those who ran the Brexit campaign care? No. Some pretty incredible porkies were told during the EU referendum as delivering on ideological aims outranked a commitment to democratic accountability.

Many argue that attacking the liberal elite and hiding behind ‘fake news’ is just a smokescreen. The argument goes that populists and populism is based on self-centred advancement founded on the belief that voters don’t deserve democracy and can be manipulated accordingly.

The challenge is that liberals are starting to share the same ground. There is a developing argument that if voters are stupid enough to vote for Trump, Brexit, Putin, Duda in Poland, Orban in Hungary, Bolsonaro in Brazil etc, do they really deserve democracy when the outcome of such elections is mostly so damaging to their individual prospects and a nation’s health generally? There is also a growing suppression of freedom of speech among extreme liberals for anyone deemed not politically correct enough, worthy of a blog on its own. All this leads to mutterings that perhaps voting should be encouraged only for those educated enough to know what is best for them…

Against this background, it is worth being reminded of Churchill’s full quote on the subject of democracy: “Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”.

Food for thought. The case for democracy and full voter participation clearly has to be re-made in these turbulent times and not just in the obvious places.

According to the IMF’s latest analysis of economic ranking, admittedly pre-Covid so it is likely to be flattering, the UK is in 7th place with a 3% share of the world’s nominal GDP. We have recently fallen behind India. The US accounts for a 24.7% share and China 16.9%. The EU, post-Brexit, accounts for c16%. On a per capita basis we rank 23rd. That hardly amounts to a powerful bargaining position as we forge our new post-Brexit global trading alliances…

And there is no clearer indication of our relative economic weakness than the rows and U-turn over the role of Huawei in helping to build our 5G network. The government announced this week, under some pressure from the Trump administration and its own backbenchers, that Huawei will be banned from supplying new equipment to the UK’s 5G network from the end of the year, reversing a decision made in January. In part this is due to a ‘reassessment of security risks’ prompted by fresh US sanctions. Huawei now cannot rely on the supply of US made chips and will have to rely on home grown ones. Then there is Hong Kong…

The impact of this decision will apparently be a 2 year delay in rolling out our 5G network at a cost of £2 billion and that is before any compensation to operators. It has also damaged our relations with China where inward investment to the UK has already fallen from a peak of over $30 billion in 2017 to less than $3 billion in 2019. The Chinese Ambassador warned such a move would damage Britain’s image as a proponent of free trade and cautioned that it was “not in the UK’s interest” to make an enemy of China. Strong stuff.

The purpose of this blog is not to debate the merits of keeping Huawei at bay but to highlight the economic vulnerability of our current position. We have been dragged, albeit reluctantly, into Trump’s confrontational trade war with China in advance of trying to secure a free trade agreement with the US. To what extent are the two linked? We are also being threatened by China. Our bargaining chip of 3% of the world’s GDP is looking somewhat meagre.

Earlier this week government officials admitted that the post-Brexit bureaucracy burden of trading with Europe, even if a trade deal is reached, would involve an extra 215 million customs declarations at a cost of £7 billion a year. Even Michael Gove confessed that any new arrangements would require the hiring of some 50,000 private sector customs agents to deal with these formalities. Such is the price of leaving the single market.

Over half the world’s trade is divided between 3 trading colossi, one of which is the EU. Our economic weakness relative to the other two, the US and China, has just been cruelly exposed with the prevarications over Huawei. It will be miraculous if we hold on to our current share of global GDP in the post-Covid years ahead which, in any case, has been shown to provide little protection. Against this backdrop, the cost of this Government’s ideological obsession of leaving the EU on its own terms is increasingly plain to see.

Two characteristics of the populist surge across the globe are evident. First, populist governments simply replace one elite with another, in the process possibly speaking to a smaller room of people than previous regimes…Second, they mostly seem to be manifestly incompetent and that is what will do for them in the end.

This has sadly become all too evident with the management of the Covid-19 pandemic. Let’s look at a few of the cast to see its impact. Note Putin and Xi are excluded from this roll call. You can hardly be a true populist when you don’t invite people to freely vote for you in the first place…

Trump. A second wave of infections, which is really just an extension of the first wave is engulfing the US, particularly in Republican led states who followed the President’s lead that lockdowns are an anathema to freedom loving Americans. Trump is now behind Biden by double digits in most national polls. Crucially in key swing states, including the populous Florida, Biden is ahead by 5-10%. Infections are heading towards 3 million, there are 130,000 deaths and re-openings are being reversed. The public are increasingly of the view that the pandemic will get worse dragging down any economic rebound. Trump’s general behaviour and lack of leadership is appalling even to some of his core base. To add insult to injury he has just withdrawn from the World Health Organisation. Of course, there is always a risk that law and order issues will drag some support back to him, but one feels his ability to enthuse is draining away.

Bolsonaro. His behaviour is perhaps even more extraordinary than Trump’s and this week he has tested positive for coronavirus. One hopes his infection is confined to his earlier description of it being sniffles or ‘a little flu’. Bolsonaro has consistently urged regional governors to ease lockdowns and only on Monday watered down face mask regulations. He has lost two health ministers in the process and other cabinet ministers due to his handling of the crisis. Meanwhile infections have topped 1.6 million with 65,000 fatalities, second only to his friend and ally, Donald Trump.

Johnson. It is perhaps unfair to club Johnson together with the above two. His populism is more nuanced but he is a populist nonetheless. Whilst mindful of the science, his libertarian instincts delayed the obvious need for an early lockdown. With over 60,000 excess deaths in the UK, topping the grim league table of worst affected countries on most measures, his popularity has fallen sharply, despite decisive economic intervention, in the face of a number of issues; his key adviser, Cummings, caught flouting lockdown rules and getting away with it, confused messaging, a failure to sort out a schools reopening policy and a growing focus on the mismanagement of the crisis in care homes.

Poland. This may be a little tangential but coronavirus delayed the presidential poll due in May until this month with the final round this Sunday. It is pitting the incumbent Law and Justice Party backed candidate, Andrzej Duda, against the liberal, current Mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski. The coronavirus induced economic downturn has helped narrow the race considerably and the Law and Justice Party’s cocktail of right-wing nationalism, social conservatism, now with a strong dash of homophobic rhetoric, is under electoral threat for the first time since 2015. If Duda wins, then the corrosive populism dominating Eastern Europe, in turn undermining democratic institutions, will remain unchecked but if there is an upset, then the tide may start to turn.

None of the above populists will go without a fight and there is still time for populism to reassert itself, particularly if the pandemic abates more quickly than seems evident today. But to use Johnson’s ‘Whack- a-Mole’ analogy, let’s hope they (and others) go down one by one and the coronavirus leaves at least one cloud with a silver lining.

It was 2016, I was in New York on business, and I found a spare day to campaign for the Democrats, so horrified was I by the concept of a Trump presidency. Some good it did! I spent my time ringing voters in Florida and the message was clear. Anyone but Hillary Clinton.

Move on four years and it seems like Groundhog Day except, now, it is anyone but Trump. A recent opinion poll out yesterday by the New York Times and Siena College has Joe Biden ahead by 14%. There is no room for complacency. Candidates in the past have been further ahead in polls, only to lose at the last minute to the incumbent but it feels different now. Certainly, the mood has changed from pre-coronavirus days when the economy was booming and the Democrats struggled to reach any consensus on their nominee, with a potential drift to the harder Left.

Biden may be a somewhat mediocre candidate and, at 77, permanently shielded from the coronavirus, but he is not The Donald and that may ultimately be all it takes, particularly if he appoints a rejuvenating Vice Presidential running mate. He is consensual, moderate, and respectful of minorities and US voters may just be in the mood for a bit of healing after the last four tumultuous, divisive years.

And the seemingly self-defeating rampage of Trump just goes on. He has sacked the independent US attorney, Geoffrey Berman, for having the temerity to investigate potentially corrupt Trump associates; he has just accused his predecessor of ‘treason’ for ‘spying on his campaign’ whilst providing no evidence to back up his allegations, and there is the book by ‘sick puppy’ John Bolton highlighting the sheer ignorance of Trump’s forays into foreign policy and cringing support for ‘favourite’ dictators seen appreciatively as strongmen.

Then there is Trump’s response to the Black Lives Matter campaign and his management of the coronavirus pandemic. Oh dear. He has attempted to divide his country racially but seems to have created a consensus among most voters that his actions have been appalling. On the coronavirus pandemic, things only seem to be getting worse. The early unlocking of predominantly Republican states, supported by Trump is proving a disaster. Cases of Covid-19 are now rising in half the country. With medical leaders looking on aghast (why don’t some of them just resign?), the death toll exceeds 120,000 with 2.4 million infections. Both are still rising sharply. Things are going to deteriorate before they get better, but Trump sees everything through the prism of his re-election chances with potentially more tragic consequences.

Trump has emasculated his country internationally and tried to divide it domestically. Anyone but Trump? It might not be enough, but it should be.

Faced with an unparalleled pandemic, the initial response of most governments could be forgiven for falling short. The main hope was that they learnt from their mistakes and raised their game in the process. It is what we have seen frequently overseas, confirming that it would have been unhelpful and unfair to judge a government’s actions too early in this crisis.

We are further through the pandemic now, at least in Europe, and the focus is gradually moving to a review of past actions and managing the way out of lockdown. Comparisons are being made and the UK is not coming out at all well so far. Things only seem to be getting worse for Johnson’s administration and the charge sheet continues to mount.

It is not helped by the commonly held view that this is not a pleasant government. Under the guidance of Johnson and his adviser, Cummings, it is building a reputation for bluster and self-defeating bullying in equal measure. It is given less leeway by commentators for its character but, even then, all could be forgiven if it were competent. It appears not.

To be fair, under the able Rishi Sunak, the government has performed well economically and protecting an unprepared NHS succeeded although, as we now know, at an immense cost to care homes. But there have been too many unenforced errors, and this is changing public opinion. Several are listed below:

• Late to lockdown. A government with a libertarian heart could not bring itself to lockdown early. Modelling data forecasting up to 500,000 unchecked coronavirus deaths was available from 2nd March. Playing with the concept of herd immunity and with little capacity for testing, it was 3 weeks later before shut-down even though the evidence was clear of its benefits, as was the severity of the virus.
• Care homes and lack of testing. This is a disaster. According to the National Audit Office, some 25,000 patients were discharged into care homes untested in March/April, in haste to free up hospital beds. Testing was either unavailable, not even to care home staff, or not deemed a priority. This will be the tragedy of Covid-19.
• Statistics. These make grim reading. Who can argue the management of the crisis to date has been good when we have the highest excess deaths in Europe?
• Cummings debacle. No more to add.
• Managing our way out of lockdown. U-turn after U-turn with the Cabinet barely consulted. First, having to reverse a policy of charging overseas NHS and care home staff supplementary fees for using the health services here. Having praised their contribution, how could the government be so crass? Second, opening schools and then announcing closures until September at the earliest with a £1bn emergency fund announced today to plug the gap. Chaos. No planning, with the poorest children suffering most. Third, a reversal on food vouchers over the Summer for some of the poorest families. Having tried to tackle Marcus Rashford on this and failing, then praising his initiative, the government looks hapless and out of touch. Fourth, an abrupt reversal on the track and trace system which may not be fully up and running until the Autumn at the earliest. We now await the reversal on quarantining. Oh dear, and all this as a backdrop to possibly the worst recession faced by any developed country.

But I return to my earlier point about the character of this government. Boris Johnson is undoubtedly a polarising figure. Some have and continue to claim that once his Prime Ministerial ambitions were fulfilled, he would be a little lost in the role.

That may be unfair, particularly mid-pandemic, but what is clear is that his administration, under the guidance of Dominic Cummings, believes aggressive campaigning techniques will win the day, even while in power. The weakness of this approach has been uncovered in this crisis and the government’s satisfaction ratings have suffered accordingly. Confusing policies, messaging and U-turns have been savaged by even the most sympathetic media. We have been treated to the propaganda of superficial phraseology such as ‘ramping up’, to unattainable targets, PPE equipment counted singly rather than in pairs and a raft of ministers refusing to admit any mistakes, even the obvious ones. SAGE deliberations and its membership until recently have mostly been kept secret.

As argued before, if Johnson and his ministers showed more humility, admitted to mistakes with a focus on learning from them, invited the media more readily into deliberations and had generally been more transparent, many more missteps would have likely been forgiven. None of this has happened to date and that promised independent review may consequently be brutal.

This is the most unTory of UK governments. The Conservative Party used to be a party of pragmatism; conservative with a small ‘c’, defending the institutions of state, a mixed economy, accepting and sometimes initiating social and economic change as a necessity in its own right, and/or for maintaining power. Whilst always a coalition of the authoritarian right, economic and social pragmatists, pro and anti-EU supporters and some free market libertarians, it stood mostly on the centre-right ground.

No longer. The rot, so to speak, started under Thatcher who, whilst sometimes tactically pragmatic herself, encouraged right-wing, libertarian free market ideologues to enter the Party from the grass roots up. I saw several of them in student politics, some of which now hold or have recently held senior positions in the Conservative Party or government. They believed in the smallest of States or, at the extremes, hardly any State at all, allowing people to survive, prosper or fail with little government intervention. What was particular about their style was their refusal to compromise or brook any dissent and this led to what one would politely call ‘hard campaigning tactics’.

Move on to recent history, and many of those with a libertarian philosophy could be found at the heart of the Brexit campaign, believing in the concept initiated from Thatcher onward, that the EU was a socialist institution intent on shackling people to a super-state and, as a concept, ultimately doomed to failure. Brutal campaigning techniques won the day (that is not to dispute some valid arguments) and the rest is history as they say. The architect was one Dominic Cummings, ‘the great disrupter’. He is allegedly not even a member of the Conservative Party for which he has very little respect and is apparently almost anarchic in his beliefs.

Today, many Conservative moderates have chosen voluntarily or otherwise to withdraw from the Party, driven out predominantly by the hostility of the EU debate. There is a real vacuum left by the likes of David Gauke, Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin, Sam Gyimah, Amber Rudd, Rory Stewart, Ruth Davidson and Justine Greening to name but a few. The libertarian inclined Brexit team now lies at the heart of government and has a blank canvas to paint on which they have exploited ruthlessly. It is called Boris Johnson.

However unfair, Johnson is repeatedly criticised for having no guiding principles except to reach the top. It was victory at all costs, starting with weaponising the EU. Consequently, this is now a (Tory) government that has attacked Parliament, the courts, allegedly misled the Royal Family and generally treated institutions, and, until the coronavirus epidemic, experts, with contempt. Revolutionary in its zeal, it has ignored the potentially dangerous, longer term consequences of its actions, to shape a shorter term, impressive General Election victory.

And it is this libertarian influence which will be identified as one of the reasons of a late lockdown and its terrible consequences in terms of excess Covid-19 deaths. Johnson and his team simply couldn’t contemplate government telling the public what to do in such an extreme fashion. They felt it was a deeply continental European trait and there was a superior English way of doing things…

The contradiction to this argument is, of course, an almost socialist, deeply unTory approach to spending public money, identified before the arrival of Covid-19. These policies, many of which have merits post austerity, were also about upending the Establishment, protecting a new power base but leaving room to be radical elsewhere. Such policies are now rightly set in stone in exaggerated terms to recover from this crisis; but it will not stop the march of the breaking down of institutions, freeing markets on a US style basis (watch the EU withdrawal negotiations closely) and accepting the consequences of the rupture of the Conservative Party with glee in a drift to the Right.

But the triumphant libertarians in government should tread warily. Cummings has already tripped up once, the review of actions running up to the lockdown will be brutal and the consequences of a complete, almost contemptuous break from the EU will be plain to see. The essentially English view of being free from the yoke of Europe and showcasing the glorious days ahead of unfettered, home grown, competent government are currently hard to see…

If the Labour Leader, Starmer, becomes a real threat and incompetence becomes the hallmark of the libertarian approach shown to date, then Johnson’s hold on power will weaken. He is not widely trusted or liked by his colleagues but was seen as an election winner. It is very early days but at least one, not unsympathetic former Tory Cabinet Minister, predicts a possible Labour victory at the next election. As we emerge from this Covid crisis depressingly in some disarray, and if such disarray continues, then the Old Conservative Party might just find its teeth. But it is a long shot…