We’re about to face several weeks of a Conservative leadership battle, where the politics of substance will be obscuered by a debate about the alleged “qualities” of Tory leadership candidates.

But what are the real stakes? What are the class dynamics behind the Johnson project and how do they limit the options of the contenders. Here’s fifteen thoughts about what’s really at stake…

1. Boris Johnson’s premiership was the product of a factional split within the British business elite. In the name of faster deregulation, reduced labour standards and an orientation to global rather than European trade/investment flows, this “fraction of capital” sought a hard break with the EU, and — strategically — the breakup of the EU. Elsewhere I have labelled this “Thatcherism in One Country”.
2. In pursuit of this project its designers enlisted Russian support, and actively encouraged powerful foreign oligarchic elites (Saudi, UAE, Sri Lanka, Russia) in the project of transforming Britain into a friendly environment for kleptocrats and tax evaders. In this sense Johnson/Hard Brexit was the creature of both a fraction of British capital (centred on investment managers, private equity and property speculation) and of oligarchic global capital.
3. Johnson created a new Conservative mass base not only through “populism” but through demonstrative signalling to a hard-core English plebiean nationalism on its key valuies: racism, colonial nostalgia, war nostalgia, disdain for rules (“red tape”, “wokeness”) that embody commitments to a social welfare society, and hatred of socialism. It was an alliance of the globalist, socially-liberal and professional middle classes with a section of the working class who seen their communities atomised and secure jobs destroyed by globalisation.
4. He won in 2019 because (a) neither the Corbyn leadership, nor the centre-left majority of the PLP was capable of generating a counter-narrative to his populist/presidential style, nor to evolve a coherent position on Brexit; (b) part of Labour’s mass base proved acutely vulnerable to the messaging in point 3, when reiterated by the oligarch-controlled mass media; (c ) large scale violations of electoral law by non-party campaigns, social media and even anonymous propaganda created by companies that appeared and rapidly disappeared without adequate transparency.
5. Even before February 2020 the Johnson project — Hard Brexit plus radical technocratic reform of the British state to favour/foster kleptocracy — was unrealistic due to accelerating deglobalisation. Johnson’s Greenwich speech, outlining the ambition (there was never an actual plan) for Britain to be a leader in destroying all existing trade blocs and opening up new trade and investment patterns, was always hubris. But the Covid-19 pandemic killed even the remote possibility trade liberalisation, and the Putin-Xi declaration of 4 February 2022, heralding a period of systemic conflict, buried it deeper.
6. Once the transition period ended, Hard Brexit became an added dysfunction for British capitalism, on top of the exogenous shocks of Covid (which has reduced the labour supply, flattened productivity and plunged the country to 100% debt/GDP ratio) and Ukraine, which has boosted inflation to 9.1% and rising. Johnson’s ability to deliver on his vacuous soundbites — levelling up, Global Britain, a space superpower, 40 new hospitals — relied increasingly on a combination of borrowing, state direction and money transfers to households. Yet Brexit was designed to achieve the opposite: a small state, low taxes, and a deregulated labour market.
7. Amid this strategic impasse over economic policy — symbolised by the cognitive dissonance of Sunak borrowing and spending alongside repeated professions of belief in the small state — very little was delivered of the day-to-day agenda. In place of concrete, incremental progress, of the kind that all governments are required to make, Johnson substituted culture war. The Covid-19 pandemic saw a qualitative increase in crony capitalism, with billions handed to fraudulent schemes, plus newly created companies associated with Conservative politicians and donors.
8. Having purged the Tory party of its liberal/Remain wing, and as controller of the “switch” that connected the mass base to a new intake of talentless northern English MPs, Johnson was obliged to rule through patronage. In each of the major scandals a pattern emerged of rule-breaking, lying, coverups, fake apologies and culture war distraction techniques (Patel bullying, Russia Report, Dowden, Partygate, Pincher). These repeated scandals eroded the personnel and institutions designed to buffer Johnson from accountability.
9. Between 2020 and 2022 rising economic and geopolitical tensions pulled apart the alliance that had coalesced around Johnson: the One Nation paternalists were seeing rising poverty; the orthodox neoliberals were seeing a two trillion pound debt mountain and demands for ever more transfers to households; the defence and security hawks were seeing day to day defence spending cut, and major decisions on procurement delayed; the ultra-Brexiteers, still dreaming of mass deregulation and trade war with Europe, were seeing continual compromise with Europe; the social liberals were increasingly uneasy about the culture war agenda (Rwanda deportations, crackdown on protests, privatisation of Channel 4) and the promise to scrap the Human Rights Act.
10. As 2022 progressed, with one scandal after another leading to a collapse in Johnson’s personal ratings, and a clear polling lead for Labour, the impact of the scandals became cumulative. The critical moment was the intervention of a former senior civil servant to reveal a direct and blatant lie over the Pincher scandal. Though previous scandals had provoked resignations, direct evidence of lying triggered the a revolt led, essentially, by the pro-austerity wing led by Sunak and Javid.
11. In the coming Conservative leadership contest, various axes of disagreement will represent the competing interests of sectors of capital and obsessions of the Conservative mass base. On Brexit the positions range from ultra-Hard Brexit with severe deregulation, through Hard Brexit with fiscal largess, to a Customs Union/regulatory alignment with Europe. On rule of law and human rights, the divisions are between a liberal/paternalist wing and a populist wing connected to the plebeian racist activists. On economic policy the positions range from fiscal austerity through to the high-spending, high tax, direct patronage model Johnson called “levelling up”. There will be very little argument over the issues essential to the major donors from the finance, property and foreign oligarchic capital: financial deregulation, tolerance of offshore tax vehicles, artificially created housing shortage, lax planning rules, strangulation of local government as a safety and social housing regulator.
12. Johnson’s project contained elements of the Trump/right-wing populist project that swept the world from 2016 onwards, but the Conservative Party as an institution was not as completely conquered as the Republican Party was; the rule of law prevailed over Partygate, as it did over the Prorogation Crisis of 2019; and though Johnson was able to scrap or disregard key parts of the unwritten constitution (eg the Ministerial Code, recruitment rules, public spending on private ministerial consumption) he never managed to fully override the weak checks and balances in the system (eg the ethics adviser, the Civil Service code, parliamentary scrutiny, police investigations).
13. Johnson’s fall leaves the Conservative Party prone to strong centrifugal forces. The party will go on representing the interests of the rentier bourgeoisie — investment funds, property groups, private equity, foreign oligarchs. It is highly unlikely to abandon its anti-woke, racism-pandering policies on migration, education and human rights. But faces the following strategic challenges, which could be used as matrices to position the 10+ emerging candidates to replace Johnson:
    a) Whether to continue with hard Brexit or attempt regulatory alignment with the EU, while re-engaging with Europe on security and defence against the Russian threat
    b) Whether to go on borrowing to fund an investment led, dirigiste growth strategy, plus money transfers to households hit by inflation and increased defence spending; or to return to austerity, using the Ukraine-triggered recession to clear out jobs, firms and sectors kept afloat by state largesse during the pandemic, and to further deregulate the labour market
    c) Whether to abandon the zero net carbon target in the name of energy security and placating climate-skeptic right wing voters, or stick to it in the knowledge that on current levels of investment it will fail
    d) Whether to placate or antagonise Scottish nationalism.
    e) Whether to maintain Britain’s role as a European outlier/leader in the defence of Ukraine or to revert to a Macron/Scholz style “just doing enough” strategy, in order to keep open goodwill for trade and investment from Russia, China and their global south allies (eg India).
14. The strategic problem remains: Hard Brexit cannot work in an environment of rapid deglobalisation and systemic conflict. It is exacerbating the impact of inflation: trade, sterling and investment have all fallen. The Conservative patriarchal dream of a high wage, high growth, high productivity economy is unachievable without a confrontation with the interests of financial, property and foreign oligarchic capital. Such a confrontation is, in turn, impossible under the present electoral system, and with the current demographics. Even the option of “buying” an electoral victory with loose fiscal/monetary policy and then imposing a decade of austerity thereafter looks hard to achieve, even if the political coalition to attempt it could be found.
15. So the opportunity remains for a coalition of progressive parties to depose the Conservatives between 2022 and 2024, enact radical constitutional change and create a majority for a softer Brexit, EU alignment, rapid decarbonisation and an investment-led growth policy. That will depend on how the opposition parties handle Johnson’s successor. However, the legacy of Johnsonism (alongside Faragism) would leave a Labour-led progressive government facing acute social, cultural and elite resistance. If Trump, or a Trump proxy, wins the Presidency in 2024 that would likely stimulate a further iteration of the “alliance of the elite and the mob” that put Johnson in power. But, paradoxically, it would leave Britain more reliant on Europe — economically, culturally and geopolitically.

For what it’s worth I think Tory MPs are pretty chastened by seeing British governance almost collapse amid an inflation crisis and a European war. They will likely engineer a run-off between a Hard Brexit-plus-fiscal largesse candidate and a neoliberal austerian, and the former will win. The real battle will be behind the scenes, over what commitments the financial, property and oligarchic elite get from the inevitable winner.

These are just theses, so the comments are open…