David Runciman

Some​ books appear at exactly the wrong moment, which only makes them more interesting. Rahm Emanuel was mayor of Chicago between 2011 and 2019. In short order he has turned out a boastful and boosterish account of his time in office, which also serves as his manifesto for a new way of doing politics. Emanuel believes that the world’s hundred leading cities generate the economic,...

There is a difference between a politician deciding your fate and its being left to impersonal chance. But it isn’t a dif­ference that matters much when lives are on the line. When something has to be done – and something always has to be done, even if it’s nothing – then what mat­ters is what it leads to.

Now, in the aftermath of December’s general election, the story has come full circle. Faced with Boris Johnson’s Brexit-driven leadership of the party, both Major and Heseltine found themselves unable to support the Conservatives, with Heseltine going so far as to suggest that people vote Liberal Democrat instead. Months earlier, Major had been involved in a lawsuit that accused the sitting Conservative prime minister of having abandoned the constitution. All this would have confirmed Thatcher in her belief that the two men were traitors to the cause. Seeing them routed by Johnson’s overwhelming victory, along with all the other faint-hearts, Europhiles, elitists, lawyers and other metropolitan types, would have given her great pleasure. Her vision of Britain as a Singapore off the coast of Europe no longer has to be hidden. Some, indeed, hope it will soon become official government policy. Yet anyone who wants to see the coming Johnson administration as continuity Thatcherism should bear in mind that what is being channelled today is not Thatcher’s own record in office, but her views after she stepped down.

Leaving aside all the tactical manoeuvring and dishonest electioneering that this mismatch between options and outcomes is bound to produce, one thing looks clear: for most people, the ultimate choice is a pretty miserable one. As far as one can tell, the public is not enthused by the prospect of either BJ + Brexit or JC + 2 refs. Usually that is put down to the personal unpopularity of the two leaders, both of whom attract strongly negative reactions. The people who dislike them seem to dislike them more than the people who like them like them; and many, many people dislike the pair of them. But there is something else going on. What makes the binary options in this election so unpalatable is a political system that puts too much power in the hands of majority governments and too little in the hands of minority ones.

Cameron says of his time in government: ‘We proved in an increasingly polarised age that politics wasn’t either/or – you could be pro-defence and pro-aid; pro-family and pro-equality; pro-public services and pro-fiscal prudence too. We demonstrated that you could take the difficult decisions and win elections – and that a government could achieve a lot in just six years.’ So why on earth did he turn British politics into just another either/or question?