Instead of building a legacy in concrete things they actually achieved, our leaders instead now try to conjure one by setting a binding but remote aspiration and letting others work out the details.
Obviously the membership don’t set the strategy. But one wonders whether the Party might find it challenging to redeploy activists from seats that it (and only it) officially deems ‘safe’ to campaign in its fantasy marginals.
That would be a profound change in this country’s attitude towards children and family life. One can argue the case for or against it – but that argument doesn’t really seem to be what’s informing ministers thinking.
Angela Rayner’s showdown with Peter Mandelson highlights how difficult the Opposition is finding it to unite around a programme for government.
All politics, and not just that with a religious flavour, rests on a foundation of essentially pre-rational beliefs each of us has about right and wrong and how the world ought to be.
Meaningful fiscal devolution within England would face huge opposition from Labour councils; anything else would not give town halls the incentive to undertake difficult reforms.
Taking action against low-value courses (and indeed institutions) means admitting that some (likely an increasing proportion) of existing graduates, paying through the nose for having been to university, were mis-sold an aspirational illusion.
The Opposition cannot deliver a 1979-style transformation without making difficult decisions, or only picking fights with easy targets such as non-doms and parents of private-school children.
The Opposition reportedly plan to fund a new task force with the savings from clearing the asylum backlog and ending the use of hotels. But both of those things would cost a lot of money to achieve – unless the plan is to just wave people through.
Jeremy Hunt clarifies he only hopes that it might be abolished at some point, after “many parliaments”; Rachel Reeves leans into the myth that it is hypothecated to the NHS and pensions.
On the face of it, the plight of the Government today is much, much worse than was David Cameron’s in 2014. Yet few people can think that Reform UK poses anything like the threat to the Tories that UKIP did ten years ago.
Forget the Overton Window, this is the Overton Precipice – the art of teetering on the brink without going over it.
Meanwhile Penny Mordaunt overleaps Kemi Badenoch to take top billing after being front and centre in the row over Speaker Hoyle a couple of weeks ago.
Just over one fifth preferred no increase in the military budget and more tax cuts. Grant Shapps’ demands for more cash have cut through with members – but show little sign of having persuaded the Treasury.
The former has once again been returned to Parliament at the head of a minor party. Yet it was the latter who, despite never entering the Commons, wrought the real, transformative change.