Bloody Panico! Or, Whatever Happened to the Tory Party?

By Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Verso 2024

When reigning governments collapse and their gangrenous pinatas sway before the commentariat, the reading public can expect a disparate output in response. The feverish ideologues smack away contentedly, the diehard supportive remnants give teary salutations and the real professionals shun the butcherous ceremony and burrow down into the diagnostics. Thankfully, Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s new book Bloody Panico! or, Whatever Happened to the Tory Party? is a studious example of the latter. From an eighteenth century definition of Toryism to the sinister fraudulence of its misnomered descendants, the genre of ‘Conservative Party ruination’ has another teutonic son. There are no earth-shattering concepts to anaesthetise or academic marquees to impress. What follows is point after point of refreshing veracity and a stentorian flotilla of quips and put-downs. 

An erroneous comparison of Benjamin Disreali and Boris Johnson (foreign birth, divisive rhetoric, literary sensibilities) gets the book off to a bizarre start. Soon this entertaining chronicler wows with his artful descriptions and enduring perspicacity. “If the name ‘Tory’ survived, it was partly as a colloquial alternative to ‘Conservative’, Wheatcroft writes, “...there has always been a party standing for property and invoking tradition, and we might as well call them Tories.” Much of this historical whirlwind is presented as a wrathful re-estimation. We are told that “Tory political dominance for so much of the past hundred years is explained, or explained away, by the way that the anti-Tory vote was split between Liberals and Labour in the early decades of the twentieth century and split between Labour and Liberal Democrats in the last decades. This is historically false.” These discernments are bold, if a little uncoordinated, and deserve an appreciative spotlight. 

We continue to be staggered by this tour guide’s vivacity and acute insight. Former Labour party leader Tony Blair’s sleak, cogent conservative redolence is described gorgeously as “a stealthy appropriation” and the archetypically villainous Tory Margaret Thatcher is also brought down from her pedestal. By mentioning the UK’s 2011 vote on electoral reform and Nigel Farage’s near-fatal plane crash, we’re spoiled with the lesser known gewgaws of British politics that will intrigue the laymen and stimulate the aficionado. Mr Farage gets off rather lightly in Bloody Panico. His Dulwich education, drinking habits and comedic affability form the central depiction, rather than his status as a demonstrable obfuscator of reality, repulsive xenophobe and mawkish footstool for Donald Trump. Even when he misses the mark Wheatcroft can’t help being exquisitely percipient. “It had long been assumed that [Farage’s former party] UKIP was a repository for disaffected, reactionary middle class Tories but it had now cut heavily into the Labour vote as well as appealing to another disaffected group, the white working class.” This recognition of a shift in demographic sentiment is a totemic marker of the book’s overall denunciatory magnificence. 

The Tory party’s most recent compilation of gaffs allows Wheatcroft to excel and introduce a scintilla of composed chronology. Boris Johnson “was quite extraordinary ill-equipped to deal with a grave crisis”, the vile and pitiably overestimated former Home Secretary Suella Braverman is laid to rest as a “demagogic nationalist standard-bearer” showcasing “the ultranationalism of the outsider”, and intractable advocates for Brexit are “sabre-rattlers of the Europhobic right [issuing out] bellicose sub-Churchillian rhetoric.” This outlandish beauty will have tie-swaddled old-timers chortling into their port and younger conservatives bubbling up their milkshake. This is an eloquent and sturdy fumigator ridding the Tory party of its pestilential inefficacy. 

What Bloody Panico lacks in topical endurance, it more than makes up for with those aforementioned sterling critiques. A quick glance at Wheatcroft’s published works (and his syndication for The Spectator, The Sunday Telegraph and The Guardian) reveals a recognisable aim for punchy eclecticism. Needless to say, there is nothing of the marijuana-addled campfire mania that ruins the similarly critical books written by smirking detractors on the left. Wheatcroft is obviously disgusted by the deforestation of conservatism as well as the governmental misdirection and lack of pragmatic alternatives. Bloody Panico is a startling shout for kinship and change but has to be barred from the top pantheon of the ‘Conservative Party ruination’ genre - best evidenced by Peter Hitchens and James O’brien - because of its brevity and the nonexistence of prescription. The spasmodically venturous nature of this review is a reflection of the book’s slippery focus. It often struggles along without much of a through-line or falsifiable thesis, but the gentrified pugnacity and professorial execution raises it above the levels of bitter screed and makes it an essential top pocket revision guide for any ‘small c’ conservative. 

Joe Spivey is a book critic currently residing in Kingston Upon Hull