Effective politics promises to change who has power, not just manage it more competently
The ongoing disaster in Afghanistan is only the latest fiasco to provoke fury at the unseriousness of Boris Johnson’s government. In fact, for the past 20 years British and American conservatism has seemed ever more unrealistic: its policies ever more like fantasies, its relationship with the truth ever looser, its leaders ever less focused and competent.
This persistent unrealism has had terrible costs. And yet, without seeming to have mastered the basics of governing, conservatives still win plenty of elections, and dominate how politics is talked and thought about. To many voters and commentators, conservative government, however much it fails in practice, is still the realistic option.