Thatcher’s Ghost and AI Churchill: The Pantomime of a Dying Party
I was scanning the headlines this morning when one leapt out: “The Tory conference is a ghost town – even the protesters haven’t bothered to show up.”
I had to laugh. I had almost forgotten the Tories were still around. If it were not for the occasional Prime Minister’s Questions on a Wednesday, during what feels like the shortest parliamentary sessions in living memory, we might all assume they had already been buried.
What’s left of the Conservative Party now roams Westminster like a horde of political zombies, the walking dead of British politics. Shuffling through the corridors of power, moaning incoherently about “growth” and “stability,” waiting for the inevitable moment when a general election finally drives the last nail into their coffin. Here’s hoping they take the Labour Party with them.
The Tory conference used to be a spectacle. A magnet for activists, lobbyists, and protesters, from climate campaigners to NHS defenders, all descending in their thousands to shout at the party of privilege.
But not this year. In Manchester, Kemi Badenoch’s big moment as party leader has been met with a wall of silence. The streets around the conference centre are deserted. Even Steve Bray, the human foghorn of Westminster, couldn’t be bothered to show up. When even the rent-a-protest crowd decides you’re not worth the train fare, it’s safe to say the game’s up.
Inside the hall, the picture’s no better. Empty seats, half-filled bars, and ghostly exhibition stalls abandoned by sponsors and lobbyists who’ve clearly decided there’s no profit left in backing the blue corpse. Businesses, charities, and pressure groups have all taken one look at Badenoch’s fading brand and concluded it’s not worth the cost of a train ticket, let alone a stall.
And when you do finally stumble across a display, it’s not the current leadership on show but the embalmed memory of Margaret Thatcher. Her face is everywhere, mugs, baubles, even bottles of whisky, as if drinking her image might resurrect the magic of the 1980s. You know the one, when she sold off everything from council houses to the family silver: water, gas, electricity, and finally, the people themselves.
If there’s an afterlife, Thatcher must be hosting the champagne reception down there, while the remnants of her party cling to her ghost, praying her shade will save them.
Meanwhile, an AI-generated Winston Churchill is available for selfies, because apparently even artificial intelligence can be persuaded to say “Never surrender” to the inevitable.
In the absence of real ideas, the conference has resorted to pantomime. There’s a funfair called Labour’s Circus of Despair, where delegates can “whack a taxpayer” and spin Rachel Reeves’ Wheel of Tax. It would be funny if it weren’t so painfully symbolic: a party that’s turned politics into a sideshow, flogging Thatcher memorabilia while the country burns.
Even the trains to Manchester tell the story, once packed with Tory activists in blue rosettes, now half empty. The bars and cafés that usually heave with lobbyists and hacks are silent. Only one fringe event, a talk by Badenoch’s old rival James Cleverly, managed to fill the room, fifteen minutes before it started, then silence again.
This isn’t a Party conference. It’s a wake. A political necropolis where the ghosts of neoliberalism gather to remember when they still mattered.
And if there’s one small mercy, it’s this: when the zombies finally fall, may the same neoliberal virus that created them die too.
