Something I touched on in my previous article is this sense with Boris Johnson and some senior Conservatives that they’re attempting to recapture the halcyon days of 2019 when people ‘kind of liked’ the Conservatives enough to elect them as the majority party in England.

Or in other words: when England had a “collective nervous breakdown”, drove to Dundee in its bare feet snaffling Toblerones and it ‘kind of liked’ Brexit, inhumane racism, union smashing, the concept of tearing up the rulebook to appease a cabal of nefarious, logic-defying ‘Far Right’ numpties within their own party, lying about levelling-up - that sort of thing.

General unpleasantness, basically. An unfortunate general unpleasantness.

Right now with this new ‘relaunch’ [this page estimates the 4th since January] they’re going through what seem like the motions of an 80s rock band: they haven’t done anything worthwhile since their ‘number one’ album that got them where they are, a haggered old manager has been in touch and they’ve decided to regroup, and ride a nostalgia wave by appearing at some festival or other for the express purposes of playing that ‘one album’ from start to finish for those still living that actually remember who they were.

Often, the primary motivating factor for bands attempting to recapture ‘that moment in time’ - is money.

In the case of the Conservatives, it might be about money - after all, it was donors and oligarchs that essentially ‘ordered’ Conservatives to vote in favour of keeping Boris Johnson in his post, as noted previously.

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7ab78464-eeea-4823-a2e5-a2fff7ad24ba_732x959.jpeg

[See: ‘Kleptocracy’]

At this ‘moment in time’ for the Conservatives, however, it seems to be about salvaging reputation after a series of mishaps and scandals that have ultimately left the marketability of the brand and its formerly charismatic frontman in tatters.

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