Britain’s Conservative Party used to have an enviable reputation for good financial management of Britain. People voted for the Tories because of this reputation even though they may have had some misgivings about some of the party’s other policies or had a dislike of some of the high profile personalities involved in the party. The ability that the Tories had to point to their superior management of the economy when compared to that of the Labour Party acted as a shield for the party. Even though the party suffered from allegations of sleaze and incompetence in other areas, the record for good economic management kept them going and kept people voting for them.

However those times are now gone. Because of numerous missteps which include quantitative easing (in other words Weimar style money printing), the ongoing scandal of public sector waste, high tax for poor services, a piss poor energy security policy that impacts on costs and a willingness to splurge money extorted from British taxpayers on guff like ‘climate reparations’, the Tories can no longer claim to be the party of fiscal common sense or financial probity. With regards to the economy they are now little more than Labour with a blue badge.

The Tories have not only mismanaged the finances of Great Britain but according to a piece on the Guido Fawkes site, are not even managing the finances of their own party organisation. According to Guido, the party is lacking in a number of senior staff including those who are in charge of finances and fundraising with one of the party’s most successful fundraisers leaving when the last Prime Minister before this one, Liz Truss, was elected and not yet being replaced.

The Guido piece intimates that the party is in a relatively bad financial situation when compared to the past. This is something that I can well believe to be true as the shenanigans over the leadership and over the Tories mismanaging the nation’s finances and energy policy has driven many loyal members away. People who once made up the backbone of the party and who funded it and who were the footsoldiers of the party at election time have had enough. The Tories look to be approaching the midpoint of this election cycle with less money and less election workers than they need to have in order to be able to fight an election. It’s pretty shameful in my view and it bodes ill for the Tories, that the party doesn’t have strong hands on the financial tiller. Their entire upper tier of financial managers and fundraisers appear to be missing in action and even when new people are appointed they might struggle to fill the party’s coffers at a time when election finance is desperately needed by the party.

The Tories have been the great survivors of British politics. Even when they’ve been kicked into the gutter as was the case in 1997, they’ve managed to rebuild. But they rebuilt in large part by showing that they were more financially sensible than the opposition. Now the Tories don’t even have that reputation to fall back on. They are now just another tax and waste party like the Lib Dems or Labour and I can’t see how the Tories can win back the voters and members that they’ve lost nor recover the grass roots financial support that they once had. I’m loathe to say that the Tories are finished as too many others have written the obituary for this party in the past and been wrong, but they are most certainly in a very great deal of trouble.

The Tories are now an analogue of a local council candidate who promises to properly and carefully manage the finances of the local authority, but who has a reputation for personal financial disaster and a string of bankrupt companies to their name. You would not vote for such an individual to be a councillor as their personal record in finance would not indicate competence, so why vote for the Tories who are all this and worse?