The Conservative Party’s Oppenheimer syndrome

“OPPENHEIMER”, which won seven Oscars at the Academy Awards on March 10th, is a about hubris and regret. Cillian Murphy plays the titular American scientist who builds the atom bomb that will end the second world war. Then the Soviets get its secrets. An arms race begins; he is tortured by visions of missiles streaking through the sky. “He talks about putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle,” scoffs a rival. The prospect of Armageddon can make you question your career decisions.In recent years Tory ministers have been conducting their own experiment with the nuclear physics of the British constitution. The cognoscenti call it a restorationist agenda that asserts the primacy of a sovereign Parliament over subordinate institutions, and of elected politicians over unelected officialdom. To less sophisticated folk it has looked more like ministers hoovering up powers they don’t know how to use and sidelining any practices that inconvenienced them. Either way, Conservatives have put surprisingly little thought into the consequence of this unshackled state falling into the hands of their opponents. A Labour Party that is inimical to much of what the Tories hold dear is on course for a parliamentary majority in a system where the institutional and cultural checks on executive power have been weakened.