The strange death of Conservative England

"One prominent MP, in a philosophical mood, told me that Boris’s behaviour is a comment on the age of ego: when religion and ideology are dead, the self fills the vacuum."

Timothy Stanley today in the Daily Telegraph

"... Brexit (and later Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss) was so divisive that it was unrealistic for the Conservatives to build their electoral future around the very groups that were likely to abandon them in droves after Britain exited the EU -the graduate class, the middle-class professionals, the young Millennials and the even younger Zoomers from Gen-Z who have spent the last decade doubling down on their social liberalism and trending toward Labour. Just spend five minutes online and you’ll see instantly what I mean. For these voters Brexit was never just a political issue - it was existential, a profound psychological and political shock which violated their very core identity, their sense of self. "

Matt Goodwin in May on the English local election results