Tory scandals show Brexit was really right-wing populism

 An excellent revival of the frequent attempts to show how it all makes sense to the Islington petite bourgeoisie (journo tendency) in this welcome piece by J Freedland in the Grauin

This scandal reveals a Conservative party corrupted by Boris Johnson – and by Brexit

 Recent events show that the Conservatives aren't really (nicely) conservative according to Freedland:

no Conservative would have dreamed of partying in a government building on the eve of a royal funeral, even if there was no pandemic. They would have been affronted by the very idea of it....Once upon a time, a member of the Conservative and Unionist party would have understood that the fate of the union is imperilled if Scottish voters believe Westminster regards them with contempt

It’s Brexit that transformed the Conservative party.Where once Tories revered tradition, Brexit filled them with revolutionary zeal....Vandalism became a Brexit habit – hardly surprising for a project dedicated to uprooting a tangle of connections with our continental neighbours that had grown dense and thick over half a century – and this is the Brexit government. Like all revolutionary endeavours, it believes that the end justifies all means, no matter the damage to those things conservatives once cherished.... The Brexiters believed the referendum result had given them a super-mandate that trumped any conventions or norms: it made them anointed instruments of the will of the people, who could brook no challenge. The landslide victory of 2019 reinforced that conviction.

 The final conclusion:

 Brexit transformed it from a conservative party into a national-populist party. Its instincts now are those of Viktor Orbán, funnelling public money and jobs to ideological allies, ready to burn down even the most valued institutions that stand in its way

The critique of Johnson's boosterism and cronyism has something going for it, of course. What the whole piece also reveals is Freedland's own Little England nostalgic conservatism, of course, a place where we respected our elders, the Royal Family and the Union. His fears of the popular and thus populist have always been there and now they have surfaced in this overall nightmare that has only proved him right all along.