Britain’s Conservatives are losing as they governed. Meekly

Squint a little and the letters “UwU” resemble someone with large, cartoonish eyes and a serene smile. The cutesy emoticon is a staple of a certain corner of the internet, in which grown-ups speak to each other in an infantile tone (“I’m just a smol bean”) and adopt feigned helplessness.

What is grating enough online is much worse coming from a g7 government. The Conservatives, who have spent 14 years running Britain, increasingly subscribe to a narrative that they were a mere bit-part player, rather than its main actor. Gazing upon a dying Conservative administration in 1993, Lord Lamont, who had recently been sacked as chancellor, accused Sir John Major’s government of being “in office but not in power”. What was once an attack has now become the party’s principal defence: the Conservatives may have been in office, but they were never in power. Call it UwU Conservatism.