Why Are New Politicians So Attracted to Vanity Projects?

There's an old adage – best known probably as a David Brent quote – that the struggling salesman doesn't turn up to work on a bicycle. No, he turns up in a nicer car. When you're trying to strike a deal, it's all about perception.

This week, Conservatives gave the saying a 2016 update: what does the failing country do when its currency is dropping faster than a lead balloon? It turns up to work on a £100 million yacht.

That's right, in possibly the most Tory thing to happen since Gary Barlow was given an OBE, the Daily Telegraph have launched a campaign to get Theresa May's Conservative government to consider investing in a brand new royal yacht, which they believe should be given the name – curveball – Britannia. May has not yet weighed in on the idea, but it already has the support of around 100 MPs, and has even given Michael Gove and Boris Johnson something to reconnect over. The Conservative Party might be divided on how best to pull our country out of the single market, but at least they have found common ground here, united by the urge to build the Queen a massive boat.

The Telegraph are keen to stress that this campaign isn't just about showboating, arguing that in fact this is a plan to "boost the economy". The Telegraph reckons that the royal yacht Britannia in its first incarnation, which was decommissioned and not replaced by Tony Blair in 1997, brought in around £3billion worth of trade deals. Okay, you're thinking, that sounds okay. £3billion is loads, right? How does the magic yacht secure the deals, you ask? What is the royal yacht Britannia's actual role in all of this? "Well," the Telegraph answers, pulling pin-striped suit trousers up at the knee and exposing a pair of snazzy Union Jack socks, "by projecting British soft power and commercial interests around the globe".

That's the real excuse for the royal yacht Britannia, or Big Yachty, as I'm calling her. Despite the Telegraph's half-arsed attempt at convincing us that the yacht is actually important for saving the country's finances, it's clear that this has fuck-all to do with trade, and absolutely everything to dick-swinging. Brexit fever has clearly gotten a few Tories hot under the collar for new chest-thumping antics. So hot in fact, that one Whitehall source told the Telegraph: "We recognise strength of passions that have been aroused for a new royal yacht."

"Passions that have been aroused," while sounding quite a lot like "Tories Shag Boats", is actually a pretty neat way of considering exactly what is going here. This is a political vanity project, for sure, but more than that, it's Britain's first post-Brexit vanity project. The first vanity project to exist in the new world. The world where the pustules of previously thinly veiled jingoism have finally been burst, allowing the red, white and blue to ooze out in broad daylight. The world in which we're happy to accept a tanking economy and rising xenophobia, in exchange for little more than the conceptual gratification of the word sovereignty.

We've experienced vanity projects before, of course, and they are in no way exclusive to Tories. Tony Blair's classic, the Millennium Dome – a place that, if my 16-year-old memory serves me correctly, was sort of like a Butlins big-top designed by Jon Tickle – cost over £1billion in today's money and proved to be nothing more than a colossal waste of time, money, white plastic and yellow spikes. Blair pitched it as a "a triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, excellence over mediocrity". Now, in 2016, it's little more than a place to pay £110 to watch Drake from half a mile away, while an overpriced hotdog dribbles gristly juice down your chin.

Boris Johnson – an outspoken fan of Big Yachty – can claim at least two major vanity projects from his time as Mayor of London. Not only did he introduce Routemaster buses with old-fashioned conductors – which everyone said was an unsustainable waste of money and turned out to be exactly that – but he also tried, tried, tried and tried to build a magnificent Garden Bridge. The bridge, a window into a Britain 250 years in the future once civilisation has crumbled completely and shrubbery has burst through the tarmac, still hasn't been built, yet may still cost the taxpayer £22.5million, according to the Mirror on Tuesday.

Yet there's something particularly galling about the royal yacht Britannia. Maybe it's the fact that proposal for the boat were being discussed at the same time as the crisis in Syria worsens, indicating the stark reality of priorities in Parliament as it stands. Maybe it's the price tag being so brazenly flashed about at a time where most working families stand to lose significant amounts every year, post-Brexit. Perhaps it's even down to the weirdly aggravating knowledge that sailors on the last royal yacht had to give orders by "hand signal" and wear "soft-soled white plimsolls to reduce noise", in order to keep the environment as tranquil as possible on deck for the royals.

The yacht signals the spirit of the country we now inhabit. At least a big white dome, a bus, or even a load of hedges on a bridge are vanity projects that in some way benefit the public. They are grand gestures motivated by self-interest or hubris, but at least on some level they endeavoured to offer something in return. Theresa May is obsessed with her government standing up for the lowly, unheard, left-behind Brexit voter. Rallying against some mythical, elite who have failed them and patronise them. Strange then, that her party appears to be deciding this is the moment to pitch a luxury cruise liner for a 90-year-old.

The royal yacht Britannia will benefit few more than a cluster of elderly royals, and a gaggle of Etonians with a hard-on for colonial grandstanding. But if history is anything to judge by, the project will go ahead, be millions over budget and likely be called the May-flower.

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