In January last year, I wrote a rather polemical piece for East Anglia Bylines, ‘The end of conservatism’. In part, this was an attempt to answer a question that was in my mind at the time about what conservatism (as a broad political approach in several countries) had to offer the future, the young and the unborn.
The only answer I could come up with was “not much”. It was also a look at what the future seemed to me to hold for our own Conservative Party, in government at the time, with Rishi Sunak the leader and prime minister. I was fairly convinced even then that they were heading for a major defeat, and they were then going to face existential questions, as a political party.
Terminal decline
Those existential questions came partly out of the wider thoughts on how little conservatism actually has to offer the future, and partly from the threat on their right posed by Reform. It seemed exaggerated to think that one of the most successful political parties in the world, that had been in government far more than the opposition, might be in terminal decline, or might even implode. After the last round of the long leadership contest to replace Sunak, that question seems more relevant than ever.
Sunak’s challenge
It’s worth pausing a moment to think about how they got here, before thinking about where they’re now going. From the moment Sunak became prime minister, I thought he could succeed. To begin with, he was in effect the beneficiary of a revolt in the Parliamentary party against the most radically “conservative” prime minister the Tories had ever had, who had lasted an inglorious 49 days. He had the support of an experienced politician like Jeremy Hunt, and there were clearly others in the Parliamentary party who had had enough. Sunak was, by repute, a pragmatist technocrat who would “steady the ship” and lead the party back to popularity.
I watched, interested, and waited to see him take up the challenge. In the first days after his installation, he had the opportunity to show himself to be a genuine, ruthless politician, seize control of the party and take it by the scruff of the neck to drag it back to popularity and success.
Sunak’s failure
He failed. Rather than recognise the threat came from the extreme right in his party, and that the only language they would understand was power and force, he tried to be the uniting peacemaker, bridging the deep divide in his party. His cabinet brought back Suella Braverman, and others from the extreme right. What followed, up to the comedic desertion Lee Anderson – whose earlier political journey had taken him from the Labour Party into the Conservative Party – and his supporter Brendan Clarke-Smith, was horribly predictable.
Even towards the end I wondered if Sunak would have the courage that a genuine politician might have shown, withdrawn the whip from the troublemakers and left them to dangle, or to join Reform, while he, Sunak, kept control of the party apparatus, and those MPs of a more “moderate” persuasion. In the end, calling the election when he did looked to me like an escape route for a man who had never really understood what it takes to be a party leader.
A tragic farce
But the tragic farce which the Conservative Party has become wasn’t quite over. The final scene came on 9 October with Cleverly’s unexpected exit from the leadership contest. It seems most likely that this was a cock up – of monumental proportions for the party – caused by Tory MPs trying to cast their votes cleverly, possibly aided by the inept, confused personality that is Grant Shapps. So now the membership gets to choose between Badenoch and Jenrick, with Badenoch the favourite. It really doesn’t matter much which wins; in either case the party is moving rightwards, in a desperate attempt to win back the voters who have already deserted them for Reform.
A flawed party
Whatever political space this version of the Tory Party tries to carve out, the flaws are clear already. First, the supposed “moderates” who now find themselves unrepresented and are sulking in a corner, refusing to endorse either candidate, and threatening to tear up their now irrelevant ballots. Second, a commitment from Badenoch to say the unsayable, to make economic policy suggestions designed to put people struggling to make a living and balance home and work life even worse off, and more desperate. Third, a set of legal and xenophobic imperialist fantasies from Jenrick appealing to a national stereotype he can’t even start to define.
We are about to see a competition between the Tories and Reform for an electoral base which is easily conned but dwindling in size. I can find nothing any of the candidates said during this contest which indicated they thought elections were won in the centre of politics. They addressed themselves solely and unremittingly to the right.
No answers, especially not for young people
Whether or not the Party formally splits, it is split. It will remain so until one or other “wing” seizes power and kicks the others out. Then it will be united, but stranded. Barring some completely unforeseeable plot twist, the right will take control of the party apparatus, and the “moderates” will be cut out ruthlessly.
You can call it what you like, but what remains will not be the “Conservative and Unionist Party” in any real sense. And it will not have any answers to the problems faced by the country, and most importantly, by young people. The Party’s over.
