So, that’s it. They think it’s all over – it is now. The completion of the 2024 UK General Election campaign last week marked the end of 14 years of Conservative leadership. The swearing in of bountiful new MPs this week marks the beginning of an entirely new era.
It would be very easy for me to sit here and rant about the flaws of Keir Starmer’s plan, including Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ new enforced housebuilding targets that will undoubtedly set the NIMBYs of the world in motion. Equally, I could lament for hours over Jeremy Corbyn’s disrespect for parliamentary traditions when he declared the swearing in process was “a load of nonsense”.
But instead of being a negative Nancy, this week I’m going to some deep places to discover the answer to a very important question. What next for the Conservative Party? After such a crushing defeat, it is inevitable that wallowing will be a necessary precursor to the party’s rebuild. But what rebuild, how, and who will lead it?
Kemi Badenoch, now shadow housing secretary, is the bookies’ favourite to become the next Conservative Party leader. But she’s got to be very careful. Reportedly calling out Rishi Sunak’s mistakes in Cabinet and lambasting former Home Secretary Suella Braverman is a dangerous game to play. The party needs a uniter, not a divider. There has already been more division in the recent history of the Conservative Party than in an entire maths book – and how’s that all turned out?
It is therefore extremely concerning that almost half of Tory members apparently want a merger with Reform UK. Nigel Farage – Reform UK’s leader – didn’t even speak for 60 seconds in the Commons before sparking controversy, calling out former Speaker John Bercow as a “little man” who tried to overturn Brexit.
Reform UK have been the chief dividers throughout the election campaign – so siding with such a controversial unit is hardly a good strategy for a party that has already crumbled to historic lows. I would strongly advise against forging any intimate relationship with Farage’s band of brothers if the Conservatives want to have a hope in hell of regaining control of the centre ground of common sense that was once such a Tory stronghold.
And this brings me nicely onto my wistfully idyllic story of what’s gone wrong and how that tees us up for a Conservative rebuild.
Historically, the main attraction to the Conservative Party is that it is a wide-reaching broad church renowned for sound economic management, enforcing necessary discipline and encouraging individual freedom.
Being a Conservative is about being practical. Everybody wants freedom of speech and movement, just as everybody wants enough police officers to prevent disruption and crime. Everybody wants to live rich and prosperous lives, just as everybody thinks companies need to be regulated and those with more should pay more into a state safety net of essentials, like the NHS. And everybody wants to live greener lives and to build more homes for their children, just as nobody wants their quality of life to be prelimited.
It is this beautifully natural common sense that has enabled the Conservative Party to be the most successful political party the world has ever seen. It is the party of one united nation.
This is not how other parties operate. Everything the Labour Party did was forever constrained by their Clause IV commitment to common ownership – rooting it firmly in Red Scare socialist soil. At least until Tony Blair ditched the commitment in the 1990s and won the biggest electoral landslide in modern British history. This colossal turn of fortune should tell you that tribalist ideologies do not work in the real world, where principles like common ownership are obstructed by making things work in reality.
Now, the great misfortune of recent times for the Conservatives is that they have been dragged kicking and screaming into a very different ideological wing. The exponential rise of right-wing populism has put moderate conservative politics between a rock and a hard place.
Previously, it was a tug of war between the left and the right: between Labour and the Conservatives. Now, it is a fight between the left, the right, and the extreme right – inevitably haemorrhaging Conservative voters to right-wing parties like UKIP and Reform UK.
Understandably, the temptation was to win these voters back. The party crept further and further to the right. Brexit was only the beginning – cracking down on rights to protest, warring with union barons and developing an anti-immigration rhetoric were all to follow. Of course, nothing happens in isolation. Illegal immigration has indeed become a bigger problem in today’s unstable world. Meanwhile, environmental and security instabilities have pressurised the cost of living with a global pandemic and a major war in Ukraine.
Nevertheless, the effect of creeping rightwards should not be underestimated. Far-right-wingers attracted by Farage’s divide and conquer politics could not be won back by a party appealing to the right very feebly in order to avoid alienating the centre. And yet, crucial jolts to the right like Brexit did alienate the centre. Not enough to push them across the floor to Labour, but enough to make them paralysed non-voters on polling day.
The Conservative Party’s great strength has always been its enduring appeal to a whole host of the populace. Young or old, male or female, voters have been attracted by the allure of the freedom to live a good life in a secure environment that rewards hard work but will catch you if you fall.
Turning away from this broad church and toward fighting a war in the ideological trenches on not one, but two fronts has been the Conservative Party’s downfall.
So the Conservative rebuild must focus on reigniting the public trust for a prosperous nation that can work for everybody. Enough of the division. Enough of the needless ideological warfare, which lamentably so often percolates parliamentary debate. Voters don’t like it when politicians just argue with each other. They like it when a politician gets things done. Bring back one-nationist conservatism, and you’ll have a Conservative Party that gets things done to benefit everyone, everywhere in Britain.
So there we have it. It’s been less of my usual gung-ho Punch and Judy style and more of a wistful bedtime story along an idyllic meandering river. But that reveals something very poignant about politics. Throwing punches at each other may be theatrical – and occasionally jolly good fun – but reflecting deeply on where this country’s future lies is a much stronger foundation for one-nationist thinking that will unite the Conservative Party and Britain into the prosperous community we know it can be.
Image: Walter Baxter
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