They came not to bury Rishi, but to praise him. Of course they did. There’s been no end of Tories queueing up to profess their support for the prime minister in recent days, only to then point out where he was going badly wrong. They’ve even created their own death rattle. The sound of rats leaving a sinking ship. Lashing out even as they face extinction.
On Monday, the newly minted New Conservatives group of 25 MPs elected since the Brexit referendum went public for the first time at an event taking place in the Unherd Club – the Westminster establishment location for anyone who wants to be considered anti-establishment. They claimed to be just like-minded MPs. Men and women merely interested in ensuring their own survival. Though that looks unlikely, given the talent on show.
Rather, with the absurd John Hayes as their president, they were more likely expendable outriders for a Suella Braverman leadership bid after the next election. By which time many of the New Conservatives are likely to be far from parliament. Not that Suella cares about their survival. She is merely keen to undermine Rishi Sunak. Most of what we were to hear would have been Home Office policy were Braverman to have her way.
Danny Kruger got things under way by saying sorry. He wanted to pass on Lee Anderson’s sincere apologies for not being able to host the event. Lee had recently been told that he wasn’t feeling very well – up until about two hours earlier he had been just fine – and so was staying in bed. Any suggestion he had been leant on to not turn up was completely untrue. The Tory party would have been totally relaxed about its deputy chair slagging off current government policy.
“We want to take back control from the establishment,” the Oxford-educated Kruger declared. The levels of denial were terrifying. He genuinely has no idea that he and the Tories are the establishment. That they have been running the country for the past 13 years. It’s as though he believes the government has been under the control of some unspecified blob. The lengths he will go to absolve himself of any responsibility.
Having made the introductory speech, he went on to introduce the person who would be introducing the main speaker. Step forward the formidably dim Miriam Cates. Fresh from her Today programme car wreck that morning in which she didn’t seem to know that social care workers were not part of the NHS nor have any clue how much she thought they ought to be earning. And she is meant to be the brains of the operation.
But hey ho. Cates is the woman many Tories see as the future of the party. Which may just be an indication that most Conservatives see their own extinction as inevitable. Someone you could almost guarantee to reach the wrong conclusion on almost everything. She, too, wanted to take back control. The Tories had made a promise to keep migration to 229,000 and now it was three times that. And the New Conservatives had a cunning plan to reverse that. Just stop foreigners coming in.
Say no to Johnny Foreigner. It was time to make our borders “culturally secure”. We had to end our addiction to cheap labour and get Britons to fill all the vacancies in social care and the NHS. And we should just pay them more.
She didn’t seem to have heard of the doctors and nurses going on strike. Her own government’s inflation targets. Or that most Britons didn’t want to do these jobs at any price the government was willing to pay. Her ignorance was total. It would have been shameless, were she on nodding terms with any concept of shame. Still, any Tory fringe event always has an element of comedy, and Cates was happy to oblige. Nor would she be the last laugh on offer.
Next up was Tom Hunt, the Tory MP who had come up with the new immigration plan. He tried to be reasonable. First, he wanted to dispel the notion that he was a Tory rebel. He wasn’t. He adored Rish! more than life itself. It wasn’t that his plan was a criticism of the government’s policy. Rather, the government had just got a bit confused and he wanted to help out. And do anything to try to protect his seat at the next election. Hell, if it meant doubling inflation, closing universities, bankrupting the health and social care sector and sparking a recession to get down the number of immigrants, then it was a price worth paying.
Yet again it was the liberal elite who were holding us back, said Hunt. Who also went to Oxford. “I worked in a radish-sorting factory where I was the only Brit,” he claimed nostalgically. Man of the people. Shame he didn’t decide to make that holiday job a full-time career. “People shouldn’t feel that any job is beneath them,” he added. Present company excepted.
Last to speak was the permanently angry James Daly. He’s yet to find an issue on which he doesn’t want to pick a fight. It was all the Blob. The establishment. The Guardian. Another Tory MP who thinks Labour is in power. All he had ever wanted was to be helpful. And the best service he could offer Sunak right now was to spark another civil war. It’s what the party needed. He loved the Conservatives so much he’d do anything to make sure they were never elected again.
The Q&A that followed descended into chaos as everyone doubled down on their stupidity. It’s not often that Kruger finds himself the brightest person on a panel and he did his best to distance himself from his colleagues. He’d realised too late he was yet again on the wrong side of history. There was nothing to be gained by being the No Mark’s No Mark.
Cates continued to increase wage inflation with every sentence. Any price was worth paying to get rid of foreigners. Hunt couldn’t quite work out why Labour was 20 points ahead in the polls when Sunak was doing such a great job. No one thought to enlighten him. Daly merely got angrier and angrier. Picking fights with Rish!, the media and himself.
Eventually Kruger called time. It had all been much ado about nothing. The New Conservatives had no more clue than the Old Conservatives. All they had done was highlight yet more divisions within the Tory party. Rats in a sack. Fighting to the death. A theatre of the absurd for which the country is paying.
