“Back again? Dear, oh dear” as the King once murmured at the reappearance of one Elizabeth Truss in the purlieu of the Palace. And dear, oh dear, here she was, back again so soon, the Pop Tart of the Tory Right, popping up in the central London toaster, this time for the launch of yet another Tory ginger group. This one is called — optimistically — “Popular Conservatism”, or PopCon for short. And it will be for short.
Just what the country — reeling from the shock of “King has cancer” headlines — wanted, as hundreds of loyal subjects formed an orderly Wimbledon-style queue to register for the one new NHS dental practice that has opened in Bristol.
Just what the ruling Conservative Party — bracing for its extinction-level event in the autumn — needed, as its Prime Minister made a boysy thousand-pound bet with Piers Morgan that he could deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda, and then made a tactless reference at PMQs to trans people after being told the mother of Brianna Ghey, the murdered teenager, was to take her seat in the Commons gallery.
Never mind all that. As PopCon’s official X page announced: “The fightback begins.” Fightback against what? It was a bit like Penny Mordaunt saying “stand up and fight” 12 times in her speech to conference. Fight whom? Why? I’m so confused by the Conservative Party.
PopCon’s Truss is strong-hulled, but she will never expand, puff up and explode when heated
As I gazed at the images of Liz and Co opening their mouths and words coming out, words saying that Britain was full of secret Conservatives, playing the predictable round of bogeymen bingo (Left-wing extremists, high taxes, immigrants, wokerati, quangos, Davos Man, et cetera) I felt an unfamiliar sensation stirring. Admiration, almost. I’ll explain why in a sec.
If there was any snap, crackle or pop in the Emmanuel Centre, it mainly emanated from the attendance of hacks and news crews supplying the oxygen the gathered attention-addicts needed, plus the following: Nigel Farage — described by one observer as a hungry crocodile deciding which of the PopCons he was going to eat for lunch — Dame Priti Patel, Lee Anderson and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg. Celebrity stardust came in the shape of Holly Valance.
I reproduce her political philosophy in full in case Gary Lineker (who now stands for the Left as Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour is too frit to take a position on anything) has missed her exegesis explaining the built-in obsolescence of socialism. “I would say that everyone starts off as a Leftie and then wakes up at some point after you start either making money, working, trying to run a business, trying to buy a home, and then realises what crap ideas they all are and then you go to the Right,” said the Aussie actress, who we can legit describe as arm-candy as she is married to Nick Candy. She went on to praise Truss’s speech as “actually really, really interesting” and ended, “Jacob Rees-Mogg for PM!”
Each to their own. Back to Liz. Yes, I felt admiration for the woman. As everyone knows, she was only prime minister for five minutes at all because the loyalists to the previous prime minister would not allow knife-wielder Rishi Sunak to wear the crown next.
As everyone also knows, she was a staunch Remainer who in her mayfly moment as PM was going to relax the immigration rules, but none of that matters now, and this is what I admire.
She is the director of PopCon despite being even more unpopular than Sunak, a man who once couldn’t beat her in an election (a survey by Savanta this week put her net favourability score is minus 54 per cent, compared with Sunak’s minus 27 per cent). She is strong-hulled — like the corn kernel — but Liz will never expand, puff up and explode when heated, unlike, say, her former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, who announced his resignation from politics just as PopCon launched.
The problem with populist leaders is they are popular; the problem with Popular Conservatism is that… it isn’t . A more realistic name for the splinter group — which is, after all, competing with the New Conservatives, the Northern Research group, the European Research group, the Commonsense group, and the Conservative Growth group — would be Unpopular Conservatism. That could really catch on, one senses.
It is always glad confident morning again for her, even if despite having lashed out on all those Fizz with Liz evenings a while back, she “doesn’t get invited to dinner parties much anymore”.
She is the Scarlett O’Hara of modern politics! Tomorrow is always another day for Truss, if not the Tories.
