When an asteroid hits your house, it’s a safe bet that you’re going to need more than a vacuum cleaner, a feather duster and some air freshener. That is roughly the situation the Tories face now after the election. Yet the party’s leadership contest — officially under way, with Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat, Priti Patel, James Cleverly, Mel Stride and Kemi Badenoch in the running — has so far been almost entirely a festival of banality and platitude.
So fair play to Suella Braverman for delivering some much-needed entertainment on Sunday night with an epic display of toy-throwing from her armour-plated pram of doctrinal purity. “I’m sorry. I cannot run because I cannot say what people want to hear,” the former Home Secretary wrote in the Telegraph. “I’ve been branded mad, bad and dangerous enough to see that the Tory Party does not want to hear the truths I’ve set out”.
Meanwhile, her former colleagues — with one exception — operate in varying states of denial. How wise was it of Cleverly, after the Conservatives’ worst-ever election result, to open his declaration of candidacy with the boast that his party is “the most effective and successful political organisation on the planet”? Does Jenrick’s campaign really have a cunning plan to present the Tories as “the most responsible and competent party of government”?
Ditto Patel and her promise to lead “competent, grown-up, experienced and strong politicians putting authentic conservative values into practice”. Does she sincerely believe that giving “a much greater voice and role” to her party’s members — who will pick Rishi Sunak’s successor — can propel the Tories back into power? Tugendhat offers the following reassurance: “What qualifies me for this job? Well, I live by a simple rule. If I say I’ll do something, I do it.” Good to know, I suppose.
Voters defected to the Sofa Party; 2.8 million who voted Tory last time stayed at home on 4 July
Stride’s prescription, on the other hand, is as follows: “We need to rebuild trust and competence through demonstrating effective opposition, holding Labour ruthlessly to account, but not simply opposing at every turn.” This does not exactly convey a sense of urgency.
Amid all the boilerplate language, only Badenoch has publicly acknowledged the depth of her party’s predicament. “After such a terrible result, some will assume that things will naturally get better,” she wrote in yesterday’s Times. “The truth is that it could get much worse”. Just so. The former business secretary, to her credit, has framed her campaign as an inquiry into an electoral disaster rather than a straightforward political repair job.
The Conservative Party has been left with only 121 seats — considerably worse than the previous rock bottom of 156 in 1906. The electoral coalition that delivered the Tories a majority of 80 in 2019 has shattered, as voters have defected to Reform UK, the Lib Dems and the “Sofa Party” (according to a new Policy Exchange paper, 2.8 million people who voted for the Tories five years ago stayed at home on July 4). “Conservatism hasn’t failed,” insists Patel. Really?
What ended last month was not just 14 years of Tory government but an era in British politics: the 45-year reign of a political and economic paradigm forged by Margaret Thatcher’s ideological allies — a paradigm upon which New Labour and David Cameron’s strategy were essentially variants.
But that world view is now hopelessly out of date. It has next to nothing of substance to say about the savage inequalities yielded by globalisation, the climate emergency, human longevity, the digital revolution, the intergenerational crisis and the fast-morphing geopolitical landscape.
When Cleverly, for instance, takes it as read that Conservatives should fight for “a smaller state”, he sleepily reiterates an orthodoxy that is, in fact, completely obsolete. The battle of the future will be between the ugly, autocratic statism of Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin, and a liberal statism that embraces the growing challenges facing government today, but does so without trampling upon basic civic rights and liberties.
This is an entirely pragmatic, rather than ideological, matter: the range and complexity of political, social and global challenges in the second quarter of the 21st century will require a completely new approach to statecraft and a readiness — especially hard for centre-Right parties to accept — that government is going to have to do more, at greater cost.
To be honest, I do not expect the Conservatives to come close to accepting the new reality that is staring them in the face. But it will be fun watching them try.
