David Gauke is a former Justice Secretary, and was an independent candidate in South-West Hertfordshire at the 2019 general election.
Last Wednesday morning I rejoined the Conservative Party.
I resigned my membership in the autumn of 2019, a few minutes before announcing that I would stand as an independent in the election of that year. I thought it better to resign than be (justifiably) expelled.
In the Boris Johnson years and the Liz Truss weeks, I wasn’t inclined to reverse my position. Rishi Sunak was a more attractive proposition but was still a captive of the right. I thought I would wait to what would happen on the other side of an election defeat to see who emerged as Sunak’s successor.
Then came the announcement of the leadership election timetable. Anyone who signed up before 7 pm on 24 July was eligible to vote. I made an impromptu decision. If people like me – people who thought the party had taken a turn for the worse in embracing populism in 2019 and, in electing Johnson and Truss, choosing leaders unfit for the highest office – remained outside the party, nothing would change. It probably won’t change in any event, but it was worth £39 to try. Slightly to my surprise, I signed up.
Of course, I shouldn’t have a vote. Not that I think the party should reject my membership, whatever might be said in the comments below. At the last election, I endorsed some Tory candidates, and even knocked on doors for one of them. I also endorsed the independent standing in Norfolk South West, but I would argue that that was very much in the best interests of the Tory Party.
No, I shouldn’t have a vote because the leadership should be chosen by the MPs, not the members. The MPs know the candidates best and have a better appreciation of public opinion than the unrepresentative membership does, and a leader who doesn’t command the confidence of their Parliamentary party is in an impossible position.
But we are where we are. Objecting to the leadership rules is all very well, but they are the only leadership rules we have.
The more fundamental reason why I did not expect to rejoin was out of pessimism about the future direction of the Party.
For some time, our politics – as with the politics of many developed countries – has appeared to be realigning. We are dividing more on cultural lines, rather than economic ones. Working-class voters who are socially conservative and economically redistributionist once solidly voted for left-of-centre parties. Over decades, they drifted away from social democracy, perhaps staying at home, perhaps voting for populist parties. In the UK, they voted for Brexit. There was a potential support base for a new type of Conservativism – based on a combination of nationalism and higher public spending.
It was a great electoral opportunity, and Johnson seized it. My problem was that I did not agree with it. I thought the nationalism – manifesting itself in a hard Brexit – would be economically damaging. In that context, promises of improved public services and levelling-up would inevitably be broken. There was dishonesty about the 2019 election campaign that was inevitably going to lead to disappointment.
I feared that this was no mere aberration but where the party was destined. Trying to prevent this course would prove futile. There would be no going back.
By positioning itself as the party of populist voters, the party had also abandoned many of its traditional supporters. I represented a constituency full of successful, educated, moderate voters who supported the Tories because they trusted us to govern competently. Despite my best efforts, most of them stuck with the Tories in 2019 out of fear of Jeremy Corbyn. Take Corbyn away, and many more looked elsewhere. A town like Berkhamsted, for example, as delightful, prosperous, and as true-blue a place as you could hope to find, now votes solidly Liberal Democrat.
The strategic problem for the Conservatives is that to appeal to the centrist voters it has lost, it will have to – at the very least – stop targeting those voters who they gained in 2019. And the chances are that socially conservative voters will abandon the Tories more quickly than centrist voters will return.
This means that the temptation for the Party will be to try to keep hold of its existing socially conservative voters and win back those who defected to Reform. Putting aside the policy merits of this approach, it relies heavily on voters born before 1960 which – over time – becomes increasingly unviable. But the alternative approach requires a modernisation strategy that must involve repudiating policies and individuals that are popular with the core support but not the country as a whole.
I am for modernisation, however painful that might be. To be frank, I am not sure the Conservative Party is up to it, but I hope it tries.
There are some small grounds for optimism. There is demand within the Party to focus on Reform voters, but I detect little appetite for anything like a merger. By mutual consent, Nigel Farage is not going to join the Conservatives. Nor is Suella Braverman going to become leader. The Tory Party at least has learned that it must draw the line somewhere.
The parliamentary party is much smaller, and some very good centrist MPs lost their seats, but the damage done to the right was greater. The nature of Conservative support has also moderated. Overall, the Party looks less of a populist outfit than it did. That might not last, but it is something.
Then there is the wider context. For politics to work properly, we need a functioning, mainstream party of the centre left and a functioning, mainstream party of the centre right. Unlike in 2019, we have a mainstream party of the centre left, and it sits on a huge majority. Reform cannot be the latter party; the Liberal Democrats do not want to be.
Somewhere, there must be a party that makes the case for a market economy, fiscal conservatism, personal responsibility, and a cautious scepticism about the ability of the state to solve every problem. If the Tories embraced Farage, there might be a place a new party of the centre-right, but that does not look a likely prospect. For all the idiocies of the past few years, the Conservative Party remains the best hope.
So I filled in the online form and signed up; a triumph of hope over expectation, perhaps. When I first joined the party, I stayed for 29 years. This time, it may be a shorter period of membership (I clicked on the option to join for one year only rather than renewing automatically). But, for the moment, I am a Tory member again.