In one form or another, the Tory tradition has survived across five centuries. So despite our current difficulties our continued existence is surely guaranteed, right?
Except there were times when Toryism hung by a thread. In the 18th century, one could argue that it snapped altogether. Even by the loosely defined standards of the era, the Tory party ceased to have any organised existence by the 1760s. Truth be told, its revival by the end of that century was more of a re-invention based on a memory.
From a 21st century perspective, this gap in our CV might not seem to matter — but for those who had to trudge through decades in the political wilderness, it must have felt like forever. Indeed, no one actually made it from one side of the wasteland to the other. Time alone ensures that there’s little overlap between a party in the opening decades of a century and the same institution at the close. But when it collapses as a serious contender for power, there’s just a blank space in between — no line of succession, no living tradition, no handing-on of the baton from one generation to the next.
There’s nothing more unconservative than radical discontinuity, but, as in the 18th century, that’s the prospect that lies before us. Given the accelerated pace of life in the 21st, our unraveling won’t take decades — just one or two electoral cycles will be sufficient to break the threads between the present and posterity.
The process is already underway. The publicity for Michael Heseltine’s new book reminds us that ours is a party in decline. You don’t have to like the old lion or his politics to see that recent Tory frontbenches suffer by comparison. Nor can the thinning of talent be wholly explained by the loss of two-thirds of our MPs last year. The gaps were clearly visible before the 4th of July disaster.
Senior Conservatives seem oblivious as to the existential threats facing the party.
Even when they should have been free to grasp nettles — during the months-long leadership contest — genuine debate was suppressed in the name of “unity”. But among our smartest thinkers (very few of them in parliament, let alone the shadow cabinet) there’s a greater willingness to peer into the void and report back. One of them is James Frayne. Writing for the Telegraph last week, he took a look at recent polls — and warned that “we might be seeing the last days of the Conservative Party”.
These are the sort of numbers that prompted him to reach that grim conclusion: The latest polling from FindOutNow has us down two points on 21%; the latest TechneUK poll down one point on 23%; the latest Survation down three on 22%; the latest from More in Common down one on 24%; the latest Opinium down two on 21%; and the latest YouGov down one on 21%. The most hopeful poll is from BMG which has us tied for first place on 25% — but even that is four points down on the company’s previous poll in October. In short, all of the polls are heading in the wrong direction and most of them show us dipping below the already miserable vote share we won last year (23.7%).
But do we really need to worry about a point or two of deterioration so soon after a landslide defeat? Yes, given the cliff edge that exists in our electoral system. First-past-the-post does terrible things to a party with a vote share in the low twenties — just look at what happened to the Lib Dems in 2010 (23% of the vote, 57 seats). So, make no mistake, we are circling the plughole.
There are two main ways in which a major party becomes a minor party or a non-party. A governing regime might become so powerful as to render the opposition irrelevant. That’s what happened to the Tories during the Whig Ascendancy of the 18th century. The other path to obscurity is displacement by a rival party, which is what happened to the Liberal Party between the wars. It’s also what could happen to us at the hands of Reform UK.
In my previous column, I tried to sketch out the terms of a pact between the two Right-of-centre parties. I should have emphasised that this is a best-case scenario. If the Conservatives find themselves polling consistently in the low twenties and Reform regularly hits the high twenties, then Nigel Farage will be tempted to spurn any such deal and go all-out to replace us. Westminster is already rife with speculation that a number of Conservative MPs are set to defect.
That would be the beginning of the end — and so Kemi Badenoch doesn’t have the time that she seems to think she has. That said, what can she actually do?
There’s the composition of her top team, of course. But I’d better withhold comment on its recent performance until I calm down. Rather, I want to concentrate on policy.
The conventional thinking is that Badenoch needs to abandon her stepwise approach and go all out to match Reform’s clarity on the hot button issues of the day — especially immigration. But there’s a major problem. No matter how bold her attack, Farage can always outflank her. Demand a crackdown and he’ll say he’ll crackdown harder. Offer a tax cut and he’ll double it. Light a bonfire of red tape and he’ll burn down a forest. Unlike the official opposition, no one’s checking his homework so he can promise the earth and howl for the moon.
OK so what if the Tories lean into responsible opposition and become the party of credible policy solutions? That would accord with Badenoch’s instincts — even if she does need to accelerate her policy development timetable. But why would anyone pay attention to our carefully prepared detail, if no one’s listening to us anyway? As a recently humiliated ex-government, you have to say something new to even earn the right to a hearing. But that, of course, brings us back to the outflanking issue. What can Badenoch say that Farage can’t say louder?
By the way, the same would apply if we were so foolish as to believe that “elections are won from centre“. As opposition leader, David Cameron’s move to the middle ground was only made possible because New Labour had presided over an unpopular war and a financial meltdown — and, even then, he was tripped-up by Nick Clegg’s rival centrism.
So the big question facing Kemi Badenoch is what can the Conservatives offer that can’t be offered by either Reform UK or the parties of the centre-Left? That’s it, that’s the challenge — but I’m not at all convinced that the current leadership is looking for the answer. To be clear I’m not talking about a fully thought-out programme for government, not at this stage. Rather, I mean a single signature issue that could give the Conservative Party a unique identity and mission.
When William Hague was in Kemi Badenoch’s position, the raison d’etre that he found for the Tories was saving the pound. It wasn’t nearly enough to win the 2001 general election or to stay on as leader — but it did make the party relevant again and, not coincidentally, it did help save the pound.
My answer to the big question in 2025 is this: to restore a property-owning democracy. We don’t just need to build more houses, we need a radical commitment to make home ownership affordable to the whole nation — and especially to young families. If young people are willing to commit to the future of this country in the most sincere way possible, then the country must be ready to provide them with a place to call their own.
This must be the foundation of a new, authentically Tory, social contract. It will require us to move beyond our comfort zone, to reject the landlord interest, to recognise the failures of capitalism, to embrace distributism and to put family before liberalism. Labour, who wish to make us tenants of the state, would be unwilling to outflank us — and the same goes for Reform UK, the Lib Dems and the Greens, because each represents a different strand of nimbyism.
Not unlike this website, the home should be the party’s logo — and its purpose. So there it is: a reason to be relevant again — if, that is, we have the heart and the guts to go for it.