Taking back control: An uphill struggle

The other day I floated the idea that we will have to rebuild a conservative movement out of the wreckage of the Tory party. This was surprisingly well received, though there are plenty of hardliners about who are still pushing for zero seats. They tell me that retaking the Tory party will prove impossible. The people who control the party have taken steps to ensure members have very little influence.

Moreover, it looks like the party is parachuting “one nation” wets into the safe seats, not least Iain Dale of LBC. The people who control the Tory party believe the party is losing because they went too far to the right, and are working to ensure the right cannot reclaim the party after defeat. They see it as their own private domain. They're already anticipating entryism, and they're not going to go without a fight.

I’m told that entryism was tried by Arron Banks with his “blue wave” in 2018/19 and it was spectacularly unsuccessful. I would hazard a guess that it failed because Banks, though very personable, was a novice at politics. He billed it as a hostile takeover, and, of course, the organisation was going to defend itself.

What's needed is a group, perhaps New Culture Forum, to go in and persuade the Tory party to adopt genuine conservative values, rather than the half-cocked confrontational populism of Banks et al.

Whether that’s likely to succeed or not is an open question, but there isn’t much cause for optimism. The average Tory wet thinks anything that conservatives approve of is populism, therefore something grubby they must be socially distanced from. The core of the Tory party is a liberal aristocracy. They believe they are the centre right, but basically, they aren’t conservatives. As such, the establishment is “taking back control”.

That essentially means any trace of conservatism is vanquished from politics. We are nowhere, and FPTP effectively locks us out of politics - especially since any alternative party is likely to be ill-conceived and shambolic.

Here, though, I should follow my own advice and keep speculation to a minimum. We can’t really know how to attack the problem until we survey the wreckage. It just looks pretty bleak from here. Matthew Goodwin makes encouraging noises but we don’t know if he'll put his money where his mouth is.

I remain convinced, though, that the answer is a real centre right party. It has to be a principled movement rather than focus-grouped policy because genuine British conservatism can win where rootless populism cannot.

But what does "centre right" even mean when you have the likes of David Gauke, Rory Stewart and Amber Rudd laying claim to it? If those people are centre right then words no longer mean anything.

My writing of late has been exploring what the essence of conservatism is, but there are other dimensions to it. Recent developments in politics, not least the rise of political Islam, requires robust nationalism. We have to rebuild a patriotic British identity. How we do that, though, given the fragmentation of British society, is unclear. It’s far easier said than done.

For this to happen, I think the tide has to go further out on the Tory wets. There’s not much we can do for now, but as I’ve alluded before, external factors are more likely to shape the new British politics. Even if Donald Trump doesn’t win this year, America’s priorities are in the Pacific, and the writing is on the wall for Ukraine. Meanwhile, immigration will be the driving issue in European politics. The British political establish simply cannot ignore these global trends - much though it would prefer to.

Whether they like it or not, whether they acknowledge it or not, the era of globalisation and "liberal internationalism" quietly died while we were all in lockdown.

When we emerged from our collective incarceration, we stepped into a multipolar world, in which the post-war institutions are in a state of terminal decay, captured by a radical activist class. A world in which America is no longer the guarantor of European security. A world in which the EU no longer believes in free speech and free exchange of ideas. A world in which economic nationalism and national identity is roaring back to life. A world in which electorates will no longer tolerate the stranglehold of duopoly and the false choice of consensus politics. We are in a different moral universe to the post-war settlement.

The new conservatism must speak to this new world. It cannot be yesterday's men trying to put Humpty back together again. It must be prepared to build a new Britain, and a new settlement for the age of uncertainty. An age when the people demand more of a say in how they are ruled, and demand their politicians only act with consent.

The new centre is rooted in the nation state. The centre-right is rooted in the time-honoured traditions that have withstood throughout. Nation, community, family, free enterprise and free association; the authentic centre of conservatism. If the Conservative Party can find its way back to these core concepts, it will rule for a generation and create a nation its people can be proud of.

It will perhaps take a humiliating defeat in in 2029 for the Tory wets to get the message. In the meantime, the anger and frustration of the politically disenfranchised will only grow - especially if Labour is as bad as we assume it will be. They seem quite determined to ignore the herd of elephants in the room, not least immigration, but reality bites eventually. I know somehow we will win. Political gravity is on our side. It just has to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

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