Rather than feeling the pain of loss, many of those who attended the Conservative party conference in Birmingham last week said they felt another overriding emotion in the aftermath of July’s cataclysmic general election defeat: one of overwhelming relief. “To be honest it feels like a weight off my shoulders,” said a senior MP who narrowly retained his seat. “We knew for two years we were going to lose, so it wasn’t exactly a shock. Now I don’t have to spend all my time answering emails from constituents complaining about all the dreadful mistakes we were making in government.” As for the future, MPs and party members mostly agreed, in their serious private moments, that the Conservative party needed to bide its time. There was simply no point in rushing. Many seemed genuinely humbled. “On several of the most important issues where we messed up, like immigration, we will not have any right to be listened to for quite a long time,” said one new entrant to the House of Commons. “We have to win back that right somehow over the next couple of years. We have to stand in the corner, show we have learned our lessons. And we need to come together and have a long hard think about where we go now.” Overall, however, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the Tory conference was a deeply confused and conflicted affair. The show it put on for party members, the media and for public consumption was certainly not one of humility, unity, or deep, hard thinking. It was about picking a new leader in a hurry, allowing the four candidates vying to succeed Rishi Sunak to promote what for the most part would be populist policies, while indulging and talking endlessly about leaders who had gone before. On day two, a key attraction was former leader and prime minister of 49 disastrous days, Liz Truss, who strode on to the stage beaming. Rather than repenting for sending financial markets into meltdown and mortgages skywards with her mini-budget, she did the reverse, saying the party would have done better at July’s election if she had remained in charge. Another ghost stalking the corridors was Jacob Rees-Mogg, now working as a journalist, who posed for selfies with adoring party members whenever they asked.
There was much talk too of another leader who had imploded before Truss. Was Boris Johnson, who was about to publish his memoirs, plotting a comeback? Two former MPs who had both lost their seats to Labour chatted in a corridor on Monday about the prospect of a Johnson return. One thought he should go for it in a couple of years when a seat came vacant because he was “a winner” and his ex-constituents “adored him”. The other believed Johnson would be up for it, but was horrified at the thought. On one thing they did agree: that the new parliamentary party would be split down the middle over the idea. As for the candidates to succeed Sunak, who had appeared for a very brief address on Sunday and then left, they strutted around as if having already won their country’s and party’s enduring respect and adulation. Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister who has turned rightwards as fast as he has shed weight over recent months, revealed that his daughter’s middle name was Thatcher, and said he hoped to revive the disastrous and costly Rwanda scheme for deporting immigrants, on which huge sums of public money have been wasted. Everywhere he went, Jenrick was accompanied by a group of heavies, darting their eyes around for anyone with possible malign intent against their man, as if he was leader of a global superpower rather than an ex-minister of a government that had just been thrown out by a furious electorate. MPs who do not support Jenrick sneered and mocked him with the nickname “generic”. Kemi Badenoch, the former business secretary, surrounded throughout by photographers as if it were the Oscars, seemed intent on causing the maximum stir while she had the chance, by questioning, among other things, whether maternity pay was too generous and the minimum wage was harming businesses. She duly got the attention – if not the headlines – she wanted. “I just love Kemi,” said one Tory member. “She just goes for it, says what she thinks,” she added, apparently not remembering the Truss disaster. Tom Tugendhat, the former security minister, talked a lot about his days in the military and attacked Jenrick for having claimed, without any apparent evidence, that Britain’s special forces had killed rather than captured terrorists because the country’s human rights laws would not allow them to be detained. Drawing on his personal experience, Tugendhat said the comments showed “a fundamental lack of awareness of military operations, the command chain, and the nature of the law in the armed forces”. James Cleverly, the former home secretary and probably now the favourite to lead his party, having emphasised the need for it to become “normal”, also tore into Jenrick. “Our military do not murder people,” Cleverly said.
And so it went on, often to the bemusement of the membership – believed to be about 150,000 these days – who will make their choice in a ballot, after MPs vote this week to reduce the four to two. The weight of responsibility sits heavily on their shoulders. In the last two such votes the members chose Johnson, then Truss. “I hope to goodness they have learned something,” said a former cabinet minister. “Somehow I doubt it.” On Tuesday morning two party members exchanged views on what they had heard thus far from the potential leaders. “God knows really, I mean they all have drawbacks don’t they? Kemi, well she has a bit of magic but she is clearly a risk,” said one of them. His friend thought Jenrick was “professional” but wasn’t quite sure about him. “And Tugendhat, he’s OK but I do wish he would stop going on about the military. It is as bad as bloody Starmer and his father being a toolmaker. Cleverly, he seems a good bloke, but I just wonder if being a good bloke is enough really.” Enough for what was another of the many questions on Conservatives’ minds. Before the conference a large number of senior Tory figures had decided to give the event a miss, partly because they did not believe that whoever the membership finally chose from the final two would be able to unite the party, and lead it into the next election. He or she would be a caretaker in effect. Their view was that the victor had a couple of years, perhaps three at most, before being tipped overboard, and that the prospects of victory at the next election were close to zero. If there was cause for hope in Birmingham, however, it was that Labour’s recent difficulties may offer the Tories more encouragement than they believed was possible just a few weeks ago. Alan Duncan, a former foreign office minister, who stayed away from Birmingham but watched the event closely, said the clear winner was Cleverly, who exuded “an air of decency and confidence”. But he added that unfortunately “none of the candidates covered many of the issues, such as poverty, social deprivation, economic management, health, and foreign policy which the party must grasp if it is to recover.” This was alarming because the Tories needed to get real for their own sake and the country’s. “The UK is at a dangerous moment,” he added. “We have a Labour party which has just won a massive majority, with a low vote share, which is already nosediving to terrible approval ratings. The Conservative party is on its knees, but its potential leaders have preferred shallow soundbites to meaningful discussion of what went wrong, and what their vision is. Short-termism will not restore faith in democratic politics.”
With Labour already struggling, some senior Tories – including figures in the shadow cabinet – are coming around to the view that, such is the nature of modern politics, the public might possibly still turn back to a reformed and sensible middle-ground Tory party sooner than anticipated because of the speed with which voters now change their minds. If that does not happen, and Labour continues on the slide, they fear the beneficiaries could be Nigel Farage and Reform UK. “We’re in an era where support can form and break up very quickly – this is sandcastle politics,” said a shadow cabinet member. “Based on that, Labour is in a very precarious position.” In recent weeks Keir Starmer’s ratings have nosedived as a result of controversy over numerous “freebies” which he and his ministers have accepted. And this after they had campaigned on promises to be different from the Conservatives and run a “government of service”. When parliament returns on Monday, both of the main parties enter a vital few weeks. Starmer will attempt to get his premiership back on course, first with the publication of a major bill on Thursday on employment rights. Then on 14 October the PM will convene a large investment summit at which the focus will be on how his party can revive public services at a time when money is in very short supply. On 30 October Rachel Reeves will deliver her first budget as chancellor, before the Tories announce their new leader on 2 November. The latest Opinium suggests Cleverly had the best of at the Conservative conference with his “acceptability” rating improving among the British public. Badenoch took the biggest knock. Half (49%) of 2019 Conservative voters say Cleverly would be an acceptable leader of the Conservative party, with 41% saying the same of Jenrick, 40% of Tom Tugendhat and 37% of Badenoch. But talk of the party moving on under a new leader was somewhat undermined on Saturday when its chair, Richard Fuller, said the Tories should never have forced out Boris Johnson at the height of the Partygate scandal. Speaking to GB News, Fuller said: “Removing Boris Johnson, whatever one might have thought about what went on or didn’t go on at the time, was a mistake.” He added: “My personal view was also getting rid of someone who’d just won the general election was probably not going to end well, whatever happened.” While some Tories now believe a new leader may at least make them competitive against a struggling Labour government, their own party clearly has a long way to go before it comes to terms with its recent past.