Will the right unite?
Jonathan Edwards
The Conservative Party in the UK is undoubtedly going through an identity crisis.
I’m not the biggest fan of party conferences because these days they are money-generating events and performative in nature as opposed to serious policy-making exercises. After a month of listening and reading commentary on the respective party gatherings, the noise merges into one big smudge.
In the case of the Tories, the big announcements on leaving the European Convention on Human Rights; the £47bn cuts to public expenditure based on an axe to welfare spending; and a forced removal plan to detain and deport 150,000 illegal immigrants could all have been delivered from the Reform conference.
The Tories, who find themselves third in the polls across the UK, and fourth in Wales, are in the type of strategic sinkhole that the party has never faced in its long and illustrious history.
Duopoly
The old duopoly which enabled the Tories to use Labour as a polarising target evaporated once it was overtaken by Reform.
This major shift has been aided by the deliberate strategic decision of Labour to frame UK politics as a fight between them and Reform – which Labour hope will unite the progressive side behind them while indirectly undermining the Conservatives.
So far, the latter is working while the jury is out on the former.
The Tories are finding out that the strategic choices are more difficult the lower down the political food chain you go. It finds itself outflanked and losing politicians, activists and supporters in droves to a challenger party.
Leader Kemi Badenoch has decided to move the Tories more to the right to stop the haemorrhage but in doing so will surely alienate those who have traditionally supported the Conservatives who don’t subscribe to radical right ideology.
‘The worst sort of prejudice’
Witness the conference contribution of Michael Heseltine, who accused the party’s leadership of “encouraging the worst sort of prejudice”. The Lib Dems will surely try and convert the cohort of voters that the likes of Heseltine would have traditionally represented.
Badenoch’s position is not aided by the positioning of her rival for the leadership, Robert Jenrick, who seems to be acting with impunity, forcing his leader to dance to his increasingly extreme tune.
The common strategy between both seems to be to mimic Reform in the hope of being able to pick up the pieces if the insurgency led by Mr Farage implodes. The obvious question which arises then is what happens if there isn’t a Reform blow out before the next general election.
One current major division line between Badenoch and Jenrick falls on the question of working with Reform. Badenoch has so far ruled it out while Jenrick hasn’t.
Returning to Michael Heseltine, he also reportedly said that the Tories must make it clear that they would never “have any part in the populist extremism of Nigel Farage”.
Others in the party are far more open to the idea, based on their shared values and a realisation that a divided right would find it difficult to form a post-2029 government.
Critically, a poll this week of Tory members by YouGov for Sky News indicates that two thirds would like some sort of pact going forward.
Power
For the right in general, politics is about power as opposed to the tribal loyalties and blind obsession with ideological purity on the left. It is not unsurprising therefore to see active Conservatives looking at the next general election through the prism of the current polls and thinking that there is only one plausible route to some sort of victory.
The Senedd election results will probably bring matters to a head on this debate if the current projections materialise on election day. Firstly, because the Tories in the Senedd have a position of working with Reform if the numbers add up, but more importantly a fourth-place finish in the election next May in Wales will inevitably destabilise the Tories at UK level.
Looking down the barrel of a humiliating election result at the next general election, if the polls don’t shift, expect the volume on the unite the right clarion calls to get louder.
Jonathan Edwards was the MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr 2010-24
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I agree with your comprehensive opinion piece. The right seem be shifting more to the right and Kemi may have no choice but to cede her party to deform. Of course those on the right are clearly in the wrong and I pray for their demise.
The centre right moderates need to just give up on this lot and move to the Dems and drag them back to the centre. After this do-se-do has played out the Cons and Reform will eventually reunite as the Neocons, an extremist cult.
When you say Dems I assume you mean Lib Dems right? Because that is happening already. Its the outcome of Boris Johnson purging all the moderates in his party when he took over in 2019.
It’s not happening fast enough because too many are still waiting, pitifully, for their old party to return. That’s the problem with small-c conservatives who instinctively resist change even when it’s forced on them.
The last pact between the Brexit party and the Tories was easy to organise. If the seat was held by a non Tory then the Brexit party put up a candidate. There may have been behind the scenes conversations, but it was basically the Brexit party acting on its own.
This time there is a totally different dynamic with the Tories if they were a private company like Reform being ready to call in the administrators. In a fire sale situation like this how would this pan out?
I am no fan of the far right. I cannot abide Deform, the Tories OR Labour. But why on earth do Deform need anything to do with the Tories? All three parties are incompetent authoritarian zealots, but the hard of thinking LOVE Deform. Not for any understanding of their lets generously call them policies but because of <gestures vaguely> “all this woke stuff”. The only think Bad Enoch brings to the party is an unhinged fanatical obsession with transgender women. And Deform already has that covered. So why would Deform deliberately scupper their own ship with that load of useless… Read more »
In Wales the Conservatives have become Reform Lite .Andrew Davies not known for not coming forward has gone radio silent on the Nathan Gill affair.
Keeping his powder dry.
You would have thought Powell as Gill’s former aide was an easy target for an onslaught especially as there is a Conservative candidate standing in Caerphilly.
Yet nothing
It looks like there will be a whole stream of defections to Reform by Welsh Conservatives in the lead up to the election next year