UK: What Next for the Conservative Party?

Whither the Tories? If they go to the left, they go into oblivion. The only hope is to move to the right to follow the people. What will they do?

From The European Conservative

By Michael Curzon

Tories appear more likely to go left than right

The Conservative Party has spent the weekend (not unlike the previous six weeks) bickering over the timing of the general election.

But despite its major loss, most commentators agree that the party has held onto enough of a base from which to rebuild ahead of the next election (probably held in 2029). This means that it really does matter who the Tories choose to lead them next, and in which direction (if any) they push the party.

So far, the signs aren’t looking great for genuine British conservatives.

The left of the party is working hard to ensure the next leader is “woke” and “wet,” according to journalist Steven Edginton. He has also been told by party activists that Tory bigwigs are brandishing the trans flag inside Conservative Party HQ, suggesting—as Edginton put it—that “the party has gone woke” (as if it hadn’t already).

In The Observer (The Guardian’s sister Sunday newspaper), former Tory deputy prime minister Damian Green has warned that it would be “weapons-grade idiocy” for the Conservatives to move to the right.

Meanwhile in The Sunday Times, Ben Houchen—Conservative executive mayor of the Tees Valley, who lathered praise upon the new Labour prime minister Sir Keir Starmer—described calls for the Tories to align more closely with Nigel Farage and Reform as “a knee-jerk reaction [that] risks alienating the broader electorate and exacerbating our difficulties.”

Houchen added that “Farage’s appeal lies in his outsider status and critiques from a distance of the established framework.” But what about immigration, or, indeed, the perceived failure of the Conservatives to properly deal with Brexit?

Indeed, it is worth noting that while the Conservative Party held on to its Remain-voting support base at this election, it lost large swathes of its Brexit-voting contingent. And lost it largely to Reform, which has campaigned to the right of the Conservatives on immigration and Brexit, as well as on tax and healthcare.

Politics professor Eric Kaufmann commented that with all this in mind, it is “astounding that there are still Tory voices calling for the party to move to the cultural left!”

Former prime minister Rishi Sunak hopes to be out of the job of Tory leader as quickly as possible. It is not clear when the party will choose his replacement and no candidate has yet formally launched their bid for the role.

But in a further sign that the left will maintain its grasp of ‘Conservatives,’ party sources have described the likely bid of former home secretary Suella Braverman—who is liked by many on the Right—as “dead before it has even started.”

Danny Kruger, who helped to set up the ‘rightish’ New Conservatives group of Tory MPs, is already understood to have dropped his support for Braverman. Reports say he will back former immigration minister Robert Jenrick—who yesterday insisted there is “no role” for Farage in the Conservatives—instead. Braverman has described Jenrick as a “centrist Rishi supporter” and a Remainer “from the Left of the party.”

The timeline of the Tory leadership changeover should become more clear later this week.