In her inaugural BBC interview, Badenoch declared her economic programme “completely the opposite” of Labour’s but would not be pressed on its key planks, falling back on the canard that “it is not the government that creates growth, it is business that creates growth”. A theme in the maiden speeches of the Tories’ 26 new MPs has been opposition to the building of homes and infrastructure through their countryside constituencies.
All taken, with Badenoch’s tone-deaf attacks on maternity pay, autism support and the minimum wage, this is the austerity and deregulation agenda that underpinned the Tory election defeat but even more crude and alienating. Equally crude is her escalation of old attempts to gain a base by whipping up division – attacking the rights of trans people, disabled people, women, and others.
This can all have a dangerous effect but is also out of touch with the priorities of most voters – public services and the cost of living – who widely view the Tories as irrelevant already. While Keir Starmer contends with Nigel Farage to head (net negative) approval ratings, Badenoch is in the play-offs with the Liberal Democrats’ Ed Davey. Any leader would have a mountain to climb now – but the longer she stays down there, the shorter her likely lifespan.
Badenoch’s declaration of war on ‘the blob’ – ‘woke’ civil servants and liberal professionals tying up noble entrepreneurs in red tape – does play better among some of her party ranks. The average Tory member is now 60 years old, white, affluent, and lives in southern England. Only 2% are under 25. The party’s 82,700 TikTok followers are dwarfed, as are all parties, by Nigel Farage’s one million.
The narrowing party ranks continue to be an unrepresentative rightward pressure, but are not without divisions. The conventional leadership candidate James Cleverley had substantial support but was cut from the final vote by MPs’ tactical ineptitude. Polls on the idea of merging with Reform – agitated for by Liz Truss’s ‘PopCon’ faction among others – are split. What is clear is the membership is demoralised and shrinking. From the last leadership election in 2022 to November this year, numbers had plunged by a quarter from 172,437 to 131,680. The layer admitting no election activity whatsoever – even online ‘campaigning’ – had doubled since 2015 to 56% this summer.
The members are not alone – ticket sales for business day at party conference reportedly fell off a cliff after the general election. “What business gives a damn about engaging with the Conservative Party right now?” asked one Tory official. Around 100 guests dotted the morning panels. Labour the week before welcomed 500.
To cap it all, they literally can’t get the staff. Shadow ministers are having to do without political advisors. Candidates for the roles are one problem – talent must see the private sector or Starmer’s Labour as far more appealing right now. But the main issue seems to be lack of funds, which is also behind complaints from Badenoch’s shadow Northern Ireland secretary that he is unable to go to Northern Ireland.
Adjusting to life in opposition has been hard – and the wounds from summer’s historic rout are still unhealed. A pitiful 121 seats, beating previous record lows delivered by the Liberals in 1906 and New Labour in 1997. Casualties included fifteen cabinet ministers – twelve losing their seats, another record, with three more standing down rather than face the music.
Bitter recriminations
Bitter recriminations exploded in all directions, but the theme among more serious thinkers was summed up by one former minister: “In reality, it’s the entire clown show that’s caught up with us”. The problems run deeper than the litany of grave tactical blunders, failed policies and loose-cannon leaders; austerity itself is hated – and the root of it all is an intractable crisis of capitalism. But it is possible to compound the consequences of that for British capitalism and the careers of Tory MPs. So have the losses left a different balance of ‘moderates’ to ‘headbangers’?
Subscribers to the influential thinktank Bright Blue, a mainstay of conventional liberal Conservatism, held steady at around two-fifths. Groupings tied to the mythical ‘levelling up’ investment agenda dropped in weight (most of all Johnson’s ‘red wall’ MPs, all but extinct) from two-fifths to one-third. The free-market nationalists of the European Research Group also shrank – from one-third to one-quarter. Overall, however, these changes plus those of the many other overlapping factions do not suggest decisive shifts; the wars stay unresolved.
Simple arithmetic cannot give a full picture – the Tories’ multidimensional cross-currents have chaotic positions and relations. The stormy events ahead will change them all despite the shelter of opposition. For now, they are biding their time. Badenoch made the usual overtures to include leadership rivals on her front bench alongside rewarding loyalists, with Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel and Mel Stride all taking shadow cabinet posts. James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat, the candidates of traditional stability, both declined.
The way back from the wilderness was the question before and after the leadership race. Columnists on the party’s right examined the successes of Trumpian base-building; Boris Johnson, “cockroach-like” (his words), trailed a future comeback. More sober pundits pointed to David Cameron’s turnaround in 2010; strained editorials and comment pieces in the Financial Times warned against populism.
Former home secretary Cleverly took the lead in bourgeois opinion, among MPs, and among the public (although two-thirds polled didn’t care who won) – exhorting the party to “be more normal”, restore ‘centre-ground’ policy priorities and leadership style. Robert Jenrick went the Trump route: wild anti-immigrant provocations, cuts to income tax and benefits. Badenoch tried to position herself as a more respectable right-populist than Jenrick.
The MPs themselves have only had a vote since 1965, after the traditional deference to brandy-and-cigars patronage by informal circles of elders produced a leader too divorced from voters’ expectations. The members had no vote till 1998, attempting to salvage buy-in for another new era, after defeat by Blairism. Even then that final vote caused problems, selecting the hapless Iain Duncan Smith in 2001. Another change may be in order but also risks intensifying factional conflict.
Shocks and realignments, and even formal splits, are inherent in the situation. The ruling class would strongly prefer a stable two-party mechanism to try to contain rising working-class revolt, and a reliable leader heading their own long-established institution is best. The problem is that capitalism’s attacks have gutted popular trust across its institutions. At the Tory party’s height in the 1950s it claimed 2.8 million members – a base per MP of roughly 1:10,000. In the run-up to July, the ratio was below 1:500. Despite the population having grown by one-third, the Tory vote was halved – from around 13 million to under seven million this time.
Another ex-minister observed that “Labour is about to hit the same problem we had in 2019 – almost immediately after Brexit was delivered, our electoral coalition was no more. The thing that has brought voters in – getting rid of the Tories – will have been fulfilled immediately… That’s the nature of the volatility we’ve seen”. The coming collapse of Labour is what can return the Tories to power – but the working class, the heart of ‘the volatility we’ve seen’, can collapse them both.
