Where have all the normal Tories gone?

Over the past few weeks, one topic has kept cropping up, namely: where are they? Where did they all go? Like the horror movie Weapons, which came out earlier this year and featured schoolchildren all disappearing into thin air one night, centre-right figures are currently nowhere to be found.

The election was lost last year and, understandably, a number of Tories decided to take some time off afterwards, to recover from a bruising few years. It has nearly been 18 months, however, and their presence is needed now perhaps more than ever. Kemi Badenoch, nominally the Conservatives’ leader, is often missing in action, and usually off-topic when she does bother to take part in the national conversation.

Robert Jenrick, the empty suit who would be king, is so desperate for attention that, most recently, he argued that 1980s football hooliganism was just fine and dandy, and ought to be brought back. Most alarming of all has been Katie Lam’s freelancing on immigration.

A current shadow minister and rising star, the MP believes that a Conservative government should deport hundreds of thousands of people currently living legally in this country, in order to make the UK “culturally coherent”. The policy would be more radical than Idi Amin’s expulsion of Asians from Uganda, and involve ripping considerably more lives and families apart. 

To pick one of many hair-raising real life examples, all nurses with indefinite leave to remain would be deported from Britain under the scheme, as they, according to Lam, do not earn enough to deserve to stay here. Again, it seems worth asking: where on earth have regular Tories gone? Was there a rapture that we somehow all missed?

Sadly, the truth seems both more pedestrian and discouraging. It’s just Occam’s razor, really – the simplest explanation tends to be the right one. Centre-right Conservatives have left their party to be cannibalised by the hard-right because they just don’t care all that much. There’s no glitz or glamour involved in being a centrist Tory these days; few fancy invitations, and even fewer paycheques.

One friend told me of a once influential centre-right thinker who is still holding on in the background, just about, while aware that their bank account would look a hell of a lot plumper if they rebranded themselves as a Reform whisperer. How long will they keep resisting for? You can probably hold your breath, actually. It’s unlikely to be all that long. 

Once upon a time, shrewd and ambitious operators in their twenties and thirties would have seen a party at its lowest ebb and decided to get in on the ground floor, so they could reap the rewards in five or ten years. Unfortunately, the Conservative party was so thorough in its mission to alienate anyone under the age of 50 while in power that few of those people exist.

Of the handful that do remain, many have turned out to be mere cynics who favour the immediate promise of power over principled patience, and are consequently flirting with Reform.

What the country is left with, as a result, is a gaping hole where the centre-right should be. In an ideal world, a rambunctious entryism campaign could take over dozens of associations in the space of a few months, as the party’s membership figures are so dire, but it’s unlikely to happen.

Suggested Reading

Katie Lam’s immigration panic is built on lies

James Ball

Instead, we must reckon with the fact that, like babies whose attention can be grabbed by jingling keys in front of them, centrist Conservatives must be offered money and fizz to be tempted back into the fold. They simply won’t do it out of ideological certainty, or the kindness of their hearts.

Should any millionaires be reading this column, then do consider it your call to action. For the price of a few bottles of cheap prosecco, some think tank reports printed on fancy paper and a couple of parties in Westminster’s fancier rooms-for-hire, you may just be able to save Britain from what increasingly feels like a dire future.