Self-doubt does not appear to be a feature of Kemi Badenoch’s personality. The current leader of the Conservative Party seems as flexible as a crowbar in her opinions and completely confident in their validity. Yet the architects of Prosper UK have launched their new pressure group in the belief that it will influence her thinking and change the direction of the party.
She wasted no time in letting them know just how futile their efforts would be, declaring: “The people who don’t agree with this direction need to get out of the way.” Her dismissive comment took in all opposition, including Tories who have defected to Reform, and those who dream of returning their party to a centrist position, which is the aim of Prosper UK.
The Prosper launch party last week consisted of a scrum of disaffected Tories in a cellar near Charing Cross station. Recent party rejects, many of them sacrificed on the Brexit scaffold, were scattered among vaguely familiar faces from a bygone age. The urge to blurt out “I didn’t realise he was still alive”, was almost irresistible.
Andy Street and Ruth Davidson were both on stage at the launch, and their assumption that Badenoch would be interested in their contribution suggests political antennae in need of retuning. The former mayor of the West Midlands and former leader of the Tories in Scotland cannot bring themselves to leave the party that got them elected. The idea they can change it from within seems close to vanity.
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Prosper might well produce some worthy papers on economic growth, but betting on actual policies emerging that might be adopted feels like a long shot. And while the group makes much of its emphasis on economics, hence the name, it also makes very clear its desire to restore the party to the centre ground.
Given that so many Tory voters have switched to Reform, this is not a route that appeals to a party that is now focused on the polls. While the Liberal Democrats and Greens are also beneficiaries of discontent with the existing Labour government, this is not a hunting ground for Badenoch. However rude she chooses to be about Nigel Farage and his growing catch of ex-Tory ministers, she is not a natural to sit comfortably in the middle ground.
Anyone who tuned into Badenoch’s appearance on Desert Island Discs would be making a mistake if they took her choice of Wet, Wet, Wet’s anthem too literally: love is definitely not all around in Badenoch’s world. And she is most definitely not a wet. She is fiercely opposed to multiculturalism and harbours a particular antipathy to those who don’t take naturally to queuing.
Street and Davidson are right to say there’s now a significant cohort of people who feel politically homeless. They might have supported David Cameron at the beginning, as I did; they might also have been comfortable with Tony Blair. They might still hanker for the brief honeymoon of the Rose Garden when the happy coalition of Tories and Lib Dems came into being and showed how a less divisive political system might benefit the country.
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But whatever their previous allegiances, the Tories have lurched through chaos to become, once more, “the nasty party” and Labour is hobbling through incompetence and confusion and seems to be tacking hard to the left.
What connects many of these political refugees is their commitment to the European dream. All of them agree that leaving the EU was disastrous for the UK and that the easiest and quickest route to rebuilding prosperity in the UK would be a new trade deal.
Yet despite having support from Remain-voting Tory cabinet ministers such as David Gauke, Amber Rudd and David Lidington, Prosper UK has not been brave enough to commit to that cause. This cowardice is likely to condemn this new group of Tory centrists to an early grave. A pressure group of wets trying to exert influence from within the party will be ignored by a leader convinced that she knows best.
New parties do not have a glorious record in the UK. Instead, the pattern has been for existing groups to evolve their identities, precluding the need for an entirely new organisation. Today, things feel different. Reform has been the catalyst for change. Farage, whatever his faults, has demonstrated that, if the ground is really fertile, a new party can emerge and even prosper.
This may be the time when a centrist party might do likewise, since there are plenty of voters in search of a real alternative to the populist right. As long as the Tories want to be Reform-lite (and only a little lite), Prosper UK cannot hope to have an impact without taking the risk and launching a genuine challenge.
