It was billed as the launch of a campaign to hand more power to Tory members. It was not, its organisers repeatedly insisted, a group aiming to reinstall Boris Johnson as party leader – or cause trouble for Rishi Sunak. It was about “taking back control” of the Conservative party for the grassroots.
Yet as the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) met for its inaugural gathering in a sunny Bournemouth on Saturday, it was less than 15 minutes after Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns had belted out the national anthem that Johnson’s name was first uttered on stage.
His close ally and local MP, Conor Burns, said the party owed him a “debt of gratitude” for delivering Brexit. Meanwhile, two boxes labelled “Team Boris” and “Team Rishi” were placed outside the conference hall, and attendees were invited to drop a ping-pong ball into one or the other to indicate their allegiance.
Soon after Burns’s appearance, Tory donor Peter Cruddas got up to attack the “plotting”, “secret meetings” and “collusion” that led to Johnson being removed by MPs. He and other speakers called for more rightwing policies that, they said, party members craved. Cruddas suggested the party under Sunak was now overseeing “the reversal of the 2019 manifesto” and becoming “a centre-left party … of higher taxes”.
Whatever its motives, the key question for Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) is whether this group and its members – who gathered for what felt like a party conference from a previous age – is a real threat to the sense of calm and order that Sunak has sought to bring to his party after a year of ferocious infighting. Or is it simply a small army of pro-Johnson disciples that will have little impact?
If nothing else, the event suggests there is still a radical strain in the Conservative party’s bloodstream that could well play a significant role in the next leadership contest, should Sunak depart soon after the general election.
It is not the only event signalling a greater degree of organisation from the right. The Bournemouth gathering comes before a three-day conference by the global “national conservatism” group, which has its roots in the US right. A similar cast list is likely to trumpet the Liz Truss-style agenda of low taxes that is becoming the main concern for many on the Tory right. In reality, even MPs close to Johnson find it hard to envisage him making a comeback before an election – and also struggle to see him wanting to take on the thankless task of leading the party in opposition. Yet the more significant concern for Sunak is the personnel who attended the Bournemouth bash – and the threat they pose to his plan to restore order to a party that has torn itself apart in recent times.
Former cabinet ministers Jacob Rees-Mogg, Priti Patel and Nadine Dorries attended – and while there might be agreement that Sunak is safe in his post, they are just some members of a group of MPs with the ability to make life seriously difficult for the PM. From their utterances in Bournemouth, it appears that Sunak will have to achieve a turnaround with a constant hum of discontent in the background.
In one of the most direct warnings from a senior figure, Patel, the former home secretary, received a standing ovation as she warned the party was in decline – and called on those present to defend Johnson’s 2019 manifesto, which she warned was being torn up by the current leader.
Rees-Mogg, to great applause, said that the government’s recent U-turn over axing all EU regulations by the end of the year was “not exactly a sign of strength”, and called for labour regulations to be removed and “supply-side reforms” brought in. He also, however, made it clear that the party would “be toast” if it tried to change leaders again. “It would make us look ridiculous,” he said.
Jenkyns said some of her Tory colleagues belonged in the Lib Dems. Stewart Jackson, the former MP and now Tory peer, said Johnson’s mandate had been thrown away.
Dorries, the former culture secretary and one of Johnson’s biggest backers, was the most passionate in defending the former prime minister’s record, but also the most cutting in her analysis of the party under Sunak. “We are going backwards,” she said, saying the performance since the 2019 election had been an “astonishing political tumble”.
There were other notable rumblings in the last week. Guto Harri, Johnson’s former communications chief, revealed in a podcast that the former prime minister had been so angry at what he saw as Sunak’s betrayal in helping to topple him that he wanted to send him a video calling him something unrepeatable.
Then business and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch made a provocative appearance in the Commons after the government’s decision to do a U-turn on a plan to end EU laws by the end of the year. Her decision to hit back at attacks from the European Research Group of pro-Brexit Tory MPs, rather than attempt to keep them onside, has gone down incredibly badly. Senior ERG figures said the episode had made it more likely that the group could join forces with Labour over certain issues to defeat the government.
These concerns on the right show the tightrope Sunak is walking. They are also coming despite the fact that one of the few political positives for the PM is the absence of a real electoral threat on the Tory right flank. The Reform party, created from the Brexit party, performed poorly where it ran in this month’s local elections. “Without Nigel [Farage] coming back, I just don’t see that there is a real threat there,” said one senior Tory sympathetic to the idea of Johnson’s return.
While there is no doubt that those in Bournemouth represent a chunk of the Tory membership frustrated by the lack of Brexit progress and what they see as a “woke” mainstream agenda, experts suggest there is little evidence of an electoral bounty from the agenda they offer.
“Because the Conservative party has become a radical right party, it means that it’s probably squeezed that vote about as much as it can,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “There aren’t that many voters out there who will come flocking to the party if it moves any further in that direction. It has probably mined all the voters there are to mine. But that threat from Farage remains, if Richard Tice [the current Reform leader] were to step back.”
In Bournemouth, it was tempting to think that Conservative MPs were now sitting atop a membership that was far to the right of them, creating the kind of imbalance that saw Labour members deliver Jeremy Corbyn, a leader out of sync with the parliamentary party.
But Bale questioned that conclusion. “I think people overstate the degree to which the Conservative party membership is much more rightwing than the parliamentary party. I think there is still quite a lot of love for Boris there, but that’s as much about the cult of personality than policy.
“You’re always going to get politicians who like the limelight travelling to where they will get applause and a lot of love, but that doesn’t mean the membership as a whole is prepared to become enlisted in Boris’s zombie army.”
