The Bruges Group celebrated its 35th anniversary last week in the august portals of the Army and Navy club in Pall Mall in central London. The group was formed in 1989 and, in case you weren’t around back then, ignited the great split in the Tory party, after Margaret Thatcher made a speech in Bruges calling a halt to any closer federalism in Europe. Though she was never mad enough to be a leaver, this group used her words to send the first Brexit snowball rolling downhill until it turned into the avalanche that finally broke the Tory party into pieces. They spread Europhobia through their party until all candidates had to test positive for Brexit. Now many of their members are joining a new rebellion, clamouring to merge with the Faragists. “What you are seeing is a revolution!” one hissed at me. “There’s no going back!”
Days after their party’s worst ever election defeat, I was expecting more of a wake. But no tears were being shed for their deceased government or fallen MPs. Instead a gleeful “we told you so” filled the room, which often devolved into naked hatred for their defunct government. From a lectern decked with a portrait of Thatcher, the chair, former MP Barry Legg, said that in “its 14 years in office, it’s not been a Conservative government at all. It’s been a big state party.” The claim that “One Nation took over the party” raised jeers. (Odd this, as the One Nationers were notably silent over ever-more extreme policies.)
“Sunak never had the interest of the country” drew more hissing, with contempt for his “gimcrack manifesto”. The chair yearned for some “figure of substance and integrity to emerge as a leader to reduce the state”. Who would be “the best to come forward and speak from the heart? Someone with the economics of Enoch Powell!” Many in the room called out “Nigel!” to cheers. Some demurred: “Farage is only interested in himself.” Someone said “Kemi!” to a few cheers. Someone said “Iain Duncan Smith”, a Bruges Group member. Many luminaries of the right, including Norman Lamont and Sir John Nott, were there.
The mood for Faragism was swelling in the room. “This is the first time in my long life I didn’t vote Conservative” drew much clapping. “My head said Conservative but my heart said Nigel!” Great cheers as someone called for rebuilding the future around “Nigel’s principles”. In vain, the chair protested that Farage has 25 times fewer seats than theirs, but one call will resonate with Labour people from its bad old days: a member asked, to loud applause, “Do we care more about seats or backing something we believe in?” The heart had the room. Not a nice heart, at times: a woman harangued me about Jews controlling everything.
Most were for Farage – ending net zero, cutting taxes, quitting the European convention on human rights, shrinking the state, stamping out “wokery” and, of course, “maximising the benefits of Brexit”. Only the wrong lessons had been learned from the election result. This group is just one of many carbuncles on the Tory right: the Spartans of the European Research Group, the Common Sense, Northern Research and Blue Collar Conservatism groups, plus too many others to list. The misnamed Popular Conservatives met last week with the former MP Jacob Rees-Mogg and Suella Braverman urging a merger with Farage’s party “to unite the Conservative family”, egged on by a press that so badly misleads them on the “middle England” state of mind.
As party hierarchs argue over when to hold a leadership election, things may run beyond their control. Take a recent YouGov survey conducted for the Party Members Project at Queen Mary University of London and Sussex University. Tory members are evenly split on merging with Reform UK, it finds, which reflects the seething argument in that room. Tim Bale, one of the survey’s authors, told me the idea of “uniting the right is flawed”: many more Conservative voters would flee a Reform merged party. With his wolfish grin, Farage says he is “coming for Labour”, but Bale pointed out how few previous Labour voters he attracted, a mere 4%.
The Tories, he said, should aim for Liberal Democrat and Labour votes where they came second in many more seats. Turning right to woo Reform votes, let alone merging with the party, will drive many more away than it attracts. (Labour and the Lib Dems know by instinct that, although both may be progressives, any merger talk would drive away Lib Dem voters who would never back Labour.) Why would a party with 121 seats choose to be swallowed up by a minnow with just five? Tory members would choose the most rightwing candidate on offer: Bale points out that most European conservative parties don’t let members select their leaders.
Here’s another error. Successful populist parties in Europe are social and cultural conservatives, especially on immigration, but in Hungary, the Netherlands, France and Italy they all moved left on the economy, the size of the state, pensions and public services according to the Financial Times’ data cruncher John Burn-Murdoch. To succeed as populists, Farage and all these Tory factions actually need popular policies. But since right economics are burrowed deep in their DNA, it would take a gigantic political somersault to abandon their principles of free markets, a small state, and cuts to taxes and public-sector spending.
Look what Farage advocates: private insurance for the NHS, £50bn tax and spending cuts, cutting corporation tax, and a host of other policies that are unpopular even with most Tory voters. His support for Donald Trump is shared by just 20% of the British (67% dislike the US presidential candidate). Immigration does matter greatly: every government needs to control its borders. But it’s a top priority for surprisingly few voters: 60% of Reform voters put it top, but only 2% of Labour voters, says Bale. Burn-Murdoch observed that UK voters are “no less nativist or reactionary than their continental counterparts”, but Reform is too distant from voters on all other key issues.
Until the right becomes genuinely populist, Labour has nothing to fear but fear itself. Farage is not “coming for” it. Even so, the man has dominated British politics not by winning, but by frightening the life out of other parties. Unless the Tories can shake off this Farage fascination and regain public trust on the economy, the public realm and competence to govern, Labour will command the ground that most voters inhabit: a decent government, social justice, climate action and the long uphill road to repair public services wrecked by the Tories. The Bruges Group anniversary was a good reminder of the forces that sowed the Brexit seeds of Tory collapse, and how far its party is from recovery.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
• This article was amended on 16 July 2024. Due to an editing error, an earlier version incorrectly said that John Redwood and Michael Howard were present at the Bruges Group meeting.
