“Pro-bono publico, no bloody panico.” With these words, Rear Admiral Sir Morgan Morgan-Giles sought to calm his fellow Conservative backbenchers over the question of European unity in 1972. At least in the short term, the Tories survived that squall. There have, though, been plenty of occasions in their long history when Conservatives might have panicked.
They endured crushing electoral defeat at the hands of the Liberals in 1906, and then again by Labour in 1945 and 1997. In the early years of Thatcher’s term of office, a public opinion poll suggested that the party might have won just one seat (and not Thatcher’s) if an election had been held on that day.
Some Conservatives now derive comfort from the fact that the party was not destroyed by these travails. I have heard senior Tories in private suggest that their party is the cockroach of the political world — not an appealing creature, but one that is able to survive any catastrophe and outlive its competitors. They talk of the “will for power” and capacity to adapt. They point to the “secret weapon” of loyalty, but also to the ruthlessness with which failed leaders are deposed.
There is something to be said for these arguments. The party reinvented itself to deal with a widening suffrage in the late 19th century and the welfare state in the second half of the 20th century. It endured 13 years of opposition, two electoral defeats and four changes of leader after 1997, but still came back to dominate — indeed, for better or worse, to transform — British politics in the 14 years after 2010.
Should they panic now? Is it possible that the oldest major party in the world will cease to exist? Polls show that it has been pushed into third place by Reform UK — a party that has existed only for a few years and currently has just four MPs in parliament. The British electoral system is hard on third parties, and this tendency has, for the past hundred years, benefited Labour and the Tories.
But if another party overtakes the Tories by even a small margin, the advantage could be reversed. Tough-minded will for power has saved the Conservatives in the past, but it will have the opposite effect once the political cockroaches decide that they stand a better chance of re-election with Nigel Farage’s face on their leaflets. It is too soon to write the obituary, but it is worth examining the history of the Conservative Party if we want to understand its current dilemma.
The Tories were in power, on their own or as members of a coalition, for almost three quarters of the 20th century. Their success depended above all on the fact that they wanted to win elections and they wanted to govern once they had done so. This is not as obvious as it might sound. There are politicians who prefer opposition to government; after 1968, the Tories were fortunate that Enoch Powell was such a person. Others refuse to make the compromises that go with holding power. Charles de Gaulle resigned twice, first as Prime Minister, then as President. He had not been defeated in an election, but he preferred the gloomy solitude of Colombey-les-Deux-Églises to the prospect of remaining in office without being sure of getting what he wanted.
Tories, though, have liked being in government. The late Lord Carrington first held junior office in the government of Winston Churchill in 1951, then served in the cabinet of Edward Heath from 1970 to 1974 and that of Margaret Thatcher from 1979 to 1982. For men such as this, the Tories were, above all, the party of government. They sometimes talked of resisting the “state”, by which they meant trying to restrict its spending or interference in private business, but they took for granted that their purpose in life was to defend the state insofar as it incarnated the continuity of British institutions and the assertion of British power abroad. Tory prime ministers worked closely with civil servants — especially those from the Treasury and, revealingly, the Foreign Office. Winston Churchill’s private secretary, John Colville, hugely influential from 1951 to 1955, was from the Foreign Office, as was Philip de Zulueta, who served the same function for Harold Macmillan. For all the jokes about Sir Humphrey, civil servants were vital instruments of the Thatcher project. John Kerr, seconded from the Foreign Office to the Treasury, helped implement monetarism in the early Eighties. Robert Wade-Gery, seconded from the Foreign Office to the Cabinet Office, planned how the government would crush the National Union of Mineworkers.
Tory interest in government always involved a certain tension. The things they said to win elections did not always match the things that they did once they were in government. Margaret Thatcher had a particularly sophisticated understanding of this political game. In the run up to 1979, she talked the talk of Right-wing populism about race and the death penalty, but she rarely walked the walk of policy on these issues. In government, she was a model of balance. She was willing to risk an economic policy that was, in the short term, unpopular. However, when her more literal-minded ministers pointed out that the logic of their position required them, for example, to abolish the £10 Christmas bonus to pensioners, she overruled them for electoral reasons.
Being the party of government gave the Tories three advantages. First, they communicated a sense of experience and competence that attracted many voters. Second, the prospect of ministerial office could be dangled to keep rebellious back benchers in order. Third, the mystique of the prime minister’s office conferred a special prestige on the party leader in the eyes of ordinary party members. Constituency parties were ferociously loyal to party leaders.
Things have changed. The dizzying pace with which the Conservative party has switched leaders has, in itself, undermined the mystique that the office once conferred. Psychologists used to test for senility by asking their patients who Mrs Thatcher was. Now even young Conservatives might have trouble naming every Conservative leader between 2016 and 2024. Once people who might have considered themselves well qualified as Prime Minister would serve loyally in cabinets led by other people — think of Hurd and Heseltine in the government of John Major. Now every senior Tory has their eye on the next leadership election. I suspect that some ministers of the last government spent more time thinking about such matters than they did about the mundane business of running their own departments. Nothing weakens Kemi Badenoch more than the sense that she is weak. Her powers of patronage count for nothing because few of her colleagues believe she will be in place at the time of the next election.
The quality of Conservative politicians has certainly declined, but the most damaging Tory leaders of recent years were both, in their very different ways, able. Boris Johnson was the most impressive Conservative electoral campaigner since Stanley Baldwin. He was also lazy, indecisive and terrified of unpopularity. These qualities made him catastrophic as a minister — let alone as Prime Minister. It is significant that he quarrelled with civil servants and was, in the end, destroyed partly by the intervention of Simon McDonald, formerly the senior official at the Foreign Office. Rishi Sunak, by contrast, was an outstandingly able minister but a disaster as a campaigner. It is as though the two great strengths of the modern Conservative party — the ability to win elections and the ability to govern — have become divorced from each other.
None of this would matter if we still lived in a two-party system. The Tories would have been sure of getting back into power sooner or later and, given the ineptitude of the current government, it would probably have been sooner. As it is, the very weakness of Labour is also a threat to the Tories because it opens space for new parties and, particularly, for Reform, which looks as though it might be the asteroid that will finally consign the Tory dinosaur to extinction.
It may yet be that the Tories will pull themselves out of their death spiral. Getting rid of Badenoch may help — not because she is a bad leader, but simply because the drama of bloodletting might be cathartic and because her successor is bound to be stronger (Conservative MPs will hesitate before disposing of two leaders in quick succession).
It might even serve Tory purposes if Reform were to win the next election. It is hard to believe that Farage — who had never held office or, indeed, done very much in his whole life except make speeches and appear on television — would be a successful prime minister. Could Reform assemble 20 potential cabinet ministers without scraping a barrel that contains some disturbing eccentricity? Plenty of Tories will join Reform if it looks like winning an election, but Suella Braverman and Liz Truss might not add to its appeal.
“Plenty of Tories will join Reform if it looks like winning an election, but Suella Braverman and Liz Truss might not add to its appeal.”
A more likely prospect is that Reform will get more votes than the Tories but not win enough seats to form a government. Most likely of all is some kind of deal between Reform and the Tories. In the past, Conservatives have benefited from political alliances. Only too late did other members of the National Government in the Thirties, or the Liberal Democrats after 2010, appreciate that Tory flexibility is that of a python, which squeezes its prey tight or swallows it whole.
Talk of snakes puts one in mind of Jacob Rees-Mogg. Of all prominent Conservatives, he is the one who has most consistently suggested an alliance with Reform. Being, for now, out of parliament, he has a useful freedom of manoeuvre. He personally would be well suited to thrive in a coalition because he combines the style of the most old-fashioned Conservative with a willingness to countenance constitutional innovation that makes the late Tony Benn sound like Walter Bagehot. He solemnly declared that MPs could not eject Boris Johnson as Prime Minister without triggering a general election because we now live in a “presidential system” — a remark that would once have earned one of the Queen’s ministers a stern letter from an official at Buckingham Palace.
Rees-Mogg has always been ostentatiously nice about Farage, on whom he confers the Wodehousian compliment “good egg”. Before they sign up to an informal pact over lunch at the Drones club, however, Farage might be wise to remember that Rees-Mogg also once pledged loyalty to David Cameron and Theresa May, and to ask himself whether is likely to be Wooster or Jeeves in any future cohabitation.
I am sure that some prominent members of the Conservative Party will hold office in future governments. It is possible that they will do so as members of a party that continues to call itself Conservative. But the virtues that even opponents of the party would once have recognised as being represented by the Conservatives — scepticism about rapid change and a willingness to take the hard choices required by holding office — seem to have gone for ever.
