Would the Last Person Please Turn the Lights Off?

UK Conference Coverage: Conservatives

This year’s Conservative Party Conference came and went from the 29th of September to the 2nd of October. Friends in attendance told me that it was so dull they “Don’t have a single story to tell”.

Attendance was notably lower than in previous years. Even the remaining leader Rishi Sunak only stayed for one day. There are many reasons for this lacklustre showing. Firstly, the Tories are no longer the party of government, and so fewer sycophants, eager to be in proximity to power, choose to make the journey to the eyesore that is Birmingham. Secondly, Conservative Party Headquarters have been cheerfully expelling some of their highest profile members — including Where’s Welby? founder Ben Weller, LotusEater.com founder Carl Benjamin, Fr. Calvin Robinson, and even me. My crime? Opposing gender transition surgeries for children.

If the Conservative party is no longer the place for prominent social conservatives, then it's little wonder the audiences are taking their memberships elsewhere. But as Keir Starmer’s popularity continues to fall — sometimes lower than that of repudiated former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — the race is on to inherit the mantle of Britain’s second-most hated political party. Did any of the four prospective leadership candidates make a compelling enough case at the conference to warrant them becoming Prime Minister come 2029?

Clearly not for James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat, who were eliminated by MPs in yesterday’s final round of voting. While the former Home Secretary’s speech was received well in the room, he did preside over an annual migration figure of 1.2 million last year. That same reason capsized Priti Patel’s campaign when the fellow former Home Secretary refused to admit fault for passing laws which caused the post-Brexit record-wave of non-EU arrivals. Despite writing in the Telegraph about Britain’s need to “control our borders”, Cleverly’s lack of credibility on the most pressing matter for Reform defectors caught up with him. Cleverly told a fringe event at the conference that Sunak’s pledge to “Stop the boats” was an error; when, in fact, if he and Sunak had the courage to leave the ECHR, they could have done so. Cleverly’s inability to foresee that his failure to deliver promises on migration while in government would derail his leadership campaign makes his surname ill-fitting.

Conversely, Tugendhat represented a return to the same David Cameron-era Conservatism which won a coalition with the Liberal Democrats; and then an outright majority which governed indistinguishably from the Liberal Democrats. Tugendhat represents the One Nation wing of the party, who, last year, published a veiled threat in the Times to New Conservatives like Miriam Cates saying “The message to the right is, ‘You’ve had your turn. Now the grown-ups are in the room’”. Given a majority of members support a merger with Reform UK, Tugendhat calling Nigel Farage “irresponsible and dangerous” meant his leadership bid was destined to be dead on arrival. Nevertheless, their insistence that the voters are wrong, not themselves, prevails.

Tugendhat received an eleventh-hour endorsement from failed Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Street who told the conference “I want my party to get back to that centre-ground agenda”, and that moving to the right would be "political suicide" for the party. Street made similar comments on Sky News after losing his re-election bid: “I would definitely not advise that drift” toward the right to counter the threat posed by Reform, and that “the message is clear: winning from that Center ground is what happens”. Given Street’s election loss, the party’s subsequent general election loss, and now Tugendhat’s failure to make the final two in the leadership election, the Conservatives may want to rethink that strategy.

Tugendhat showed no sign of doing so. When asked what a woman is, he replied “An adult human female” — but then softened his answer by saying that, while “we stand for the truth, we also stand for tolerance; we also stand for liberty; we also stand for personal freedom” and that “one other thing that a conservative leader has done in recent years … I'm really proud of equal marriage”. Given that same-sex marriage was one of the landmark pieces of legislation which ruled the roles of men and women functionally interchangeable, it doesn’t appear a Tugendhat leadership would have done anything to stop the advance of a predatory trans ideology which has robbed some of my friends of their chance to have children.

Tugendhat also claimed to be the most popular candidate with “young Conservative voters”. As someone who has earned an audience of thousands of Gen Z conservatives, and who wanted to punish the party with “Zero Seats” last election, I can tell team Tugendhat that running on the foreign policy record that has been a failure for our entire lifetimes was not a winning strategy. Saying that the naughtiest thing he’s ever done was participating in the unnecessary 2003 invasion of Iraq wasn’t quite the zinger Tugendhat thinks. Neither is suggesting that Elon Musk’s X is “a platform that is entirely dominated by anonymous bots”, and that online anonymity is, paradoxically, a threat to freedom of speech. Attacking the sole platform which doesn’t ban and censor socially conservative dissidents will estrange young voters, dissatisfied by the Conservative party who have been in power for most of their living memory.

Perhaps being stuck in an antiquated neoconservative paradigm explains why he thought vaccine passports were the most un-conservative policy implemented in the last fourteen years, instead of the irreversible cultural and demographic change, economic privation, and violent crime caused by admitting more than a million migrants a year. His proposed cap of 100,000 is ten times higher than promised by his predecessors. He refuses to withdraw from the ECHR. There is nothing “moderate” or “grown-up” about continuing a policy of failed foreign interventionism, and then importing en masse the aggrieved members of the same countries Britain declares war against. The electorate have said, time and again, that they don’t want it; and now Conservative party members have done the same.

Party members now get to choose between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick. Both candidates have made more and less sincere bids for the same social conservative faction which have been ostracised by the party’s central office. This same CCHQ establishment has been aligned with Badenoch for some time. Former permanent Cabinet fixture Michael Gove supported Badenoch’s leadership bid in 2022. When Suella Braverman was sacked as Home Secretary over criticism of how pro-Palestine protests were inadequately policed, Gove insisted allies “isolate Braverman, who, as the more “extreme” voice, with her heated rhetoric aimed at Gaza protesters, left Badenoch positioned for broader appeal”. This could explain why details of the first Shadow Cabinet meeting following the election were “leaked”, with Badenoch saying Braverman’s comments at NatCon DC constituted a “very public nervous breakdown”. Despite Badenoch denying the partnership, rumours persist that the former minister has been in her corner for years. Former MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns told me in an interview that rumours of a falling-out between Gove and Badenoch are fictitious. She noted that no source has ever been provided attesting to Badenoch’s outrage over an affair Gove supposedly had with her friend.

Furthermore, those in Gove’s camp have supported Badenoch and opposed her rivals. James Forsyth, political editor of The Spectator while Badenoch was digital director in 2015-16, broke the news of Gove’s support for Badenoch, writing that “Badenoch is establishing herself as a major force in this race. She is clearly going to be a significant figure in the party in the coming years”. Forsyth, who was best man at Sunak’s wedding, also got the exclusive on former Downing Street advisor Munira Mirza quitting after Boris Johnson blamed Keir Starmer for not pursuing charges against Jimmy Saville while Chief Prosecutor. Forsyth is married to former Downing Street press secretary Allegra Stratton, who resigned after ITV published videos of her laughing about parties during the COVID lockdowns. Forsyth is also credited by Sunak’s biographer Lord Ashcroft with getting Sunak into politics by introducing him to mysterious fixer Dougie Smith. Curiously, Gove has become editor of The Spectator during the Conservative leadership election.

Former Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has detailed an extensive theory in her book The Plot, accusing Michael Gove of collaborating with Smith, his wife Munira Mirza, and former Downing Street advisor Dominic Cummings to depose Boris Johnson. Dorries may not be the most credible source: known for her unorthodox interviews, and promise to imprison Jimmy Carr for offensive jokes. However, Dorries’ interviews with various sources paint a damning picture of a nexus of Conservative party power-brokers who ensured Sunak became Prime Minister, and who have long supported Kemi as his successor. After Dorries warned that Sue Gray, the civil servant who supervised the Partygate investigation, was involved in Gove’s plot, eyebrows were raised at reports that Badenoch had tried to hire Gray as an aide. (Gray subsequently became Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, and resigned this week, saying the outrage over her £170,000 salary "risked becoming a distraction".) Badenoch has since written in the Mail that “Hiring Sue Gray may prove to be Starmer's worst decision”, and that Gray tried to pressure her into dropping opposition to the SNP’s ruinous Gender Recognition bill.

Former Prime Minister Liz Truss alleged similar things about Gove in her political autobiography, Ten Years to Save the West. She notes Dominic Cummings was installed in the Department of Education by Gove, where Cummings gave Liz the nickname “the human hand-grenade” (also first reported by Forsyth in The Spectator). She then notes Cummings was employed by Johnson in Number 10, despite his and Gove’s bitter rivalry in 2017 leading to Theresa May winning the Conservative leadership election. After May stepped down, Truss wrote that “There was no way I was going to support Gove after his betrayal of Boris last time round. I had also since grown appalled over his manoeuvring to thwart a hard Brexit”.

Later, while International Trade Secretary, Truss received a call from Johnson:

I got a call from Boris, who asked me if I’d leaked anything. It was obviously not in my interests to do so. I told him it had been Gove, and what did he expect given that Gove was a serial offender? I asked him if he thought Gove had been leaking. He replied: ‘Do bears shit in the woods?’

Even in Truss’ unlicensed biography, an anonymous insider recalls:

They were really trying to kill her. I think Cummings and Cain really hated her. Frankly this is where Gove turned on her too. [...] in July a leaked letter Truss had written to Sunak [...] found its way to Business Insider [...] The fact it was CC’d to Michael Gove heightened paranoia in Truss circles, but she got the full blame from No. 10 for the leak – something she ferociously denies to this day.

Dorries blames Smith and Mirza for the premature end of Truss’ tenure as Prime Minister too. Both are also recurring figures in Badenoch’s career. It was Mirza’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities which propelled Badenoch from obscurity to being beloved by Conservative Home’s readers. The Times reported that Smith had pushed Badenoch’s candidacy for education secretary, quoting a source as saying “She fights his war on woke”. But for Smith, the founder of Fever Parties — a company which hosted swingers orgies in Mayfair townhouses — to be a force for social conservatism is confusing in the least. Though perhaps the need for the rich and famous to submit illicit photos before attending could explain his immovable status in CCHQ. It might at least explain his being likened to The Wolf in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. As one Tory MP told the Telegraph:

Every time there is a change of leader they go through the CCHQ [Conservative Campaign Headquarters] finances and ask why we are paying this person so much money when no one really understands what he does. After a couple of weeks those questions are no longer asked.

Another MP, who supported Rishi in the 2022 leadership election, told Dorries:

‘You know Dougie Smith was about to be sacked by CCHQ the day before Liz fell? They had to go through an HR process, he had been on the payroll of the party for so long.

If this is how the party headquarters are run, it’s no wonder the Conservatives are in such a shambolic state. For all my complaints about Reform UK’s softening rhetoric at its recent Conference, at least they aren’t plagued by such deep institutional rot. Perhaps the only pledge which Tugendhat made which resonated was to “reform the central party machinery”. The leadership candidate which prevails should commit to that — though there are reasons to doubt that Badenoch would.

This general stench of association with an establishment which led the party to their worst election defeat for a century is part of why Badenoch has slipped behind Jenrick in the polls. Other reasons include Badenoch weaponizing anti-White identity politics when it suits, and claiming to have “become working class” when she took a job in McDonalds as a student. Despite a recent endorsement from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Badenoch cannot claim to be a more right-wing candidate than Jenrick. In 2018, Badenoch boasted in the Commons that she successfully lobbied to removing annual limits on work visas and also on international students to benefit her home country, Nigeria. In 2010, Badenoch wrote a blog post while running as a Parliamentary candidate for Dulwich & West Norwood, promising to “Use whatever influence I have to speak out against those who are cheating and robbing Nigeria and who seek refuge for themselves or their money in the UK”. Pandering toward the interests of an unassimilated ethnic subgroup in Britain is hardly socially conservative toward the native host population.

Badenoch won back some support when telling BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg the blindingly obvious: that “not all cultures are equally valid”. She cited “cultures that believe in child marriage, for instance, or that women don't have equal rights” as those which warrant disbarring from being imported into Britain. In an article for the Telegraph, Badenoch wrote:

We need to demand that those who come here love this country and will maintain and uphold its traditions, not change them. It is not enough that they work hard and avoid crime. [...]

What they can bring is their culture.

Culture is more than cuisine or clothes. It’s also customs which may be at odds with British values. We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnichostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not. I am struck for example, by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel. That sentiment has no place here.

I might contend that the litmus test for abiding by British values is not, first and foremost, a love of Israel. I myself have lived in Britain all my life and have never visited the Jewish state. Her rival, Jenrick, has instead focused how on “English identity” — the shared culture, history, and heritage of native British people — is being erased by Woke revisionists. Such a sudden love for our collective sense of self led Jenrick to suggest historian David Starkey be given a “dukedom”. This certainly signifies a break from the Sunak government in which Jenrick served. As professor Starkey said, Sunak “thinks in terms of spreadsheets” and is “not fully grounded in our culture”.

Jenrick has chosen to run as a single-issue candidate on immigration. One source described his strategy as “the policies of Nigel Farage and the presentation of David Cameron”. It appears to be working: Jenrick’s campaign launch video is generating a positive response from Conservative members and Reform defectors alike. Though Farage has dismissed the Conservative party as “split down the middle” and “completely broken”, Jenrick could present a threat to convincing more voters to migrate over to Reform.

Capitalising on Farage’s recent reluctance to commit to mass deportations, Jenrick has promised to deport every single illegal immigrant and foreign criminal currently in British prisons. Emulating Donald Trump’s promise to punish countries with tariffs if they refuse to repatriate their criminal expats, Jenrick has proposed we penalise countries such as India by refusing legal visas until they accept returns. Jenrick said that as many as 100,000 Indian nationals were estimated to be illegal residents in the UK, meaning the recent published estimate that one in a hundred British residents is an illegal migrant is a vast underestimate. The figure is likely higher than the Oxford University figure of 745,000 — already the most in Europe — and likely closer to Pew Research’s figure of 1.2 million by 2017. For Jenrick to deport all of these, and more, after 2029 will be a logistical challenge. But it is a necessary statement of intent if he hopes to win back those who abandoned the Tories for Reform on July 4th. Clearly, Labour see Jenrick’s strategy as a threat: otherwise they wouldn’t be taking lead from the Harris campaign and trying to smear him as “Weird”.

Jenrick has also tied immigration into his vocal support for Israel following October 7th. Both his wife, Israeli-American Michal Berkner, and, as of recently, Jenrick himself, are Jewish. Berkner is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and grew up in Israel. Her role in Jenrick’s campaign may explain his hard lines on immigration and Islamism. It might also explain his style choices: such as MAGA-esque hats saying “We Want Bobby J”. Jenrick also wore a hoodie with “Hamas Are Terrorists” printed on it — the same he was photographed wearing while jogging in central London — to deliver his speech to the Conservative Friends of Israel. With momentum behind Israel’s cause in the Conservative party, this could help Jenrick clinch the vote among members. Promising to relocate Britain’s embassy to Jerusalem may have done the trick. Though, suggesting Britain display the Star of David at points of entry may have overstated the case…

But the predominant problem for the party, under any leader, is that it continues to shrink. Income from membership fees fell from £1.97m to £1.5m in 2023. The average age of Tory voters at the last election was 63, meaning time and demographics are against them. Most telling is the fact that one of the largest crowds at the conference was drawn by former Prime Minister Truss. Speaking to Tim Stanley of the Telegraph, Truss said Britain is “already a socialist country” and that de-industrialisation and record immigration were the undoing of the Conservative government:

We failed to take on the Blairite/Brownite statist orthodoxy, and the consequence is first of all we got the worst election result for the conservatives since 1834.

The note of optimism she could provide was that “Donald Trump might win! That would really cheer me up”.

Despite her unauthorised biographer James Heale writing that there is a “lack of interest among the four contenders in securing her nomination”, the party members have retained their fondness of her. The tale of how the Bank of England, Office for Budget Responsibility, and the Conservative party moved in concert against her would take another essay to explain. But in interviews on the topic with Unherd and yours truly, Truss has entered into formerly uncharted territory on immigration and the inner workings of government. She revealed candidly that unaccountable advisory committees attempted to blackmail her by publishing financial modelling, damaging Britain’s global standing and borrowing potential, unless she continued to increase immigration. Without saying too much, I can attest to Liz’s sincerity. She is sounding much like the leader members would now want, and so leadership hopefuls would be wise to take her counsel, without being tarnished by the lasting reputational damage of her ill-fated mini-budget.

For the Conservative party to reanimate from electoral irrelevancy, they must go against the remaining rump of wets on the green benches and speak straight to both members and estranged voters. This means promising to deport foreign criminals, reduce net migration to pre-Blair levels, and undo the economic harms inflicted on Britain by globalization, high tax, and net-zero policies. Whichever candidate prevails will be because they made the case to do so. Whether or not they look credible in delivering on these promises will determine whether the Tories or Reform are the chief contender to Labour at the next general election. But for both the Conservative party and the British public, it will be a long five years in opposition.