Now the Tory right plots life after a Sunak election defeat

From Medway to Maidenhead, Conservatives are agitating for the return of Boris Johnson, says Sean O’Grady

Liberal Democrats celebrating huge local election gains in Windsor on Friday (Getty)

By common consent, the Conservatives lost the local elections by a significant margin. The projected national vote share of 26 per cent was close to a record low for the party in such a contest. They came in 9 per cent behind Labour, whose own performance wasn’t outstanding. The Tories also fell prey to factors including the resurgent Liberal Democrats, some disillusioned voters staying at home, an attack from the Greens, and tactical voting. It was rather worse than most Conservatives feared, and some on the right have been considering the future in opposition. Inevitably, a few have even been agitating for the return of Boris Johnson.

What’s next for the Tory right?

Predictably, some intensive sessions of plotting and fantasy politics are planned alongside dinner, drinks and, in one case, benediction.

First up is the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) – a Tory version of the old Bennites, and later the Corbynistas, who sought to wrest control of the party from the MPs and give it to the members. Their aim, crudely, is a lurch to the right. The drawback is that members tend to be more extreme than the voters they seek to attract, and parties that take this path often pay an electoral price for their ideological purity.

In the case of the CDO, they make no secret of wanting to bring back Boris. On Saturday 13 May they will host a “Take Control” conference in Bournemouth featuring “a stellar line-up of speakers and celebrity panellists”. There’s more: “In the evening, we invite you to lose control on the dance floor after a superb three-course meal, wine, and live music from Britain’s Got Talent stars, The Soldiers of Swing.”

Headed up by long-time Johnson ally Peter Cruddas and backed by Johnson loyalists such as Priti Patel, Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg, the CDO’s aims include “retaining and reinforcing the party membership’s democratic right to choose the party leader”. As has been rumoured for many weeks, Johnson is mulling an appearance.

And after that?

If that Rishi Sunak hatefest leaves you unsated, you can do your bit to further fragment the Tory party at the curiously named National Conservatism Conference, on 15-17 May in London. It is also known as NatCon – and, to mischievous critics, as the “NatC party”. This looks to be a wider grouping of the populist nationalist right – beyond conventional Conservative ranks – with more of a tilt towards libertarianism. In their words, national conservatives “see national conservatism as the best path forward for a democratic world confronted by a rising China abroad and a powerful new Marxism at home. We see the rich tradition of national conservative thought as an intellectually serious alternative to the excesses of purist libertarianism, and in stark opposition to political theories grounded in race.”

If you pop along, you can enjoy another dose of Rees-Mogg, while other advertised speakers include Michael Gove, David Frost, Katharine Birbalsingh, Frank Furedi, Darren Grimes, Matthew Goodwin, David Starkey, Peter Whittle and Toby Young. There is more than a whiff there of some yearning for a purer, more nationalistic, Conservative Party, making it dogmatic again, Thatcher-style. It would mark the completion of the purge of Remainers and wets embarked on by Johnson and Dominic Cummings in 2019 and currently stalled. It’s not the sort of body in which Sunak, Jeremy Hunt, Theresa May or Ken Clarke would be welcome. The keynote speaker is Suella Braverman, whose talent for self-publicity far exceeds her capacity for sound judgement.

What’s all this foment about?

Not government. Despite the drubbing at the local elections and dismal opinion polls, there’s no wider appetite in the party to ditch Sunak, not least because such a move is up to MPs – and the alternatives are so much worse.

The recent attempted Commons revolt against the Windsor Framework, backed by Johnson and Liz Truss, was a damp squib at about 22 rebels. Also, Johnson is under investigation by the Commons privileges committee over accusations that he lied to parliament, and Truss, another contender – if only in her imagination – had her chance and blew it.

So what’s the plan?

It seems clear that the Conservatives are not seriously contemplating yet another change of prime minister, or even any serious attempt to deflect Sunak and Hunt from their current trajectory. The party is staring at a near-certain spell in opposition, and the jostling to be leader while the party is reformed and reinvigorated is getting under way.

It’s no great surprise that Braverman is assiduously courting the right, and pushing the limits of collective cabinet responsibility in the process, safe in the knowledge that Sunak is too weak to fire her. Under a Braverman leadership, the party could split – but that would be welcomed by the hard-Brexiteer Thatcherites: they can be as intolerant as their counterparts on the hard left. Either way, the right would be left fractured, weakened, and electorally unattractive.

In broad terms, hard-right Tories hope Labour would flounder for one term, allowing a new radical Conservative Party to return to government and complete their hard Brexit, scrap the EU-UK free trade treaty, leave the European Court of Human Rights, dismantle the welfare state, and create the low-tax, small-state, light-regulation Singapore-on-Sea they have promised for a decade or more.

Could the Tory party really split?

Possibly, with the right wing attracting libertarian intellectuals, cranks, and the likes of Nigel Farage and Reform UK to create a new National Conservative Party, ditching remaining moderates. However, it’s more likely that the Tories would indulge themselves in another long civil war, with ever more bitter battles over Europe, tax, the size of the state, trans rights and migration.

It would be just like after the last time they lost an election after a long period in office, in 1997, after which they soon became utterly irrelevant. That time they waited 13 years to get back into government; next time it might be even longer.