What is the purpose of Liz Truss’s new ‘Popular Conservatism’ group?

As Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister launches a new Conservative faction – just what the Tories don’t need – Sean O’Grady asks if it’s an attempt to steer the party to the right, or if this is all about Truss’s endless desire to rehabilitate her career in the wake of her catastrophic seven weeks in No 10

Break out the PopCon: the irrepressible Liz Truss is launching what amounts to yet another Truss fan club (PA)

The irrepressible Liz Truss, who boasts the shortest-lived premiership in British history, is launching what amounts to yet another Truss fan club, “PopCon”. It is partly aimed at rehabilitating her political career – and, presumably, at securing her some kind of role in the reconstruction of the right with the Conservative Party in opposition, as seems inevitable after the next general election. It also represents a futile, performative attempt to influence Rishi Sunak’s election manifesto.

The unlikely name “PopCon” stands for “popular conservatism” and is “aiming to restore democratic accountability to Britain and deliver popular conservative policies”. The small “c” there is presumably not accidental – there’ll be an emphasis on social conservatism as well as neoliberal economics. Some will wonder whether the Tory party really needs another splinter group...

So what is ‘popular conservatism’?

No one really knows what that means, but it does suggest aggressive nationalistic populism, as well as more power for the Tory membership over the choice of leader and policies – and commensurately less for MPs (who tend to be dangerously centrist, at least by Conservative standards). As is the way with these things, the artful use of the word “popular” actually hints at an attempt to make the Tory party populist again, which, some would argue, was the reason for its extraordinary success in the 2019 general election – and, by proxy, in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

But the disappointments of populism are also the reason for the party’s extraordinary collapse in the more recent past. Of course, the personality of Boris Johnson has been a crucial factor throughout, and he gave the cause of populism some jokey intellectual veneer with his cod philosophy of cakeism. That also pointed to a quiet acknowledgement that, in the real world, it’s not possible to have one’s cake and eat it, but pretending it is possible is a good way to win elections. Since then, Johnson’s reputation, along with the popularity of both Brexit and populism, has declined markedly.

Needless to say, Liz Truss is not Johnson, even if she might wish to be, and she isn’t anywhere near as accomplished a populist as was her predecessor as prime minister. At any rate, it seems fairly predictable that populist conservatism will be about building a low-tax, low-regulation, growth economy; delivering a diminished welfare state; waging war on “woke”; more defence spending; lower immigration; and what might be termed “more Brexit”. The same as all the other factions on the right, in other words.

Who is behind PopCon?

Very much the usual suspects – allies of Truss, given preferential treatment during her brief time in No 10 only to be swiftly dispossessed by Sunak. Thus, for the launch event on 6 February, Truss will be headlining with Simon Clarke, Ranil Jayawardena and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Clarke served briefly as levelling up secretary under Truss, and is her ambassador on Earth. He’s also a leading light in the Trussite Conservative Growth Group. Perhaps surprisingly, the Growth Group has as many as 50 latter-day members, though it’s fair to say they vary in the extent of their personal devotion to Truss.

How is PopCon different from the other groups?

That is hard to say. It’s obviously got a different agenda from the One Nation group of MPs, on the centrist wing of the party, led informally by Damian Green and claiming around 100 supporters. On and around the right of the party, however, there’s a bewildering kaleidoscope of groups, including those sometimes referred to as the “five families” – a monicker that suggests a mafiosi aspect to their activities, though this is at odds with their actual ability to menace even Sunak.

A non-exhaustive list of groups on the right that should not be confused with PopCon would comprise the following: the European Research Group; the Covid Recovery Group (in abeyance); the China Research Group; the Common Sense Group; the Conservative Growth Group; the Conservative Democratic Organisation; the National Conservatives, or “Nat Cs”, whose membership reaches outside the Tory party; the New Conservatives – and, on an international scale, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.

Alongside these are a variety of right-leaning think tanks, old and new, including the Centre for Policy Studies, Policy Exchange and Bright Blue, plus countless pressure groups and ad hoc alliances. Memberships tend to overlap, and they tend to split at the first sign of resistance from the party leadership, in stark contrast to the way in which they wrecked Theresa May’s premiership. With so many groups fighting among themselves, you wonder how members of the parliamentary Tory party manage to find the energy to run the country. Or maybe not.

Is PopCon what the party needs now?

Ask anyone, inside or outside the Conservative Party, and the last idea that would come to mind would be “Let’s start another group.” The number of these sects is a pathological phenomenon, in the sense of its being evidence of a party looking in on itself rather than paying much attention to the electorate.

In good times, a varied and vibrant intellectual ecosystem can be of enormous value to a political party; but in the stale, slightly squalid state of today’s Conservatives, such factionalism is already doing grievous harm to the party’s unity, its electoral prospects, and possibly even its chances of survival. If the Tories had any sense, someone would strangle PopCon at birth and expunge Truss.

What does Truss want?

Apart from to turn the clock back and still be PM and leader, it’s reasonable to surmise that she’d like to be, say, shadow chancellor in the next Tory shadow cabinet. Blissfully free of self-awareness, let alone humility, Truss would no doubt be an uncomfortable cabinet colleague even for those like-minded Tories who are already quietly running for leader, such as Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, or, to a lesser extent, James Cleverly.

Her seat in Norfolk is so safe that Truss can assume she’ll still be around even after a Labour landslide, and will be well placed in a denuded parliamentary party to bring her talents to a new, supposedly unified, Tory front bench. To that extent, she’d be rehabilitated; but voters probably won’t have forgotten or forgiven her for that mini-Budget.

A Truss comeback? As she might say, that is a disgrace.