The exodus from the Conservative Party points to a deeper problem

Editorial: Parties that have been in power for too long usually run out of ideas – but also of talent

(Dave Brown)

There has been a whiff of decay about this Conservative government for some time, and one of the most pungent signs that it is rotting away is the exodus from parliament of some of the party’s better people. Parties that have been in power for too long usually run out of ideas – but also of talent. So it would seem now, after more than a decade of Tory government, in one permutation or another.

Sajid Javid is the latest sitting Tory MP to declare he won’t be contesting his seat at the next election. At 52 he is hardly an old man, he has held some of the most demanding jobs in government, and even in a very bad year for the Conservatives, he ought to be able to hang on in Bromsgrove (majority 23,106).

As the recent career of Jeremy Hunt demonstrates, as well as the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and, possibly, David Miliband, politics is full of surprises. But he’s off, nonetheless.

It isn’t hard to discern why.

As the voting in the Chester by-election confirms, unless something rather unexpected happens in the next two years of falling living standards and recession, the Conservatives will be out of office after the next general election. Who can tell for how long?

People who’ve left high government office (or have never held it) must look forward to the next few years with a sense of foreboding. Even if they hold their parliamentary seats in the face of a 10 per cent plus swing to Labour – plus a dose of tactical voting for the Liberal Democrats, the challenge from the Farageiste Reform UK, and boundary reviews – the prospect is of many years in opposition.

Their prime years (or their last chance to make what MPs like to call “serious money”) are slipping away, and the chance to get ahead of the queue at the headhunters must be especially tempting. Mr Javid joins Dehenna Davison, Gary Streeter, Chloe Smith, William Wragg, Adam Afriyie, Charles Walker and Crispin Blunt in heading for the exit, and many more will follow.

Unlike during the “chicken run” in the run-up to the 1997 fiasco, Tory MPs aren’t even decamping to safer constituencies. It’s becoming a bit of a stampede for the lifeboats.

Ambitious and vain figures such as Gavin Williamson, threatened with his seat disappearing, and Matt Hancock, recently threatened by spiders, surely see little point in becoming career backbenchers. One of the few “talents” on the back benches presently committed to fighting the next election and staying on is Boris Johnson.

A mixed blessing for all sides, he is in any case doomed in his marginal Uxbridge seat, assuming he survives the Privileges Committee investigation into whether he lied to the Commons. Perhaps he wants to go down fighting; perhaps he needs the pin money; or perhaps he hasn’t told us the whole truth about his plans. It seems quixotic, especially for him.

For a Tory MP used to being in power, the best they can hope for is an indefinite spell as a shadow minister or a chair of a select committee. Many have never known the cruel futility of life in perpetual opposition, but they don’t like the look of it. Some may return to their old trades – Mr Javid was an investment banker, and others will have to retrain or find quangos to run.

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Still, it is a little disappointing that so many of these people who proclaim their devotion to public service should seek to escape it at the first sign of setback or trouble. The Commons, particularly on the Conservative side, has suffered a huge turnover in the past few years of turmoil and purges; and now even more experience (as well as younger talent) is set to be lost.

Today there are few survivors of the Cameron years, let alone anyone with much experience of the Tories’ last spell in opposition. Soon they will need such skills, and the country deserves a competent opposition. Mr Javid and others could have provided that.

The Conservative parliamentary party has moved to the socially conservative right, becoming almost exclusively Europhobic, nationalistic and populist, and maybe some, such as Mr Javid, find it an increasingly hostile environment.

They are divided and demoralised, addicted to plotting, and now some are packing it all in. Whoever gets to be the next Conservative leader of the opposition – Suella Braverman? Penny Mordaunt? Mr Johnson? – will have to pick up and put back together a very tired, very broken party.