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So the Conservatives are going to lose the next general election. There are already some accepted facts of what’s in store, from Rishi bowing out to a Tory civil war. The battle lines have already been drawn by the so-called “moderate and right-wing” of the party.
The right wing of the party has its established champions, most notably Suella Braverman, who would be more than willing to either run for leadership or throw their weight around in any election. Much of their support base in Parliament comes from the Brexiteer generation of MPs, elected in the heady days of 2019 to former red-wall seats. Here lies one of the big problems for the Tory right: the red wall is almost certainly going to be red again.
Indeed, a sort of stab-in-the-back myth is already being formed which accuses the more moderate MPs apparently in charge of being too liberal, or not distinguishable from Labour. According to them, the answer lies in moving the party further to the right. This has some credence to it as shown by the recent Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire by-elections, where Reform UK (formerly Brexit Party) gained at the expense of the Conservatives. But it won’t be the right-wing’s champions to see this reorientation through, nor will it be the radical transformation some think.
The moderates make up a sort of silent majority of Conservatives, and they are still a majority. Indeed, they are the majority of MPs who elected Sunak as their candidate instead of Truss, the “grown-ups” (as described by Sunak) best embodied by technocrat Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and the ubiquitous taskmaster Grant Shapps. They will support anyone but one of the chosen champions of the right-wing, who’d threaten to lose yet more seats in an election.
So how will this all end? Well as I said, MPs will worry more than anything about whether their leader will win them their seat or not, so they’ll vote based on this. After Truss at least, they won’t trust another ideologue or dogmatist like Braverman, who’d alienate voters just as much as Corbyn did for Labour. Rather, a more ‘pragmatic’, less loud right-winger will likely triumph in the mould of Kemi Badenoch, and Penny Mordaunt to make both factions happy.
Image: By Zoe Tidman, from The Independant Newspaper
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