After historic defeat, British Conservatives are at the mercy of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage

Anyone wishing to trace the decline of the Conservative Party would do well to start with 1979 and Margaret Thatcher's first cabinet.

The imperious new prime minister was surrounded by a talented array of people of great stature, including William Whitelaw, Peter Carington, Peter Walker, Michael Heseltine, Geoffrey Howe and Quintin Hogg. Let us now look at those who have risen and fallen from high office since Boris Johnson’s triumph in 2019.

After forty years of preparation, the once great party has been reduced to lining up characters who would never have joined Mrs Thatcher’s camp. Among the leaders, Mr Johnson himself, devoid of attention to detail and honesty; Liz Truss, I won’t say more; Rishi Sunak, a COO but not an authoritarian CEO; among the supporting cast, Priti Patel, Gavin Williamson, Dominic Raab, Grant Shapps (a loser last night). The latter list is long and unimpressive.

For some time now, once it has become clear that Mr Johnson is an empty vessel, the Conservatives have been lacking in policy and substance. They increasingly give the impression of an organisation prepared to do anything to cling to power. It is as if the well-worn label of being the most successful electoral party in history is sticking to their hair like a worn-out ball gown that no longer fits.

From the moment Mr Sunak stood in the pouring rain to announce the election, the result was a foregone conclusion. Their campaign seemed to be treading water, trying to stay afloat. Measures reminiscent of national service for all 18-year-olds came and went, barely mentioned. The sense of people not believing in what they were doing or saying, of simply pretending, grew worse.

This was obviously not the intention, but this party had been running out of ideas and energy for years.

Under David Cameron, they invented grandiloquent formulas about the “Big Society” that evolved above those of Mr Johnson, but they had no idea how to put them into practice. There has always been a difference between the Conservatives and Labour. The former is a party, the latter a movement.

After each setback, Labour would pick itself up, get back up and start again, more determined than ever to secure victory. The Conservatives never had such motivation. For them, it was all about winning, and winning. That was it. There was no vision, no detailed ideological roadmap to a blue-tinted nirvana.

There was a time when the rest of the party, the One Nation Conservatives, provided common sense and balance. But they were increasingly marginalised. The Eurosceptics were not to be outdone and this noisy little group began to get worked up. They were aided and abetted by an outsider, Nigel Farage. The fear he spread was out of proportion to his real position. Nevertheless, it helped him get the Brexit referendum announced.

But his grip has tightened. Look at the mess the government got into over Farage’s claim that NatWest had debanked him. It was a call from a minister that forced the resignation of the chief executive, Alison Rose, of a bank majority-owned by the taxpayer.

Mrs Rose did not need to go, Mr Farage wanted her to go, she went.

At the last annual conference, Mr Farage was embarrassingly courted by fawning Tory leaders. On the way to the election campaign, Mr Farage’s declaration that he was running for Reform UK was followed by clumsy attempts by the same Tory leaders to put distance between themselves and a man they had been courting and flattering until recently.

Suddenly he has become the enemy, more than Labour leader Keir Starmer, which speaks volumes about a residual and persistent fear.

Mr Farage had charisma where they lacked it, his reform manifesto contained populist policies that would meet with Conservative approval, he had transformed himself from maverick parvenu into alternative rival.

So the Labour Party ended up with a huge majority, a landslide. Worse still, if it were possible for the Conservatives, there was the arrival in the British House of Commons of the Reform Party.

The scale of the defeat was not commensurate with a crushing defeat. A Conservative victory with more than ten MPs would surely have sounded the death knell for the party. Faced with the resurgence of the Liberal Democrats, they would have been consigned to oblivion.

That has not happened. On the contrary, they are at a crossroads: continue on the same unhappy, uninspiring and unpopular path; or change. The pressure will be on the latter. But should they return to the centre where they were once so dominant, or should they continue to move to the right, to distance themselves from the Reformists, to take over? If so, is there an argument for a merger and Mr Farage as leader?

It is too early to tell. Yes, Mr Sunak must go and a leadership campaign must be organised. But the need is deeper. They must decide who they are, what they believe in and, most importantly, they must stick to it (their party is an undisciplined one, compared to a much stricter Labour Party).

There is a strong historical case for a return to centrism and a re-emergence of the One Nation Conservative Party. But that has not been the case in recent times and the loudest voices are on the right of the party. They insist that they were right all along, that the rise of Reform proves it and that if the Conservative Party is to have a future it must embrace the values ​​of the right.

The candidates for the presidency of the parliament from this party are not very encouraging. It is difficult to imagine that Suella Braverman or Kemi Badenoch could seduce the country as a whole.

There are two big monsters, one inside the House of Commons but outside the party, and one outside the House of Commons but inside the party. They are Mr Farage and Mr Johnson. They are the same two who ran the Brexit campaign. The fact that the B word is barely mentioned today will not bother them.

A Conservative Party led by Farage will not be the Conservative Party as we know it. Mrs Thatcher and her cabinet would be voiceless. Similarly, it is hard to see how Mr Johnson could manage to secure a credible comeback. He could refer to his hero, Winston Churchill, who was ousted and eventually returned. Mr Johnson, however, is not Churchill, even if he believes himself to be.

What conservatives are facing are months otherwise years of introspection and arguments. They have searched for everything and it will not end well.

The dismantling begins today. But unless it is accompanied by reflection, clarity and rigour, the decline is certain to continue. The temptation to act quickly will be great, but a period of reflection is necessary. Start by revisiting Thatcher’s first formation and asking yourself: how did we get here?

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Published on July 5, 2024 at 5:45 a.m.