State of Play #15: End of the Party 2.0?
Johnson's bombastic exit could trigger challenges to the Conservative party's continuity as the designated party of power
Over recent weeks several influential insiders and political players have mused whether we are witnessing the destruction of the Tory party. Johnson’s bombshell of a resignation, damning takedown from the privileges committee, and by-election pain inflicted on Sunak will only lead to a frenzy of further speculation as Westminster obsesses over yet another supposed Johnson comeback. The grand old Conservative party, last splitting officially in the 19th century under Robert Peel, is the British fastream to power. It is also the only ‘trusted’ outlet of conservatism – an ideology that favours the status quo rather than change, and thus conveniently its own continuation. A self-reinforcing idea from its original design. However, the hidden unpredictabilities of our electoral system, the rumbustious characters within its movement and the possibility of a breakaway group of energised Conservative insiders could prove Westminster wrong (again).
The final downfall of Johnson
As I wrote in my recent piece on Johnson at 10, the work which chronicles Johnson’s chaotic time in Downing Street:
’Johnson has insisted on remaining a political player, the book will have an impact on the live political scene and should make everyone question whether a second Johnson premiership is best for the country’
Everything which the team and I propositioned has, arguably, come to pass. Whether the book was published six months ago or six months in the future, the result is the same: Johnson has been undone, yet again, by his own callous attitude and laughable inconsistency.
His recent bout of scandal began with a battle over sensitive Whatsapp messages handed over to the Covid Inquiry, continuing through the attempted peerages of Nadine Dorries and Nigel Adams and ending with the privileges committee’s findings against Johnson for misleading parliament. A triple catastrophe caused by Johnson’s blinding insistence to fight Sunak, a man who he views as a mythical Judas who wrongly stabbed Johnson in the back despite his divine right to rule.
Many of those around the ex-prime minister talk of how he is almost completely divorced from reality. The spiteful resignations of Dorries and Adams confirm this – triggering by-elections designed to to further destabilise Sunak’s government, as a Whitehall source put it:
‘A big problem for Sunak is that these are precisely the Cameron coalition seats he [Sunak] promised he would win. One is a heartland rural Tory seat, the other is a suburban one. Both heavily Leave-voting.’
Will Walden’s (an ex-close Johnson advisor) briefing to The Sunday Times is an revealing insight into Johnson’s state of mind:
‘He had seen the writing on the wall, he knew he probably would lose a by-election in his marginal seat,’ Walden said. ‘His primary motivation here, as it has been for the last year or so, is protecting his version of the narrative.
‘So by going, as he has, all guns blazing, he is able to avoid defeat, he is able to blame pretty much everyone else, including it seems anyone that voted Remain in 2016.
‘There is no plan but he is preparing himself for what might be next without the humiliation of being kicked out.
The most worrying aspect for Sunak is that this war has turned brutally personal. When Johnson feels stung, he will always endeavour to hit back ten times harder – a vengeful characteristic few, if any, in politics hold so strongly. The difference now, however, is that Johnson and his allies are freed from the constraints of the party, meaning that any political retaliation can no longer be contained within the party mechanisms or pages of The Daily Telegraph or, indeed, The Daily Mail.
The great benefit for Sunak is that the privileges committee report was so damning that a political comeback, which many in the media still gloriously hype up, is near-impossible. The five counts it found Johnson guilty of are staggering:
1. Deliberately misleading the House
2. Deliberately misleading the Committee
3. Breaching confidence
4. Impugning the Committee and thereby undermining the democratic process of the House
5. Being complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the Committee
These are words that have never before been used to describe a prime minister – especially an prime minister’s actions after leaving office. Any comeback campaign or future leadership bid will be haunted by this condemnation. The issue, however, with the painful rebuke is that it will inevitably feed into Johnson's false narrative of a 'witch hunt' against him – possibly spurring him on to fight his political career to the last. If that career is not within the Tory party (for now), he may endeavour to follow in his hero Winston Churchill's footsteps and switch party. But where to?
The Options for a new party
There are two broad groups who are looking at the creation of a new right wing challenger party. The first is mused about by Dominic Cummings (Strategist behind Vote Leave and ex-chief advisor to Johnson) in his recent ‘Startup Party’ series, a fascinating set of essays on the plans, strategy and possibilities of a new centre-right party. Broadly, he wants:
A political strategy to develop the coalition that emerged 2016-19, turn the Tory Party into something very different, and to change enough of the people to make it stick — i.e ally a large section of voters with a subset of the entrepreneurial elite who can build brought in to replace a chunk of the old ruling elite;
The political project of this party would focus on three general reform areas for government:
1/ A new strategy for the economy and public services. (Focusing on long-term productivity, lowering regulation, lowering taxes, changing taxes from income > consumption, radical devolution, a contributory welfare state, destruction of old university hegemony and a focus on the ecosystem of technology / scientific development)
2/ A hard reboot of Whitehall, the civil service and critical institutions like the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (which blew up in 2020), JIC/JIO and prediction (precious and neglected), the National Security Secretariat (Byzantine), MoD (horrorshow) etc.
3/ A huge focus on science, technology and data as a foundation for each of economic renewal, Whitehall renewal, public service renewal, and military/intelligence/security renewal. Only a British state really making science and technology a fundamental priority could contribute to the biggest global problems and help create new ideas for international cooperation.
Cummings' vision of a Britain built of scientific and technological development; using the most powerful aspects of libertarianism, matched with the best powers of the state, is a fascinating proposition. But, while early in development, it's hard to see how this meets the 2019 electoral coalition he wishes to recreate — confused in a language of opaque technocracy and bureaucratic revolution. However, it's possible to see that a well crafted mix of anti-establishment politics and immigration reform could create a coherent social policy, matched with nationalist intervention and technocratic radicalism creating the conditions for economic growth.
Matthew Goodwin recently proposed his alternative view of a new populist-right party:
[First] Slashing illegal and legal immigration. Opposing Woke Political Correctness [...] And promoting Britain’s distinctive national identity, history, and culture which many voters feel are under threat from a woke new elite who are trying to repackage them in very bland, international, meaningless themes, like ‘diversity’.
The second part of the formula, beyond culture, would involve charting a route to a more leftish Tory economics. This does not mean embracing redistribution. Rather, it would mean robustly attacking China for its human rights record (and, I’d add, its increasingly malign influence over Britain’s economy, institutions, and universities).
It would mean advocating a more protectionist spirit in the economy, such as by offering subsidies for firms negatively affected by a more ‘nation-first’ approach and investing far more seriously in domestic British workers.
Daniel Finkelstein, who predicted UKIPs insurgent success in the 2010s, concurs with Goodwin’s perspective, arguing there is a ‘gap in the market for a Tory populist’. Goodwin has now been joined, hardly by coincidence, in his call for new populist party by none other than Nigel Farage, who stated on the Laura Kuenssberg show that:
‘I think there are quite a lot of conservative MPs like the red wallers who know they’re going to lose their seats running as Conservatives and if there was a coming together on the centre right, which is where the gap is, I think quite a few MPs (potentially 10) would come over [defect]. It needs to be more than just me – a general election needs a range of talents, I don’t know what Boris Johnson is going to do but I see a bigger gap for insurgency today than I did before.’
The insinuation that Johnson is essentially on the transfer market for a new party is a clever bit of mischief, one that will make Conservative party sweat. But it is nothing more than a poke: the possibility of Johnson joining a Farage outlet is very unlikely – although Johnson's current state of mind could push him to the political extremes he sometimes shied away from in No.10 (whether on culture wars, leaving ECHR or attempting to dissolve parliament to save his premiership in July 2022). Johnson certainly will not join forces with Cummings, with the pair having not talked since Cummings left Johnson’s No.10 in 2020. His exit triggered two years of acrimony and briefing, and on numerous occasions Cummings claimed ‘he would bring Johnson down and install regime change’. Johnson has even briefed papers that he will not be running in a new party, however it's usually foolish to take anything he says at face value:
Those who know Johnson best say that claims he will run as an independent at the general election, start a new party with Nigel Farage or run for London mayor again are all nonsense. “All this stuff about him standing as an independent is rubbish,” said an ally authorised to speak on his behalf.
Loosely put, these two groups on the right can be compared with the other main ideologies popular either within the party or the ecosphere of the British right-wing movement currently (NB these categorisations are subjective and not academic but do broadly represent the differences):
Where Johnson's ideology fits into this list is anyone's guess as it regularly changes given the day of the week or person he's talking to. What defines his ideas is the pursuit of power – not to be confused with pragmatism used in the pursuit of good government (see Johnson at 10, Chapter 4 'Dreams' analysing his ideological position).
Will a new party happen?
Bluntly, a split is unlikely to happen because the Conservative party has a natural tendency for doing nothing – one could argue this is their only ideological unifier in present times. This is not meant as a slight – the party values tradition and the status-quo rather than change for the sake of change or for some ideological belief, especially in a neoliberal, mostly privatised market economy. The catalytic factor, therefore, would be motivating enough influential party insiders – on a national and local level – to back a new right-wing party en masse.
I've analysed (see PE#3 on complexities of insider power / groupthink) previously on TPI how you must conquer a critical mass of those influential players or recruit exceptional people to breakthrough in the British political system – whether policy wise or electorally. With a new party in First Past The Post (FPTP) this is exponentially more true. Successfully launching a new party, as with pushing through any real change in the British political system, will require insurgents to choose one of two strategies:
Either break or benefit from the change of preconceived 'Westiminster logic' and then replace it with one which supports your position. The logic is a key bind which dominates the media and largely determines how many MPs, advisors, party officials and civil servants act and how much power you thus have.
Or, push through your change irrespective of ‘Westminster logic’ – an incredibly difficult task that has only been achieved on a few occasions. It requires a great team and a near-perfect strategy to fight the storm of the Westminster media and power players – with alienation and denigration becoming the norm for the insurgents.
The other issue is the possible divide between two (or more) new right-wing movements. We could see a rerun of the 2016 Referendum fight over the official ‘leave’ campaign: with the Vote Leave (Cummings) faction Vs the Leave.EU Farage / Aaron Banks version (all a bit people’s front of Judea from Monty Python). This battle was only decided because the electoral commission was forced to pick the operation with the most suitable and sturdy campaign – whereas in FPTP, anarchy rules. It is in this anarchy that many insiders have underrated the possibilities of electoral explosions if the Tory party civil war intensifies between now and 2024. Ensuring insurgents unify around a singular movement for its replacement might be the most underrated difficulty.
The ticking time bomb of FPTP could create a rerun of what Labour faced in the 1980s, with the gang of four and the SDP faction splitting from the party and creating a damaging inefficient division on the left-liberal vote in the 1983 and 1987 elections. Both Goodwin and Cummings have mused about a strategy to simply run ‘suicide’ candidates against every single Tory in the country and split the right vote, leading to a near-clean sweep for progressive parties. They argue that once the facade of Tory power is destroyed the new right-wing party could seek to replace their vote share – or even campaign on a platform of PR. The cost of running 600+ candidates is enormous, while the nuclear-style tactics of destroying the right wing vote and enabling a huge Labour majority would be incredibly difficult to pull off, but is absolutely possible under FPTP. In fact, it's arguably easier to kill the Conservative party under FPTP than PR due to the brutal impact of vote splitting (spoiler effect).
For now, it seems the old adage of the Conservatives conserving their status more through inactivity than anything else will hold them together in the long run, unified by the pursuit of power. However, if some insiders build a ruthless and energised movement and establish the idea that the ‘unite the right vote’ can no longer win power, many young power-hungry hopefuls and grassroots activists may shift to a new party to achieve a different Conservative vision, one perhaps with a more ideological basis than the old party.
Goodbye BoJo
Johnson has performed his final trick of scorched earth on the Westminster stage. It's unlikely there will be an encore. The Tory party may struggle to move on in the face of insurgent forces, disgruntled insiders and a Johnson free from the reins of responsibility. The hope is that the party, and the country, will learn the right lessons from Johnson’s reign of terror on our body politic and that democracy will only strengthen from this tragic episode of decline. Nothing, though, is certain.
