Tories embrace life in opposition at party conference

Among the many gloomy statistics hanging over the Conservative conference in Birmingham this week, one stood out. “One in six of our voters won’t be alive at the next election,” Robert Jenrick, the frontrunner to be the next Tory leader, declared. Grey-haired party members shifted awkwardly. “No one in this hall, of course,” Jenrick quickly added.

Not that there were that many Tory voters in the first place. The party crashed to its worst defeat in its history at the UK general election on July 4, winning only 121 seats on a 23.7 per cent vote share. The age at which a person is more likely to vote Tory than Labour is now well into the sixties. It is hardly a sustainable business model.

Yet against this backdrop an air of levity pervaded the Tory conference, as if the weight of office had lifted off Rishi Sunak’s feuding party. Many seemed to be enjoying the freedom of opposition and the chance to enjoy Keir Starmer’s stumbling early weeks as prime minister.

“It’s like these conferences are the wrong way round,” said one EU diplomat, marvelling at how the Labour conference in Liverpool last week seemed more like a wake than a victory celebration, while the Tories seemed to be enjoying the prospect of years of opposition.

“The Tory party hit rock bottom at the election, but three months later members are reconciled to the defeat. Many are enjoying the chance to reflect and are now motivated about building back up,” said Anthony Browne, who lost his Cambridgeshire seat in the July 4 rout. “Labour still seems not to have adjusted to actually being in power.”

Ex-Tory MPs, handed free passes to attend the conference, were everywhere. “It’s like a zombie movie where you can’t tell who is dead and who is undead,” said one party member. Some were catching up with old friends, others dreaming of the possibility that the Tories could be back in power before the end of the decade. 

“Hasn’t it been a fantastic four days?” asked Tory chair Richard Fuller on Wednesday to cheers, contrasting the mood in Birmingham with the “misery” of the Labour gathering in Liverpool.

But for some Conservative veterans, the mood was dangerously surreal. “There is an element of false optimism,” said one shadow cabinet member. “You could say it’s totally delusional. Just because Labour has had a shit 12 weeks. They’ve got four years and 40 weeks to get things right.”

The Conservatives spent the week looking inwards, cocooned behind security fences in Birmingham’s International Convention Centre, absorbed in a Tory leadership contest which involves only 121 Tory MPs and perhaps 175,000 Tory members. The real world seemed a long way away.

For the four contenders it was a chance to make a pitch to this select electorate, attempting to create a buzz and momentum in a contest which is due to come to a head on November 2. Next week MPs will whittle down the four to a shortlist of two, which will then be put to a vote of the party membership.

In this fight for Tory hearts and minds the debate sometimes veered towards populism, with rhetoric which might have been at home at the Reform UK conference last month or the US Republican National Convention. 

Former immigration minister Jenrick claimed the SAS was forced to kill rather than capture terrorists because the “European Court will set them free”, wore a “Hamas are Terrorists” hoodie and wooed party members with the revelation that he gave one of his daughter’s the middle name “Thatcher”.

Kemi Badenoch, former business secretary, adopted the populist tactic of denigrating institutions, suggesting that the BBC was a Labour front and that up to 10 per cent of civil servants were malign leakers who should be jailed. 

Badenoch, who raised questions about whether maternity pay was too high, spent much of the week claiming she had been misrepresented, each interview a reminder to Tory MPs that she would be a combative but potentially risky choice as future leader.

Migration dominated debate, with all candidates vowing to crack down on the number of people coming to Britain. One party delegate suggested it was time to “unsmear” Enoch Powell, the former Tory minister who gave the infamous 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech.

James Cleverly, former foreign secretary, and Tom Tugendhat remain the outsiders, partly because they are campaigning from the centre. But Cleverly emerged the stronger of the two from the conference, vowing to create a Reaganite, optimistic party and conjuring up the soundbite of the conference: “Let’s be more normal.”

This is a drama which still has four weeks to run and, while it might absorb the narrow Conservative selectorate, there were still reminders in Birmingham that power was now far away. Fewer than 20 people were sighted at an event for small businesses on the first day of conference. 

The head of one trade body said: “Some of our members paid for hotels and for the conference and that’s a sunk cost so they won’t get it back, but they decided not to waste time coming here because they can use their time doing something else.”

But one person who attended the formal business dinner said it was “full” and that the mood was surprisingly positive, adding: “It was so much more energised and positive than Labour, which is bizarre considering the outcome of the election.”

The overwhelming message from the Conservatives in Birmingham was that the party may be on its knees but it is not broken. Former minister Neil O’Brien said: “There’s a tantalising possibility that there could be a one-term government. The magic lamp seems to have disappeared for Keir.”

Paul Scully, former minister for London, added a corrective as the party walked out into the grey Birmingham skies: “People shouldn’t get carried away. Yes, let’s enjoy the schadenfreude, but we still have a lot of rebuilding to do. We need to unite the party.”