The Tory ‘wets’ are finished. Good riddance

In the end, it wasn’t quite an extinction level event for the Tories. Still, the “natural party of government” has been partially buried by a volcanic eruption. With the Conservatives defying the poll-driven speculation that it might be reduced to just 50 seats, many in the party are sighing with relief. “True, the results are dismal, but they are not existential”, they say. Such optimism is unfounded. The party is officially at death’s door. While Conservative MPs are claiming that the “fightback against Labour begins today”, the truth is that they have just been plunged into a fight for their very survival.

This is down to the simple fact that the Tories have collapsed in the Red Wall. It is worth remembering that amid the realignment of politics in this country – with middle-class professionals shifting to the liberal-Left and the offspring of the traditional working-class gravitating towards conservatism – the Red Wall is now absolutely foundational to building Right-wing parliamentary majorities. And yet not only was the party turfed out by Labour in seat after seat, but across the North East and in the Midlands it was relegated to third position by a surging Reform.

Let that sink in. The Tories are the third party of choice in what should be home turf. Reform, in contrast, is now the main opposition to Labour across swathes of the Red Wall. That is a cataclysmic outcome for the Tories. The “homeless” former Labour voters of this country’s rust belt – who have now finally found the alternative populist movement that they have been longing for in Reform – may never come back to them.

The other outcome of this election which raises serious questions about the Tory party’s future as a major force in this country is that, in the eyes of much of the electorate, it is now a motley crew of nonentities. Like it or not, populist politics is about primary colours. The Tory party returning to Parliament is decidedly pastel. And that is a huge problem. It has lost many of its most vibrant characters – from the soothingly magisterial Penny Mordaunt to Victoriana throwback Jacob Rees Mogg and truculent libertarian Liz Truss. True, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch are all strong women, but the fact is that the standout star Right-wing MP heading into this Parliament is not a Tory, but Nigel Farage.

His number two, Richard Tice, who built up Reform in preparation for Farage’s return as leader, has also built a strong profile for himself in Tory England as a smooth-talking Thatcherite. There is an air of Blair without the Blairism about him. He is one to watch. The conundrum is compounded by the liberal media’s revolted fascination with Reform. The Tories have struggled to compete for attention over this election. This is likely to continue in coming months.

There is a silver lining for the Tories, however. The party may be significantly diminished but it is immeasurably more coherent. The One Nation Tory wets’ vise grip over the party has finally been broken. What used to be the single biggest organised faction in the party now comprises barely a handful of MPs.

The implications are huge. Until today, the wets constituted the single biggest obstacle to a long-term recovery of the Tories due to their relentless, self-serving promotion of the mythology that politics is won in the centre ground. In fact over the last decade, British politics has shifted from being characterised by a single Left-Right continuum with most voters clustered in the middle, to a much more complex and polarised state of affairs. These days, voters hold more multi-dimensional views that are spread across the extremities of liberalism and conservatism. (An interesting example is the increasing number of people who now combine laissez-faire economic views with a tough attitude to border control amid surging migration.) This means that majorities can only be won through conviction politics – that is, parties taking a strong stance on issues that unify their target voters (in the Tory case, immigration), at the same time as leveraging their popular support to act in the national interest when it comes to issues that split their voting coalition (in the Tory case, economic policy).

The One Nation Tories have continuously obfuscated this new reality of British politics in order to save their own terminal Blue Wall seats. Their power has remained unhelpfully disproportionate through the last Parliament, not only due to their securing of safe seats during the David Cameron era but the weakness of the opposition in 2019. Had it not been for Corbyn and Jo Swinson’s dismal Presidential-style election campaign back then, many of the wets’ seats would have fallen five years ago.

Today, not only have many on the liberal-Left end of Sunak’s former Cabinet been turfed out but the next generation of wets rising stars, including Matt Warman of Boston and Skegness, and Bim Afolami of Hitchin, have been swept away. True, a smattering of high-profile wets like Jeremy Hunt and Tom Tugendhat have clung on and are predictably on manoeuvres for the leadership. But with the Tories now somewhat more cohesively Right-wing, it should at least make it easier for the party to agree on what has gone wrong and the best way forward.

Still, humility does not come easy to the Tories and the reality that they must somehow absorb the Reform movement into the party if they are to have a future will be difficult for it to come to terms with. The question is whether the party would prefer to swallow its pride or be swallowed by Reform within the next five years. The answer is not yet clear.