Are some Tories ‘deluding’ themselves in calling for push to the right?

In brief...

• Tories like Rees-Mogg and Braverman are shifting further right, finding comfort in an 'ideological' space.
• Lewis believes some Conservatives haven't grasped the severity of their recent electoral defeat.
• There are two possible responses for the Conservatives: they can either insist on being more authentically themselves or learn from the electorate and adapt, similar to how Labour adjusted after their 2019 loss under Jeremy Corbyn.

“I have answered the question, you just didn’t like that answer.”

That was what former Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said, frostily, to Emily Maitlis’ question about the future of the Tory party, at this week’s Popular Conservatism (PopCon) conference.

She asked him why, when the UK public had just voted in a left-wing, Labour government, did he think the Conservatives needed to push harder to the right in response.

Rees-Mogg replied swiftly, saying: “Well, the parties of the right got 11 million votes. I think you're ignoring that.”

He’s referring to the combined votes won by the Tories and Reform UK.

“They wanted us to believe that the Reform UK vote was basically part of the Conservative vote that had splintered off and, if you counted all the votes together, if you counted Conservative and Reform, they hadn't actually lost that badly,” says Emily.

Emily describes the PopCon conference as “limp” and “a bit damp”, and says the number of “empty benches” was notable, estimating there were no more than 180 people there to watch people like Rees-Mogg, historian David Starkey and a video message from Suella Braverman discuss the future of the Tories after their horrific election defeat at the start of July.

Neither Emily, or Lewis Goodall, think Rees-Mogg’s argument adds up, that to secure a win in the future, the Conservatives should dig their heels in and chase Reform UK voters by pushing hard to the right.

“In many, many cases, if you put the Conservative and Reform vote together, you will overturn the Labour majority, right? You unite the right. Okay, that's fine,” says Lewis.

“But that pre-supposes that somehow there is a magical person who could get nearly everyone who voted for Reform to vote for you instead.”

The stats back The News Agents up. Polling from More in Common does indeed show that only 36% of Reform UK voters would have voted for the Tories, had the Farage-led party not been on the ballot.

But if we’re playing with the numbers, 37% of people said they would have voted for Labour, Lib Dems, Greens or another party if not Reform – so Rees-Mogg’s logic doesn’t quite work.

“They lost the election,” says Emily.

“And they're still, from the sound of it, not engaging with why that might have been.”

Rees-Mogg isn’t the only one. Suella Braverman, who recently sparked fierce criticism for her comments on the Progress Pride flag, also spoke at Pop Con – albeit on a pre-recorded video, which attendees were made to applaud before someone hit the play button.

Braverman spoke about how, during the election, the Conservatives didn’t speak about immigration enough – despite the fact “stop the boats” was probably second only to the repeated Tory claims about Labour’s supposed £2,000 tax-rise campaigning through June and July.

“You could argue, very effectively, that they hadn't spoken about anything else,” says Emily.

“That they hadn't spoken about public services, that they hadn't spoken about the cost of living enough, that they hadn't spoken about any of the areas that people were putting at the top of their lists as major concerns.

“But no, the takeaway was that they had let the country go to the ‘woke dogs’, and that this result was entirely predictable.”

Lewis says it’s clear why Tories such as Rees-Mogg and Braverman are pushing even harder to the right, now the smoke has cleared from the bombshell results of 4 July.

“They are just retreating into a deeply comfortable, intellectual political space for them,” he says.

“It is easier for the right of the Conservative Party, to pretend and to believe and to delude themselves, frankly, that if only there had been more like themselves than the electorate would have loved them.”

Lewis says he believes some parts of the Conservative Party “haven’t quite appreciated just how bad this result was,” – although there are 175 former Tory MPs in the UK right now who do indeed fully appreciate precisely how bad it was.

There are, Lewis says, two possible responses to the demolition of the Tories at this summer’s election by the party themselves.

“One is we lost because we weren't authentically ourselves enough,” he says.

“The other response is, we need to learn from what the electorate have said and change ourselves accordingly.”

Which, Emily adds, is precisely what Labour did after its own wipeout at the 2019 election under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

“Corbyn did not work, for Labour or for this country in 2019. So what has Starmer done? He's gone: 'right? Never again.’”

Listen to the discussion in full on The News Agents.