Dangerous talk among Conservatives

 Liberal England draws attention to the Bournemouth symposium organised by the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO), the party-within-a-party which supports Boris Johnson. The i newspaper quotes a passage which it says will appear in a keynote speech by the former Home Secretary, Priti Patel, criticising Rishi Sunak for "taking down a vote-winning political giant who was on course to secure a record-breaking fifth consecutive general election win for our party".

This delusion is apparently shared by many Tories. They seek to blame Sunak for English voters' putsch of Conservative councillors up and down the land, whereas - local issues apart - local electors formed their view of the Conservative brand based on the whole of the last four years, for most of which Johnson occupied No. 10. They do not accept that Sunak and Hunt have in fact steadied the economy. Confidence abroad is rising. After some profit-taking on the back of the Bank of England's latest rate rise, sterling has settled on a dollar value 3-4% above last year's. Admittedly, middle- to low-earners will not see the benefit of the drop in inflation which is clearly on the way, but they would hardly vote Conservative anyway. 

Political strategists in opposition parties clearly want the Tory rebellion to succeed. They know that a clearly divided party does not win elections. They also intuit that Johnson, having been seen through by the electorate with the help of the media, will be a vote-loser rather than a vote-winner. They would like nothing better than to see Johnson back on the political throne. But what would be good for Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Nationalists almost certainly spells disaster for the economy. For the sake of the country, CDO must not succeed.

Jonathan Calder suggests that the Conservative grass-roots are more extreme than the leadership, just as they were in Margaret Thatcher's day. Apparently, it was grass-roots pressure which caused the community charge (poll tax) to be rushed into operation rather than be phased in over ten years as was originally envisaged. Certainly, there is a lot of Johnson support out there, but I believe the picture is more mixed. There were actually two Conservative council gains amidst the bloodbath last Thursday. The i reports that in both Torbay and Wyre Forest, the successful campaigns were built on local issues, leg-work and "back to basics". Torbay's new leader puts his faith in his prime minister turning round the fortunes of the party, and that is echoed by Wyre Forest's Tory group leader: "The one thing Rishi has done is to restore an element of stability".

It will be too late to save the Tories, of course, but it should mean that there is a stable economy for an incoming progressive government to build on in 2024, Clearly Labour is set to be the largest party, but in a hung parliament, Liberal Democrats will be able to drive a hard bargain for their support. Hopefully, this time the parliamentary leadership will not drop the ball as they did in 2011.