Explaining ex-Tories

Nadhim Zahawi, former Chancellor and Covid Czar and latest recruit to the ranks for Reform, will be subject to conflicting emotions. On the one hand he will bask in the adulation of newfound friends (and one or two old ones) as they extend the warm hand of welcome. On the other he will wait with some trepidation as former friends (and the massed ranks of the media) trawl his socials and their own memories for evidence of contradiction and hypocrisy. X and BlueSky will buzz with malignancy and Dan Hodges will make a prediction — which may or may not prove accurate. It is a path well-trodden — and it will be trod again.

Yet Nadhim’s conversion, though hardly Damascene, marks a decided shift in the opinion of many who entered parliament on the Cameron wave, believing excitedly that they (we) heralded a new dawn and would make a difference, only to realise, perhaps very slowly, that the dawn never broke and that in reality they were merely small cogs in a very big and indifferent wheel.

The 2010 intake arrived at Westminster believing that they were going to deal with the consequences of thirteen years of Labour government. They were going to sort out the countries’ finances, control its borders, promote people based on intellect not identity and be, well, Conservative. But that is not how it turned out. To be fair the economy came first and deficit reduction progress was made. And the coalition with the Lib Dems put the kibosh on many other Conservative plans. Then Brexit supervened and then there was Covid. So nothing happened. The Hollow Men won out. The Equality Act was neither repealed nor amended. The Human Rights Act withstood fourteen years of government threats to emerge unscathed and its adherents unabashed. Rules and regulations crept forward. But probably more than anything else, the promise to reduce net migration to the “tens of thousands”, made repeatedly by David Cameron and doubled down upon by Theresa May and never remotely delivered, was what sat most uneasily upon Conservative consciences. By the end of the Tory years, more were coming in than ever.

Sadly, our parliamentary mechanism discourages governing party introspection. Though laudable in many ways, the system that selects its executive officers from amongst the legislative assembly gives inordinate influence over MPs to the government Whips Office and their controllers in Downing Street. It was not long before that machinery began to exert its influence on the 2010 intake, as it has done with others, fostering a sense of personal competition, wrapped in team spirit, to distract attention from both their original high ambitions and the truths about the delivery of their promises. Eyes were blinded. Blind eyes were turned.

It is only now, after the prisoners have been released from their internment, do they really see the outcome of the war they fought. For many, the reality of that failure is appalling. For more than a few that failure is unbearable. One of those, I think, is Nadhim Zahawi. And he is not alone.

A material number of Conservatives now feel that the Party itself is neither right nor Right

Guilt has impelled many Conservatives to make the difficult choice to defect. It is not a question of calculation or revenge, and before long it will happen to Labour figures too. Leaving behind friends, especially in local associations, and rejecting shared history is not easy. And of course there will always be the embarrassing tweet. The machine encourages expressions of loyalty from colleagues who compete with each other for recognition and preferment and, whether we are ashamed of it or not, we all did it. However, and having talked to a few, there is now a material number of former MPs, sitting Members and peers who are moving ineluctably to the conclusion that the disappointments of their years in office can only be rectified by beginning again from outside the Party.

The present Party leadership (which includes several good and honourable people) may well counter that they are best placed to fix those failures and that to defect only compounds the original sin. Two wrongs don’t make a right. But a material number of Conservatives now feel that the Party itself is neither right nor Right: that it is both beholden to vested interests in the establishment machinery and that, thanks to the modernisers’ worship of Tony Blair and their creation of a candidates’ A List composed of amoral careerists, it is no longer a party of Conservatism. For them, radicalisation does not begin at home, it means leaving it. In the 1970s Keith Joseph wrote about the socialising ratchet effect on government machinery that Conservatives must stop and reverse. Now that the Conservative Party appears to be an integral part of that machinery, so people like Nadhim Zahawi calculate, the only way to stop the ratchet is to break with the machinery.