Tory conference revealed a party that’s crumbling
– and with Nigel Farage laying siege to its future
Owen Jones
Just like the US Republicans in 2008, the
Conservatives are turning to far-right populism. Their comeback will be built
on it
Thu 5 Oct
2023 08.00 BST
A visit to
Conservative party conference is like being transported to the recent past of
another country. When the US Republicans were routed in 2008, the seeds of what
they would become – a party defined by conspiratorial far-right populism – were
being planted. The newly elected Barack Obama intended to establish a communist
dictatorship with a Gestapo-like security force, claimed one Republican
congressman. Fox News became a key engine of a new conspiracism, not least the
notorious “birther” lie, falsely alleging the president was not a native-born
American. The Republican establishment leaned into this fanaticism: take the
salutary example of Liz Cheney, daughter of George W Bush’s vice-president, who
defended the birther lie at the time. She helped feed a conspiratorial far
right that found itself a demagogic figurehead in Donald Trump, whom she would
later go on to denounce.
There was
no shortage of Tory Liz Cheneys at conference. Take the transport secretary,
Mark Harper, who took to the stage to endorse a conspiracy theory that, until
now, has been the preserve of far-right internet trolls. The idea behind
15-minute cities could hardly be more innocuous: we should all be a 15-minute
walk or bike ride away from everyday services we depend on, like GP surgeries,
shops and banks. But Harper told the assembled faithful that local councils
will dictate “how often you go to the shops”, “ration who uses the roads”, and
then enforce it with CCTV surveillance. This is a lie, and Harper knows it.
When his ministerial colleague, Andrew Bowie, subsequently defended this
conspiratorial nonsense, arguing that voters were concerned that their
“liberties were going to be infringed”, he must have known it was a hoax too.
Perhaps
they believe that indulging far-right conspiracism will attract its delusional
believers to the Tory fold, and prevent them defecting to Nigel Farage’s Reform
UK party. A more likely outcome is this worldview will be legitimised and pave
the way for more extreme politicians. This week in Manchester, Farage strode
around the conference like a hungry crocodile, sizing up his prey. The
rock-star reception he attracted suggests the faithful would quite like to be
eaten. Farage has partly remoulded the Conservatives in his image by menacing
them from the outside. It may well be that he will stick to his devastatingly
successful strategy, using external leverage to keep coercing the Tories into
adopting his agenda. If Farage successfully stands for parliament on his eighth
attempt, this time wearing a blue rosette, the party will one day surely be
his. He floated rejoining the party if the demagogic home secretary, Suella
Braverman, takes the Tory crown: “at least I’d believe in some of the
policies”, he said, when I spoke to him at conference.
It would be
easy to dismiss this conference as revealing a party suffering a breakdown in
advance of a shattering defeat. Tory delegates struggled to tell me what the
Conservatives’ lasting achievements after 13 years in office even are. If so
many at this flat, sparsely attended conference have given up, why should the
rest of us fear a party enduring an identity crisis? Look again across the
Atlantic. The Republicans, it was believed, became so unmoored from reality
that permanent electoral Armageddon beckoned. Hillary Clinton’s team craved
Donald Trump as their opponent for that very reason. And now? Just ask Cheney
how that worked out.
So consider
this for a scenario. Labour triumphs at the next election, but wins by default
and with no enthusiasm for Starmerism in the tank from the start. Unlike 1997,
the new administration rules a country defined by turmoil and decline, but
offers no transformative policies to answer our multiple and overlapping
crises. Disillusionment sets in, while the Tories complete their metamorphosis
into loud, proud, brash rightwing populism, hoovering up votes from the
disaffected. In the general election of 2029, a new model Tory party – flushed
with British Trumpism – stages a stunning comeback.
True, this
is not the US: your gut instinct may say it can’t happen here. But when, in the
past, you looked in bemused horror at their culture wars, you may have assumed
they’d never arrive on our shores – but they did. Farage marched through
conference not as a hostile outsider, but as a conquering general. His mission
is not yet complete, however, and a final prize may beckon.
Owen Jones
is a Guardian columnist
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