British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak\u00a0got up to speak from a podium\u00a0bearing the words \u201cLong-Term Decisions for a Brighter Future\u201d \u2013 the slogan for this year\u2019s Conservative Party conference.\u00a0But\u00a0over the past three days\u00a0on the fringes of the\u00a0governing\u00a0party\u2019s annual meeting, members\u00a0have been\u00a0planning their own long-term future \u2013 and in some cases for one that\u00a0doesn\u2019t involve\u00a0him. <\/p>\n
This year\u2019s\u00a0gathering,\u00a0in Manchester,\u00a0a historic city that was formerly the industrial powerhouse of northern\u00a0England, held extra significance as it is likely the last to take place before the next general election. It was a golden opportunity for Sunak to unite his party after the\u00a0battering his party\u2019s credibility took\u00a0from his two immediate predecessors \u2013\u00a0the scandal-hit era\u00a0of Boris Johnson and the economic tumult of Liz Truss.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
However, despite the fact Sunak \u2013\u00a0who has been in office for less than a year \u2013 has exceeded expectations by steadying the ship and restoring some calm to British politics, many members of his own party members spent this week settling old scores and\u00a0resigning themselves\u00a0to defeat. <\/p>\n
Sunak is seeking a historic fifth\u00a0successive\u00a0term for the Conservative Party,\u00a0which has\u00a0been in power since 2010\u00a0\u2013\u00a0first in coalition and from 2015 alone.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Those 13 years have\u00a0been\u00a0some of the most consequential\u00a0in modern British politics. From Brexit to the\u00a0Covid-19\u00a0pandemic,\u00a0Johnson\u2019s\u00a0transgressions\u00a0and\u00a0Truss\u2019s turmoil,\u00a0Sunak inherited an unpopular mess of a party that, according to opinion polls, looks doomed.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Sunak and his team are optimistic that they can pull the party together before the next election,\u00a0which must take place by January 2025. And their strategy\u00a0for achieving this aim appears to involve shifting further to the right,\u00a0with policies and rhetoric that are tailor-made for Conservative members rather than the broader public. <\/p>\n
One of the clearest signs this week that Sunak\u00a0feels\u00a0the need\u00a0to\u00a0appeal to the right-wing of his base was the presence\u00a0at the conference\u00a0of Nigel Farage, one of Britain\u2019s most famous Brexiteers and perma-scourge of the Conservatives.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
It was Farage, as then-leader of the Euroskeptic UK Independence Party,\u00a0who drove the political narrative\u00a0that eventually forced the Conservatives to hold a referendum on leaving the European Union in 2016. While the party establishment loathes Farage, Conservative members greeted him with open arms and requests for selfies after he arrived on Monday afternoon. In many ways, he was the star of the show here in Manchester.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
It\u2019s instructive, then, to see Sunak\u2019s strategy through that lens.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Last week, the PM announced a controversial U-turn on green policies, including\u00a0a delay on a plan to boost the number of electric cars on Britain\u2019s roads.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0He has criticized the opposition Labour Party for endorsing lower speed limits for drivers. Many of his Cabinet ministers have hinted at the prospect of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights,\u00a0which they regard as hindering efforts to curb immigration to the UK, particularly by refugees.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The health minister said transgender patients could be banned from hospital wards that corresponded to their lived gender.\u00a0Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch railed against trans rights activists, repeating an attack line that Labour\u00a0MPs\u00a0don\u2019t \u201cknow what a woman is.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
And in his closing speech, Sunak scrapped an expensive, high-speed rail project in the north of England, which he claimed would save taxpayers\u00a0\u00a336 billion \u2013\u00a0which, he said, would be reinvested instead in \u201chundreds of new transport projects\u201d in the North and Midlands, both rail and road.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The optics of this were curious, as the scrapped project, known as HS2, would have provided Manchester, the conference\u2019s host city, with faster links to London\u00a0and the wider region with better rail capacity and connections. <\/p>\n
Most of this is broadly attractive to Conservative members and it would be reasonable to assume that\u00a0it would give\u00a0them a reason to rally behind Sunak.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
But there was not much sign of unity this week. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Conservative\u00a0Party has always been a broad church, with competing factions jostling for supremacy. But these factions appear more splintered than ever. <\/p>\n
Walking around the conference centre, it was striking to see groups of Conservatives who in various ways represented every iteration of the party since 2010. And quite a lot of those factions sincerely dislike one another and have serious disdain for\u00a0each other\u2019s vision for\u00a0the future of the party. <\/p>\n
The most high-profile rebellion came from Sunak\u2019s immediate predecessor, Truss, who spoke at a rally at the same time as Jeremy Hunt, Sunak\u2019s finance minister, gave his conference speech on the main stage.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Truss, along with others on the libertarian right, called for a complete rethink of the tax system and size of the state.\u00a0Her speech was made\u00a0almost a year to the day that her own tax-cutting plans caused markets to crash and sank the pound to its worst low ever against the dollar.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
You might assume that less than 12 months since her disastrous premiership came to an end, the public might not be that interested in Truss\u2019s thoughts. But Conservative Party members are rather different to the general public. In stark contrast to Hunt\u2019s speech taking place on the main stage, Truss\u2019s rally \u2013 held in a side room of a hotel next to the main conference center \u2013 was standing-room\u00a0only. <\/p>\n
But\u00a0other factions within the party\u00a0believe the true Conservative\u00a0talisman\u00a0to be another former PM:\u00a0Boris\u00a0Johnson. <\/p>\n
Superficially, the Johnsonites are on the same wing of the party\u00a0as\u00a0Truss and her acolytes. However, the most passionate of his supporters are the so-called \u201cred wall\u201d voters: People typically from the north\u00a0of\u00a0England from poorer backgrounds who supported Brexit and, in many cases, voted Conservative for the first time because of Johnson. (The\u00a0red-wall name is derived from the color most associated with the opposition Labour\u00a0Party, which historically held sway in these areas.) <\/p>\n
Unfortunately for Sunak, many of these members didn\u2019t have a much better view of him. While broadly they supported lots of his recent announcements\u00a0\u2013 they simply don\u2019t believe he is serious about them.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s out-of-touch. He is a liberal. He won\u2019t do it properly,\u201d said one of the red-wall members.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
On the opposite wing of the party, the moderates are uncomfortable with some of the rhetoric they are hearing from cabinet ministers and the prime minister on issues like migration and LGBT+ rights \u2013 especially Suella Braverman, the home secretary,\u00a0whose hardline stance\u00a0worries even some on the right of the Conservative Party \u2013 including within the cabinet. <\/p>\n
The most optimistic group of Conservatives currently are those within Sunak\u2019s orbit. This group sincerely believes that, despite the polls,\u00a0\u00a0Sunak stands a very decent chance of remaining\u00a0prime minister after the next election. There is some merit to this view: since Sunak\u2019s green U-turn he has seen an improvement in his poll numbers and his personal approval ratings are better than\u00a0those of\u00a0anyone else in his party, according to the pollster YouGov.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The frustration\u00a0for\u00a0Sunak\u2019s allies\u00a0is that despite their optimism, so many of the party\u2019s\u00a0other\u00a0factions have already decided that the next election is lost,\u00a0and\u00a0are digging into their respective trenches before the\u00a0post-election\u00a0blame game starts. <\/p>\n
Adding to the sense of inevitable loss\u00a0was the open and obvious debate about the future of the party beyond Sunak. Events like the one Truss attended\u00a0were, in the eyes of many members, the starting gun for a battle over the party\u2019s soul once in opposition.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Indeed, many of the frontrunners to succeed Sunak should he lose \u2013 including members of his own cabinet \u2013 spoke at an unusually high number of cosy, \u201cin-conversation\u201d style events with friendly hosts, playing for the applause of party members in the audience.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Despite all of this, Sunak could reasonably call this year\u2019s conference a success, if you compare it to other conferences in recent years. He has improved the party\u2019s prospects since taking office and there wasn\u2019t the same sense of doom that lingered over last year\u2019s meeting.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
It\u2019s more that this is a party that feels tired, confused and is at times acting desperately with its hotchpotch of red-meat policies and populist rhetoric. It might not be fair and it might not even be accurate, but the general sense of deflation was more potent than that of optimism.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak\u00a0got up to speak from a podium\u00a0bearing the words \u201cLong-Term Decisions for a Brighter Future\u201d \u2013 the slogan for this year\u2019s Conservative Party conference.\u00a0But\u00a0over the past three days\u00a0on the fringes of the\u00a0governing\u00a0party\u2019s annual meeting, members\u00a0have been\u00a0planning their own long-term future \u2013 and in some cases for one that\u00a0doesn\u2019t involve\u00a0him. This year\u2019s\u00a0gathering,\u00a0in <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9672,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}