Tory Nation: The Dark Legacy of the World's Most Successful Political Party

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At his first event, the enthusiastic politician wanted to know more; what was their purpose, what were they congregated for. “Oh, for f***’s sake,” a senior MP joked at the time. “We’re here to dine. Don’t be so bloody vulgar.” Also in 2010, the then London Mayor and prominent Conservative (and later prime minister) Boris Johnson explained his political philosophy as such: Jamie Njoku-Goodwin and Adam Atashzai are tasked with sharpening Sunak’s political narrative. Njoku-Goodwin, a former housemate of Booth-Smith, is leaving his role as chief executive of UK Music to become director of strategy. Astashzai is a senior adviser working on strategic comms and is a veteran of Cameron’s Downing Street and the 2015 election campaign. The comms boss Sandbach argues: “There are ways of putting pressure on that don’t revolve around using some of the underhand methods of the ERG.”

The former Cabinet Office minister Damian Green, who chairs the group, said he was keen to move the focus of the group away from Brexit and added that there was a need for an “intellectual regeneration” of the party.Handing the choice to party members might once have made some sense. In the early 1950s the Conservative and Unionist Party of Great Britain had 2.8 million members and was one of the great popular political movements of Europe. Membership is now a rump of barely 180,000 who are much more elderly, male, prosperous, white, and right-wing than most Tory voters, let alone the populace as a whole. In a country with an electorate of 47 million, Truss was made prime minister by the votes of 81,326 people, fewer than fill Wembley Stadium for the Cup Final. Almost worse, this means that the Tory MPs can be—and have been—led by someone most of them don’t want, and that, while they can depose a prime minister, they can’t replace him or her, which gives them, in Baldwin’s famous phrase about the press lords (provided by Rudyard Kipling, his cousin), “power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot.”

What Churchill would have made of a Hindu (and a teetotaler!) at 10 Downing Street scarcely bears thinking about, but whatever else they might be, the Tories today are plainly not a nativist party. It might not be sheer accident that the party that gave us a prime minister named Disraeli in 1868 and a prime minister named Margaret in 1979 (as well as two more women prime ministers since) should now give us one called Rishi Sunak. Americans might bear in mind that they haven’t yet elected a Jewish president, let alone a Hindu, and they haven’t elected a woman either. In the week before we meet, Gauke survived a vote of no-confidence in his constituency Conservative Association by 123 to 61. The minister had been the latest target of political campaign group Leave.EU, who had sought to claim its “first Cabinet scalp”. Despite the vote, Gauke plays down comparisons to the Conservative right seizing control of the party in the same way the left took the citadel in Labour. A witty, lucid investigation into one of the great political mysteries of our time’ JONATHAN COE , author of Bournville Dorey, Peter (2009). British Conservatism and Trade Unionism, 1945–1964. Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-0754666592.Daponte-Smith, Noah (2 June 2015). "Is David Cameron Really A One-Nation Conservative?". Forbes . Retrieved 29 February 2016. All the Tory MPs I spoke to agree that the new leader should be given enough time to try and cobble together a new Brexit agreement. But four MPs refuseto rule out voting against Johnson in a vote of no confidence if, as PM, he planned to take the UK out of the EU with no deal. “Never say never,” says one former minister. Sandbach says: “I’m not going to speculate. My decisions will have to be made at the time.”

The One Nation parliamentary dining club was set up in the mid-20 th century by Conservative co-conspirators Rab Butler, Iain Macleod and Enoch Powell. Membership was by invite only. A year after entering Parliament, a Tory MP from the 2010 intake was excited to receive the call. Brogan, Benedict (29 April 2010). "Boris Johnson interview: My advice to David Cameron? I've made savings, so can you". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 22 December 2016 . Retrieved 26 May 2019.

While in government, Disraeli presided over a series of social reforms which supported his one-nation politics and aimed to create a benevolent hierarchy. [20] He appointed a Royal Commission to assess the state of law between employers and employees. As a result, Richard Cross was moved to pass the Employers and Workmen Act 1875. This act made both sides of industry equal before the law and the breach of contract became a civil offence, rather than criminal. [21] Cross also passed the Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act in the same year which enshrined the worker's right to strike by ensuring that acts carried out by a workers' group could not be indicted as conspiracy. [22] For a man who garnered a reputation for loyalty, it seems odd to see him viewed as the leader of the so-called ‘Gaukeward squad’. “I don’t think I’m one of life’s natural rebels,” he understatedly says. But for abstaining on a vote on to prevent a no deal exit, Gauke has not been a rebellious figure. “I’ve never voted against a three-line whip, I’ve never gone into the lobbies against my side in 14 years in parliament.” It’s clear that these are kind of Sunak-sympathetic, Sunak-curious voters,” says Ansell. “A full Sunak approach, which was less ‘stop the boats’ and more ‘stop the culture war’, might work. The problem is it will lose other parts of the country. The electoral sheet leaves either the feet or the head uncovered.” In one respect Johnson decidedly set the tone for a contemporary Tory Party that has been plagued by sexual and financial scandal. Sexual impropriety among politicians is nothing new or necessarily important. The pious William Gladstone supposedly said that he had known eleven prime ministers, seven of whom he knew to have been adulterers, by which he didn’t mean that only the other four were fit for office. And at the time of the Profumo affair in 1963, Evelyn Waugh wrote to a friend deriding the factitious indignation: “To my knowledge in my life time three Prime Ministers have been adulterers and almost every cabinet has had an addict of almost every sexual vice.” Green said a significant number of the MPs contributing to the group were from the new intake of 2019 and were keen to contribute ideas on “levelling up” the divide between north and south. “This is exactly what their voters, first-time Conservatives, want to see.”