This Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy

[Conservatopia]

Ah at last a thread to compete with That Still Great Movement of Theirs.

[Conservatopia]

Since there is only one Conservative on the board this is just going to be a lot of Labourites telling everyone how much they hate the Tories, like literally every other thread.

Cassisus and I are quasi-Conservatives in our own way (and I don't think Conservatopia much likes them either); beesley isn't a Labourite and I'm sure the lefties can behave themselves.

Nevertheless could we please name the thread "The Chronicles of Tory Scum".  Or just "Tory Scum".  Just for a laugh.

And yes you're right that I'm not a huge fan of the Party but that's basically because they're not rightwing enough.  Plus also I'm a big Cromwell fan and that doesn't play well with most Tories.

[Conservatopia]

There is to be a contest for chair of the 1922 Committee.

Graham Brady (incumbent) vs Robert Goodwill.
ConHome has a good write-up: https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2021/05/brady-v-goodwill-the-1922-chairman-election-isnt-just-about-these-contenders-at-its-heart-is-tory-mps-view-of-johnson.html

I'm definitely backing Brady.

[Conservatopia]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/05/28/conservative-poll-lead-grows-despite-dominic-cummingss-attacks/

The banter politics of this sceptred isle continues.
> Some terrible allegations or whatever hit the Tories
> Sunday roles around and our poll lead is up again

We don't deserve it but we can't complain.

[Conservatopia]

I dunno what poll is being referred to above, but the two out yesterday had the Tory lead dropping.

Looking into it a bit more it seems it is an NCP poll (lol) that is being compared to another of their polls from over a month ago.  So yeah not really a story but the Telegraph gonna Torygraph.

[Conservatopia]

So wretched hive of scum and villainy it is, then

Ironic that my suggestion was screwed by FPTP.

I'm glad it won though - it's clearly a better name.

[Conservatopia]

Reshuffle rumours are hotting up.  Of course for now it's all just rumouring but it's interesting none the less.

Jenrick and Shapps are rumoured to be sacked but I reckon they stay on at least long enough to see through their projects (planning reform and GBR respectively).  Patel may or may not be demoted but that would be very risky for the PM.  Johnson (and Carrie) apparently want Javid to return, possibly in the Education brief.

Most people assume Williamson will be sacked (or at least demoted) but now some believe that as a result of being Chief Whip and Johnson's leadership campaign manager he may know where too many bodies are buried.  I say so what - it would be nice to see the PM show the right sort of balls for once.

[Conservatopia]

Yes like all "big reshuffle" rumours it will likely be a damp squip rather than Night of the Long Knives.

I think the biggest changes we can hope for would be Gove moving to Health and Javid to Education.  Hancock potentially back to Communities although I doubt he would accept a demotion to such a poisoned chalice.  I'm certain if he were removed from Health he wouldn't be dropped from rhe cabinet completely.  If Jenrick is sacked (I doubt it) then potentially Luke Hall might replace him.

Sacking Patel would be dangerous for Boris because she would quickly become the leader of the rightwing backbenchers opposed to the PM.  Boris definitely can't afford that with his support on his right flank rather weak already.

Other longshots for elevation are Penny Mordaunt (please no) and Jeremy Hunt.  Hunt clearly enjoys his current committee rolw though.

As for party chair, Milling is poisonous amongst the base but she will probably stay on because "muh Hartlepool".

[Conservatopia]

Graham Brady re-elected as chair of 1922 Committee defeating a Johnsonite attempt to bring the '22 to heel.  I see this as a good thing for the Tory Right, the wider party and the country at large.

[Conservatopia]

And of course, said "sea change" is a real opportunity for a Labour party that isn't obsessed by itself.

You're absolutely right of course.  But one could argue that the Tory obsession with staying in power (no matter what principles are thrown overboard) is equally harmful, both to itself and the country.

It's a silly cliché but the Tories really are becoming a Marxist party.  That's Groucho not Karl.

[Conservatopia]

Truss appears to be the most popular amongst the membership, believe it or not.

Not really that surprising.
FWIW she would be my first choice out of the likely candidates.

[Conservatopia]

I see Peter Hitchens has decided Liz Truss is a "Lefty liberal".

She's probably too Thatcherite for his liking.

Does Bonkers have any friends amongst the mainstream right?  Farage maybe although Farage would be too libertarian for Bonkers' self-described "British Gaullism".

[Conservatopia]

Definitely. Genuine traditionalist conservatives range from at best ambivalent about Thatcher (Roger Scruton) to outright hostile (Hitchens). Mind this was in an article saying she was no Thatcher despite her silly tank photo-op: I think it is a reference to her ironic family history with CND and Greenham Common.

I don't think it's fair to blame Truss for her "left-of-Labour" parents. That being said whilst she has always been an unabashed economic liberal her new socially (kinda) conservative trait is most likely opportunism.

Not as far as I can tell. Actually the best historical example I can think of is Peter Shore, but he was Labour.

Good point - although Shore was a lot more leftwing on economic issues than Bonkers is today. Hitchens is actually probably the British political figure whose ideology is closest to mine, except he is non-interventionist in foreign policy I think.

[Conservatopia]

Mere speculation of course but my estimation is that the true number of letters is roughly 175% of the public ones.  So for every 3 public letters there are about 2 private ones.  This would mean there are about 27 letters which sounds about right.

[Conservatopia]

I actually don't want the letters to reach 54 because most likely Boris would win the vote.

[Conservatopia]

I find it very weird that some Tories are trying to pivot blame towards Corrie Johnson almost painting her as a lady Macbeth like figure that led Boris astray despite it making little sense.

Generally Carrie is accused of shifting the PM towards the net zero policy and other green stuff which is very unpopular amongst the Party Right.  Dropping Net Zero is something Boris is apparently considering to win over Tory MPs.

With regards to Partygate, whilst the PM is of course ultimately responsible for what goes on in No 10, it is a fact that Carrie was the driving force behind at least one of the parties.

So I don't agree with the attempt to blame Carrie but I do understand its background.

Johnson is appointing MPs (Guto Harri and Steve Barclay) as his staff replacements, which seems odd.

It makes sense really.

Nobody from outside Parliament wants to join an operation that is sinking.  They would only be in their jobs for a couple of months before Johnson gets pushed.

It feels a bit like the end of May's premiership when she kept having to replace resigning government people with unknowns.

[Conservatopia]

Torrain if there is a leadership election would you join (re-join?) the party? Or have you completely left behind the party? Who would you vote for out of Sunak, Truss, Hunt and Raab?

[Conservatopia]

I think I’d reluctantly back Sunak, still.

To me he seems like the candidate with the best electoral prospects.

there’s something more style than substance to Truss I distrust.

I think she's a lightweight (like most of her cabinet colleagues are) but does a good job of hiding it.

Truss (lack of a clear ideology)

Soft disagree - one thing I will say for Truss is that she's been fairly consistent in her Britannia Unchained free-market liberalism outlook. She's just now starting to sprinkle some cultural conservatism in with that.

If I can be candid though? There’s another candidate for PM, who I could enthusiastically vote for, rather than through gritted teeth. A candidate with sensible foreign policy, a level head who seems to have a better handle on party disunity. He just happens to be standing at the opposing dispatch box.

I hate to admit it but I like him too - and I'm far-right so I imagine there's plenty of Tory centrists who think he's their preferred PM.

I know you’re warmer on Truss than I am - is she your preferred candidate? Or do you have someone else in mind?

I would probably vote for her in a Tory leadership election (though I am not a member at present) but it certainly wouldn't be enthusiastic and I would be easily persuaded by another candidate if they put forward a more ambitious reform agenda or were more socially conservative. If I were an MP I would vote for Steve Baker as a testimonial candidate, knowing full well he would never make it to the final two.  This isn't going to make me popular but my favourite politician is probably Nigel Farage.

Edit: that was more of an essay than I planned. Apologies - Atlas and cider are not a wise combination…

Thatcher's?

[Conservatopia]

Kenneth Clarke has a watch featuring Hillary's face on it.  He once showed it her and she was so shocked that she screamed loud enough that her security detail thought Clarke had attacked her.

Tory MPs are amongst the weirdest politicians in the world.

[Conservatopia]

Received a letter this afternoon from the Conservatives begging me to donate to their "Critical Seats Fund".

The letter has been placed for safe-keeping in a small, round receptacle.

[Conservatopia]

The revenge of the membership on the wets who installed Rishi over our voted choices of Boris and Liz continues.

Damian Green fails to be selected as a candidate for Weald of Kent. Good riddance.

Regardless of the overall result of the 2024 election (I predict a 2005-sized Labour majority), it will continue the trend from 2019 where wet moderates (like Claire Perry) are replaced by populist right-wingers (like Danny Kruger).

The Cameron days are long gone

[Conservatopia]

Of course Benton himself is a very weird MP. A gay pro-life culture warrior who was criticised by his (gay) Brexit Party opponent for being a (gay) homophobe.

[Conservatopia]

Every few months I take a break from my usual posting habits (puns, feuding with PQG, jokes about LolDems, puns, making fun of yankees, cynicism and puns), and instead attempt to produce something of value to the forum and stimulate discussion. I would appreciate it if the Britposters would have a read because, for once, I put some effort into this post.

Today I present my own personal theories on Tory factionalism. I will attempt to be impartial, hating everybody equally.

Factions of the Conservative Party

When reading this analysis it is important to remember that factionalism within the Tory party is not really very pronounced. The party is certainly divided, it always has been a coalition of ideas, but those divides are not as straightforward or as pronounced as those in the Labour Party. Perhaps this is because conservatism as an ideology is more fluid and less easy to define than socialism and social democracy are. Furthermore, because the Conservative Party is essentially the only party of influence on the British Right, this is more accurately a discussion of factions within British right-wing politics than of the Conservatives alone.

Division in what is now the Conservative and Unionist Party and the wider British Right stretches back to the Civil War in the 1640s, the divisions between Whigs and Tories in the 1700-1800s, the founding of the Conservative Party in 1843, the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, the battles between Gladstone and Disraeli throughout the Victorian period, the decline of the Liberals and their gradual absorption by the Conservatives in the early to mid 1900s, the rise of Powell and Thatcherism in the 1970-80s and the more recent debate over the UK's place in Europe.

Each of these issues and divisions has left their mark on British right-wing politics. A politician today is not a Roundhead or a Cavalier, he isn't Gladstonian or Disraelian, he isn't even normally a Wet or a Dry, however, the heritage of these divisions marks an individual's politics, perhaps without them realising it. The easiest right-winger to analyse in order to illustrate this concept is the person I know best: myself.

My politics, like all right-wingers, are influenced by these divisions. The Civil War accounts for my republicanism and distrust of establishment institutions, whilst many Tories come down on the Cavalier side - monarchist and institutionalist. The split in the Conservative Party accounts for my relative progressivism when it comes to alleviating poverty and also my support for free trade. The division between Gladstone and Disraeli, accounts for my belief in the state's responsibility for morality and also my support for decentralisation. Everyone has a position on each of these issues and each of these issues has been a source of major division at some point in Britain's past. Thus anyone with consistent political beliefs can link their stance on a particular issue with a historical struggle.

Before I present my theory on what the amorphous factions actually are, it is perhaps necessary to discuss the issue of the European Union.

Historically much has been made of the splits within the Conservative Party over Europe. This is for good reason, divisions over Europe famously led to the downfall of Thatcher, Cameron and May and certainly played a role in the struggles faced by Major, Hague and Johnson. The reality now is different. Whilst Brexit may never be truly 'done', the divisions over the issue have largely dissipated. Those who were Remainers in 2016 have either left the party or become Brexiteer zealots and the actual question of EU membership is settled.

I have sought to divide the British Right into two amorphous camps. The membership of these camps is very fluid and certainly up for debate and there are wide internal divisions within the camps. The Historical PMs section in particular is very subjective. These factions should definitely not be taken as seriously as the more defined Labour factions but I will attempt to define them nonetheless. The names I have given the factions are based on a combination of how these people refer to themselves and how the press defines them. Note that these factions have as much to do with style and rhetoric as they do with actual policy. Such is often the case with British politics.


Common Sense Conservatives
The Johnson-Truss Axis
The Swashbuckling Pro-Growth Coalition
Headbangers and Lunatics
Populist Hooligans

Alignment: Centre-right to Far-right
Organisations: Tufton Street, Blue Collar Conservatism, Conservative Way Forward, Free Trade Forum
Prominent figures: Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Lee Anderson, Esther McVey, David Davis, Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Priti Patel
Religion: Catholicism, Islam, Money
Leadership votes: Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Andrea Leadsom, Cameron or Davis. Beyond this it gets very blurry.
EU Referendum: Generally pro-Leave but with a surprising number of Remainers.
Media: Spectator, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, GB News
Historical PMs: Winston Churchill, Robert Peel, Henry Temple, Benjamin Disraeli. The inclusion of the latter two shows how nebulous this group can be.

Built on the remains of the Thatcherite right of the party and now including more centrist figures attached to Boris Johnson (himself an arch-centrist) this faction was ascendent from 2019-22 and still holds considerable influence within the cabinet. It is also the faction that a large majority of the membership would align with and probably has a majority amongst backbenchers.

Profoundly populist and obsessed with the fabled "red wall" this faction really is a marriage of Thatcherism and Vote Leave. It takes a conservative stance on most social issues but shows its centrist influences when dealing with domestic financial issues. On the issue of free trade it is divided with both Trussite free-traders and those more supportive of protectionism.

This faction also seeks the culture war as its primary crusade and its members will typically be found on TV railing against "wokism" than discussing monetary policy. The libertarian obsession with reduction of taxes conflicts with their belief in the more progressive and populist "Levelling-up" agenda.

Tories for Stability
Cameron's Corpse
The Adults in the Room
Strong and Stable
Shiny White Teeth

Alignment: Centre to Right
Organistations: One Nation Group, Tory Reform Group, Bright Blue
Prominent figures: Rishi Sunak, Gavin Williamson, Theresa May, Jeremy Hunt, William Hague, Liam Fox, Damian Green, Grant Shapps
Religion: Irreligion, Church of England, but I repeat myself
Leadership votes: Rishi Sunak, Hunt or Johnson, Theresa May, David Cameron.
EU Referendum: Mixture of Leavers and Remainers
Media: The Times, The Economist, Financial Times, mainstream TV
Historical PMs: Harold Macmillan, Stanley Baldwin, David Cameron

An expansion of the old Europhile wets who opposed Thatcher, but shorn of their more nationalist contingent and welded with technocratic economists and sprinkled with Cameroons. The fact that Rishi Sunak and Ken Clarke would both be members of this faction shows that it spans a broad spectrum.

In many ways these are the true conservatives in that they wish to preserve the status quo rather than breaking things like the other faction. Generally this faction is socially liberal but many of them simply don't care for the whole culture war and don't take any fixed position on its issues, but there are some who are strongly on the "woke" side like Caroline Nokes. Others like Michelle Donelan sometimes stake out a more conservative position.

As a result of this diminished focus on culture wars and also because Boris Johnson isn't part of this group, these people are often seen as the adults in the room, the better media performers, the ones who know what they're on about. This isn't unfair - after all these people didn't vote for Liz Truss.

Despite their preference for talking about economic issues they too don't offer much clarity on their views. True wets like Clarke have left the Commons and Sunak himself is undoubtedly a dry. Typically they show what we might describe as "fiscal caution" - keeping tax rates as they are, seeking to balance budgets, not tinkering with social programs, never scaring the markets. They also tend to be more "globalist" in their thinking, seeking to work with rather than against the EU and not seeking independence from US foreign policy.

Due to their being a more quiet, reserved group you would be forgiven for thinking that they are a small minority in the Conservative Party. This isn't the case and while their numbers may be declining, they still make up at least 35% of backbench MPs.

There are, of course, multiple unaligned politicians who are difficult to accurately place. Many historical politicians such as Thatcher or Gladstone are almost impossible to place into one faction or another and their ideas can be found in both camps. Indeed, it would be as foolish as describing a modern politician as a "Canningite" or a "Rockingham Whig". Factions are usually a product of their time. Nevertheless, to try and make my constructed factions easier to understand I have assigned some former PMs to the factions. I am therefore a fool, but a well-meaning one.

Conservative Prime Ministers typically build their cabinet from all the factions in their party and then rely on the loyalty of their faction on the backbench to get their word out and persuade colleagues. When Boris Johnson came to power he did not have a faction because he was a Eurosceptic One Nation Tory. However, by the time he left office the old factions had been upheaved and a Johnsonite faction had clearly begun to crystalise. This became more pronounced in the leadership race and government crisis that followed.

I believe these factions will last beyond the next election. I think the Conservatives will have roughly 260 MPs, fairly evenly split between the factions as it will be mainly red wall MPs who lose their seats, thus balancing out the two factions. The final two candidates in the leadership election of 2024 will probably be easily identifiable with the two factions. For example the matchup could be between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick (it won't be). Which faction will come out on top is difficult to say for certain but I imagine it would be the Johnsonite one, Sunak having just lost the election and the membership leaning towards the right. After that the new leader may cause another shift in the boundaries of the Tory factions as they seek to leave their mark on the party but unless they are a transformational leader, their lasting impact on the factional landscape will be fleeting.

[Conservatopia]

Anyway, I enjoyed Conservatopia’s take on the Tory factions. My two pence would simply be that most of the Tory ‘moderates’ are either posh or people who’ve done the traditional uni-to-professional-career-in-London pipeline (or both) and thus want to remain on good terms with the liberal establishment in this country, whereas the headbangers generally very much aren’t either of those things. Isn’t a fixed rule of course (see Rees-Mogg, Jacob) and there is an age and time of election divide (much older posh and/or professional MPs being more likely to be headbangers). There’s also an element of sinistrism at work (Hague used to be considered much more right-wing, but now that he’s achieved ‘grandee’ status he’s now a leading ‘Tory moderate’).

I’d also argue that it’s pointless to try and categorise people like the Tub of Lard and E.T. in Drag, given that their North Star is ‘gib me attention pls’ and thus will say and do literally anything.

My factional breakdown is, of course, my opinion. But, I was working on the theory, though not explaining it well, that the factions are fluid enough that each individual leader with a bit of clout (Johnson, Thatcher, Macmillan, Churchill, Baldwin etc) can shape the party into a pro- and anti-leadership faction, but that those factions will still be largely built on the old factions that date back to Gladstone-Disraeli, and if we really squint at it, Peel.

Therefore I think that if we are going to classify Boris and Liz into factions (no easy task with the legacy factions) we must start by placing them in a faction of their own and building the rest around them, rather than shoehorning them into "wets and dries". Wets and dries as a concept is dead but its legacy lives on in other factions, just as Latin is dead but it has a legacy that lives on in other languages.

[Conservatopia]

Also, while I remember - two more retirements:

Jonathan Djanogly - member for Huntingdon, John Major's old seat, and about as true-blue as you can get. He's been involved in a couple of controversies, and faced deselection after he ended up being sued by former members of his household staff.

Chris Pincher - has announced he won't run again for Tamworth. This was kind of a foregone conclusion, but wasn't official until today.

Clearing out the rubbish. Just 300 or so to go.
The former's resignation will prevent many skeletons showing themselves too. Both real rotters.