Strange noises from the Tory rump

Those attending Popular Conservativism’s first conference to reflect on the election – titled “Beginning to rebuild: where from here?” – had at least one bit of good news to start there day: there are at least a few Conservatives left.

With a note of slight surprise, director Mark Littlewood welcomed the 200 to 300 delegates present (some of whom weren’t even journalists) and noted the event had been upgraded to a larger room, which was about half-filled.

That was more or less where the good news for the Conservative fringe group ended, though, with even Jacob Rees-Mogg taking a jibe at the event branding: “I’m not sure we’re very popular and we weren’t all that conservative.”

The gathering was a collection of notables from the Conservative grouping, which notably featured almost no MPs – Suella Braverman joined from Washington DC by video link, but every other speaker was either a peer, a former MP or unelected. Notables includes the aforementioned Rees-Mogg, his sister Annunziata, historian David Starkey, Brexit negotiator Lord Frost and former MEP Dan ‘Brain of Brexit’ Hannan.

What they offered their audience was less of a clarion wake-up call as a comforting balm to aid the electorally wounded, soothing words to heal their troubled souls. There was consensus, of a sort.

Of course elections aren’t won from the centre, the various speakers agreed. The last few years of the Conservative government weren’t at all conservative, they all said. No-one should blame millions of people for voting Reform if they wanted proper conservatism, and they certainly shouldn’t blame Nigel Farage for moving into the “vacuum” the Conservative Party had created.

Like warm honeyed drinks, the platitudes flowed, telling the audience exactly what it might want to hear.

There was a similar degree of consensus around the villains of the piece. The Conservative “party machinery” and CCHQ must be either reformed, re-educated, or ripped out root and branch, they demurred, and power returned to the members.

The enemy is not the Labour Party – after all, no-one actually likes them, they agreed – but instead the “quangocracy”, the bureaucracy, “international courts” and the “lunatic woke virus”. Without ripping up such institutions, proper conservatism in Britain is all but impossible.

The audience of true conservatives nodded along, quietly pleased, as the speakers demanded the constitutional backbone of the UK be ripped out.

Much like “proper communism” has apparently never been tried, it turns out we have never tried proper Conservatism – at least not in the last 14 years. Lord Frost got particularly indignant on this point, spitting out disgustedly that under Rishi Sunak the Conservative Party had proposed banning smoking and set “Soviet-style targets for boilers and electric cars”.

Frost’s reaction to the fact that the Sunak government passed a law making pet abduction an offence was a level of fury you’d assume would only be reserved for Cruella de Vil at such a development.

In the manner of a wounded animal limping back to its den, those in the room were happy to be cocooned by what they saw as “proper Conservatism” and proper Conservative values. The problem was, none of the speakers actually seemed to agree on what they were.

Frost disgustedly spoke of the “liberal collectivist” mindset that had overtaken Britain and the Tories, saying that free markets were what mattered, as was individual freedom. David Starkey aligned on this too, noting unhappily that Labour’s manifesto had not used the word “freedom” once (he was right; the word is actually in Labour’s manifesto four times).

They may wish to raise this centring of individual freedom with Suella Braverman, who instead argued that proper conservatives are “the champions of family, the party of duty, of love of our country, service to our people, respect for all, community, traditional culture specific to our nature”, all of which sounds quite collectivist. Predictably, Rees-Mogg agreed with the centring of family and tradition in proper Conservatism.

Luckily, no-one in the room seemed to be listening to the actual words the politicians were saying to pick up the total lack of agreement. The people standing against proper conservatism are bad, and must be stopped, unless they’re Nigel Farage and Reform.

Tradition is good, as is mentioning things from history – at various points 1265, 1832, 146 and 1880 were all referenced, as was the Duke of Wellington securing a fifth term in parliament. Letting the members decide in a long leadership contest is good, stitch-ups by MPs are bad – an interim leader would certainly be good (Iain Duncan Smith is reportedly being sounded out for such a role).

The PopCons’ half-day conference was not a plan for the future, or even for the present. It was an opportunity to offer some comfort. Whatever the problems, the answer is proper conservatism.

They can agree on what proper, or popular, conservativism actually means some other time.