Could the 21 ex-tory rebels offer voters a new home — the one nation party? | thearticle

With 21 MPs having the Conservative whip taken away, including two ex-Chancellors of the Exchequer and Winston Churchill’s grandson, Boris Johnson may be fast-forwarding an irreversible

schism in the Conservative Party. The gamble Boris is taking was excellently laid out by Benedict Spence on TheArticle yesterday. We should also ask: what might it look like if the

deselected 21 go their own way and form a new party? Firstly, these 21 MPs are in a completely different position from the founders of Change UK/The Independent Group, or the rebels who

walked out of the Labour Party in 1981 and formed the Social Democratic Party. It will be a bunch of sacked MPs who have not gone on their own terms: a Tory centrist rump.  This group,

several of whom have said that they do not intend to seek re-election, have been ejected from a Tory party with an army of 160,000 willing activists and a highly sophisticated central office

primed and ready to fight a traditional General Election campaign. They are being chucked out of a party in power, not a party failing in opposition like the Gang of Four who set up the SDP

and the former Labour majority of Change UK MPs. Change UK demonstrated that launching a party on the centre ground is not for the faint-hearted. If it is to form a distinct identity, the

group will have to fight on two fronts: against an insurgent Liberal Democrats, clearly identified with the cause of Remain, and a Conservative Party which stands for “do or die”, if

necessary no-deal Brexit. The ex-Tory rump will be caught in the middle as soft Brexit fudgers. This group will also have to fight on two fronts when it comes to rhetoric. The established

Conservative Party will paint them as a group not willing to make the hard choices needed to leave the EU, while the Labour benches will point to many of them holding ministerial positions

while austerity was being meted out to the poor and vulnerable. This group is the most establishment take on “rebel” you will ever come across. Even calling them “wets” is problematic: some,

such as Oliver Letwin, were once among the driest of dry Thatcherites. There are positives though  — and big ones. First, this new party will probably take swathes of Conservative peers

with them.  They will have their collective feet in the door of the Palace of Westminster before they start. When Change UK launched, they looked like school prefects petitioning the

staffroom and finding the door locked. A party needs big-hitters and even statesmen. The new party could rely on the likes of Major, Heseltine, Rifkind and Patten.  The new party will also

be able to strike out from the English nationalist narrative which has taken over the established Conservative Party. It can stand for Unionism, perhaps by recruiting Ruth Davidson, whose

views on Brexit are similar to theirs, to take on an SNP which is singularly failing to govern north of the border. Scotland could even become the power base for this new party, much as the

Scottish Unionist Party of Bonar Law and Alec Douglas-Home acted for the Conservatives up until the 1960s. The new group would be able to launch itself as the political home for wealth

creation. The established Conservative Party is increasingly seen as anti-commerce, summed up by Boris’s notorious vulgarism: “F*** business.” The new party would have large donors queuing

at their door. Change UK didn’t get the brand right, communication was poor, and its digital structure collapsed before it started. All these things need funding; funding which Change UK

couldn’t find but will not be a problem for this new party. This new model Tory party will be able innovate when campaigning. Rory Stewart, who will be a huge figure in this group, gave a

clue how this should be done when campaigning for the Conservative leadership election. A well thought-out social media campaign is worth as much as 160,000 activists knocking on doors —

perhaps far more. Most importantly, the only way a centre-Right party in the UK can win the hearts and minds of the electorate, in the long-term, is through One Nation Conservatism. These

are principles laid out in Sir Robert Peel’s 1834 Tamworth Manifesto and built upon by the likes of Disraeli and Macmillan over the last 185 years. Indeed, they could do worse than to call

themselves One Nation. Any centre-Right party in the UK must support business, jobs, personal liberty, a small but effective state and the Union. This isn’t the party of Cummings and

Johnson, which is developing into a sect of English Nationalists dancing around the Corbyn money tree. If the 21 MPs do set up a new party, they will take with them the very soul of Toryism,

which is worth far more than the carcass they will leave behind.