Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The chaotic defection of Robert Jenrick, a pretender to the Conservative Party leadership, to Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK opens a battle for the future of the right in British politics. For the struggling Conservatives led by Kemi Badenoch, the temptation may be to position themselves increasingly as a less extreme version of Reform. Yet what Britain needs is a modern, broad-church party of the centre right — one that offers a genuine alternative to the illusory promises of Farage and a Labour Party that has proved in government to be far more old-left than billed.
Badenoch limited some of the political damage from her shadow justice secretary’s departure by sacking him as soon as she got wind of his impending treachery. His exit creates an opportunity for her and her party. It removes an ambitious rival and destabilising presence in her shadow cabinet, whose dog-whistle comments on race previous Tory leaders would not have tolerated. It creates an opening to steer the party back to the centre-right ground on which it won past elections.
The Reform-lite approach that Jenrick championed and some other Tories favour is based on a misdiagnosis of why the Conservatives lost the last election so badly and have been reduced to a shrunken rump. They were not insufficiently right-wing; they were insufficiently competent. If mistaken analysis causes the Tories to assume the wrong remedies, it will rob voters of a moderate right-wing option at the ballot box.
Anyone tempted by the populist right is more likely to prefer Reform and its charismatic leader over a paler imitation. Farage’s party, moreover, appears to despise much of modern Britain, in its moderate social liberalism and multiculturalism. The hatred attracts a portion of the electorate but it repels many other voters.
Sadly, the Conservatives display an increasingly similar attitude. How should the country respond to a party that was in power for most of the past 15 years and much of the postwar period yet seems to dislike the country it built?
The post-Brexit purge of more liberal “One Nation” Tories pushed the Conservatives to the right and deprived the party of vital talent. The result was to disenfranchise a broad sweep of the electorate lying between supporters of the populist right and those who lean to the left.
That leaves a gap for a centre-right political force that is not fixated on anti-outsider nationalism and a half-imagined vision of the past but ready to embrace modern Britain as it is. This party must acknowledge and address voter concerns on immigration, especially illegal migration, but without resorting to xenophobia.
It should be a forward-looking party that relishes the challenges of the future — from AI to the green transition, rather than rejecting net zero goals. It should be committed to fiscal discipline, stand up for the free market and free trade. And it must be unapologetically pro-business, as the Conservatives traditionally were, and ready to make the case for allowing elements of competition and market forces to reform public services.
There are questions about the size of the UK political centre that is up for grabs in today’s more polarised era of social media-driven politics that propels voters towards the extremes. But it is the art of politics to create electoral space by adopting persuasive platforms capable of building broad support. This is the challenge for the Tories. If the only credible choice of governing party at the next general election is between Reform or a Labour Party which, to date, has badly disappointed in government, that will be a disaster not just for the Conservatives but for Britain.