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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
When politicians wonder what to pitch to the electorate, strategists tend to suggest either “stick with what you know, let us finish the job” or “try us, we’re the change”. The first has fallen out of fashion. In a perilous world, with voters fed up, offering the status quo doesn’t get you very far, unless you’re Javier Milei. These days it’s all about selling a new movement, untainted by history. That’s what Macron did with En Marche; it’s what Trump did with Maga; it’s what Nigel Farage is doing with Reform UK. It’s why Labour MPs are desperate for a new leader. And it’s why Kemi Badenoch has this week seemingly abandoned the centre ground for the Conservatives, jilting those who had thought, until that moment, that they were standing on it.
Badenoch is resisting the logic that the latest defections to Reform UK should liberate the Conservatives to build a broader church. It initially seemed that Nigel Farage had blundered, by welcoming Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman: Reform UK now has as many former Truss cabinet ministers as the Conservative front bench, giving Labour the chance to chant “same old Tories”.
But it may not be that simple. Farage is calculating that toxic characters who repeat ad infinitum that the country is “broken” will help him to wipe out the Conservatives altogether. He can up the game on immigration and offer a genuinely different industrial policy.
The fear of being labelled “same old Tories” is why Badenoch publicly cold-shouldered Prosper UK, a group of former politicians offering to help the party win over centrist and centre-right voters. “Anybody who is trying to push an agenda that is not what I got [elected on], not the platform I stood on, is not being helpful,” she declared rather mystifyingly, since a “stronger economy” is one of her slogans. She also promised there would be no return to the Tory party of 2006, which those of us who can cast our minds back that far remember as a time when the party was resurgent and was leading in the polls.
It’s all code, of course. Code to soothe a party that has some members who would rather push 7mn politically homeless voters into the arms of the Liberal Democrats than welcome moderate pragmatism. Code to handle jittery MPs who are still suffering from Boris derangement syndrome and regard anyone who stood up to him as a traitor.
The very existence of Prosper UK speaks volumes. Why would Ruth Davidson, the most successful Scottish leader the Conservatives ever had, and Andy Street, who ran John Lewis and then the West Midlands mayoralty, need to set up a movement to persuade their own leadership to have a more substantial economic strategy? You’d think they’d just get on the phone.
But Badenoch is famously not a good listener. She’s prickly about advice. She may fear Prosper is a vehicle for a leadership challenge, although those involved assure me it’s not. But she also faces a genuine dilemma. With immigration the key issue for so many former Conservative and Labour voters who have warmed to Reform UK, she fears any suggestion she’s gone soft.
The opportunity for the Conservatives is obvious. Labour’s travails, and Reform’s vacillations, have left an open goal on the economy. Yet the Tory “plan” is very thin. They have no equivalent to the 2007-2010 business engagement exercise which fed into the 2010 manifesto. I can’t count the number of business people I’ve met who say they have buyers’ remorse about voting Labour, but hear almost nothing from the Conservatives about growth, business or investment. All they hear, they say, is about immigration and culture. That’s why Prosper UK was set up. Time is running out for the Tories to convincingly claim this territory and develop credible policy.
No one wants to look like the status quo, dredging up old faces from the past. But in fact, it’s the current crop of Conservatives who are stuck. The party won’t be credible until it comprehensively breaks with the economic irresponsibility of Liz Truss and the political irresponsibility of Boris Johnson. Badenoch did a decent job of slating the mini-Budget at her conference speech in October. But she’s only inched towards criticising Johnson.
How can the Conservatives make a credible pitch on immigration, while the country is still reeling from the “Boris wave”? How can they be trusted on welfare when their proposals would barely get the country back to where it was before Johnson carelessly let the welfare bill balloon after years of painstaking reforms? Many of those who served in that period have convinced themselves the country was “broken” by a cabal of Blairites and Cameroons: not by the high-spending, high-taxing Johnson. They have let Labour get away with its “14 years of Tory failure” refrain. They can’t even attack the government’s education reforms, which would wreck the improvements the Conservatives made to schools, because they can’t admit anything went right before 2016.
And now we come to the real reason why Prosper UK gives Tory MPs the jitters. The four main protagonists were Remainers: and the current crop of Tory MPs are about the only people left who haven’t either died since the Brexit referendum, or moved on. Plus Davidson, Amber Rudd and David Gauke all sacrificed their careers to oppose Johnson. They have integrity. That commodity is very valuable in today’s politics.
Look forward not back, absolutely. Build a new Jerusalem. But build it on common sense. Reform has energy and optimism. So do Davidson and Street. It would be wise to make use of that.