'The Tories must fundamentally change to survive - but there's only one place where they can win' - Bill Rammell
The Tories don’t get the scale of their epic defeat, says Bill Rammell
Bill Rammell, a former Labour Party MP considers whether any leader can save the Conservative Party
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In politics sometimes the unthinkable happens. The Soviet Union and Apartheid in South Africa seemed like immutable certainties which would endure. Yet within a year, both were gone.
What has this got to do with the future of the Tory Party? Well, Tory domination of British politics over the last 120 years has made it one of the most successful parties in the Western world. They may come back to Government in 10 years or so, but it is by no means certain.
It is possible that the Tories continue to ape Reform, even merge with it, then split, because there is a limit for mainstream one nation Tories, and this grouping somehow merges with the Lib Dems, and we see a fundamental realignment of British politics on the right.
I am entering the world of conjecture here. But the point I am making is that the continuation of the Tories as a party of Government in Britain is not certain.
And who leads the Tory Party now matters. But more important is how the party itself and their cheerleaders in the press react to this historic defeat.
And what I’m struck by since July 4 is that the Tories don’t get the scale of their epic defeat.
This was worse by far than 1997. Their worst election result ever.
The Tories lost votes in every part of the country, in every demographic, of every political persuasion. Labour won both Southend seats and both Bournemouth seats for God’s sake!
And there’s no sense of urgency or recognition amongst any of the potential leaders of the party about the scale of their defeat, and that it means they have to fundamentally change to survive.
Bluntly the Tories don’t get why they lost so heavily. Not that they weren’t right-wing enough, but that to most people they were too right-wing and too extreme.
That they were seen as abandoning a commitment to the rule of law and a belief in strong institutions- traditionally the bedrock of the Tory Party.
That they presided over Governments of division and chaos.
As someone who appears regularly on GB News, I’ve been really struck in discussions with Tories in the Green Room how many of them have a visceral loathing and contempt for the last Tory Government.
And that communicates to the electorate, and not in a good way.
That they came to be defined by the lies of Boris Johnson and the reckless and casual extremism of Liz Truss.
Until the Tories face up to this, they have no hope. That they recked our public services with savage cuts so that nothing seems to work in Britain.
That they were seen as ideological extremists always putting party before country, giving us the hardest and harshest form of Brexit, and constantly moving towards leaving the ECHR, against the views of the majority of the electorate.
That they were seen by most people as being out of touch and bluntly not normal.
So, the Tories need recognition of why they lost so badly and a determination to change.
Will any candidate for leader do hard yards of a fundamental reconstruction job, and drag the party kicking and screaming back to centre ground - the only place in our electoral system where you win - as Kinnock, Blair, Cameron, and Starmer did with their parties?
The signs are not positive. Even Tugendhat the centrist is pitching to leave ECHR.
Because he knows he has to win over extremist Tory Party members, who are much older, much more right-wing and much more reactionary than the British mainstream.
So will the Tories return as a party of Government, or will they split? Whoever leads them at the very least the jury is out. And that’s a first in my lifetime.
