This article is taken from the February 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £25.
Why vote Conservative? There were two occasions in the previous decade when the answer was practical if not positive: the Tories provided the most effectual means of preventing the country being governed by fanatics of the hue of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.
If the Conservatives achieved nothing else — and when led by Theresa May they almost botched even this most basic task, securing 42 per cent to Corbynite Labour’s 40 per cent of the vote in the 2017 general election — they at least saved Britain from a government of ideologues of pernicious associations and sympathies bent on policies of expropriation. The Tories managed this only because most centre-right and right-wing-minded voters united behind them. Mr Corbyn might well have occupied Downing Street if that right-leaning vote had split between two parties of the right, as it has now.
Which brings us to the Conservative Party’s value as the less popular of the two parties of the right in over 200 consecutive opinion polls.
Corbyn finds himself reduced to the company he deserves. In his place, the Starmer government’s relationship to the Conservative administrations it replaced demonstrates rather more continuity than departure. Under their conveyor belt of leaders, the Conservatives fostered a high tax, high regulation economy that makes infrastructure investment unaffordable alongside a Net Zero energy policy that is obliterating what remains of Britain’s industrial base at precisely the moment geopolitics requires a revival of national capacity. The Tories provided government that was interfering by instinct yet gummed-up by process. Labour has not reversed this inheritance, why would it?
In these circumstances, the Conservatives’ task is to undo much of the direction of British government policy this century — which is their own legacy as much as it is Labour’s. International affairs are going in a direction not necessarily to Reform’s advantage. But in domestic politics, the Conservative opportunity requires broadly accepting much of Reform’s diagnosis of the underlying problems besetting Britain.
For many, the logic of this will be to simply vote Reform and get the real deal. Yet, while questions remain about Reform’s professional capacity to deliver, Tory politicians could — were they capable of the requisite humility — profess the worldly experience of those who having messed up once have learned how not to do it this badly again. It is not a convincing argument, but it is better than taking credit for the state we are in and pretending some technocratic tweaks will fix matters arising. If we believe the latter, then we have the right people in government already.
Does the ability of politicians to concede the substance of popular discontent matter? Among the reasons that seemingly motivated Robert Jenrick’s defection was his now former shadow cabinet colleagues’ refusal to admit Britain is broken. Tory progressives profess it is not, either because their empathy does not stretch beyond the ski lift or, with greater calculation, because they can’t publicly concede their part in the ruin. Thus we are fed a counter-narrative that “broken Britain” might actually be a base dog whistle for harbouring un-Whiggish thoughts about progress.
Conservative modernisers peddling this comforting belief may wish to remember who coined the offending phrase. For it was David Cameron who spoke of Britain’s “broken society” not only in the run-up to the 2010 general election but, more bravely, again in the 2015 campaign after five years’ of his own coalition’s efforts to piece the shattered vase back together. Indeed, readers of the self-styled “heir to Blair’s” memoir, For The Record (published 2019), need plough no further than page 3 before the first mention of the phrase.
It is worth recalling this because it is the cheerleaders for the Cameron transformation of the Conservative Party who are most gleeful by the defection of traditional Tories to Reform. “They’ve gone. Allelujah!” Matthew Parris rejoiced in The Times and “hopefully a few more right-wing malcontents will quit the Tories to join Reform” resulting in “an act of sanitation” for the Conservative Party. Such is the judgement of an influential journalist who has spent years claiming the party he once loved needs to be a broad tent. By this he of course actually just meant a flimsy gazebo sufficient to shelter Dominic Grieve — Cameron’s Attorney General who Labour correctly identified as precisely the man to chair its Islamophobia working group, the resulting “stereotyping” definition of which is clearly inimical to freedom of speech. Just the chap to bring Middle England back to the Tories.
Those who genuinely believe in a Conservative party of broad but also deeply Tory appeal should worry about what Kemi Badenoch is thinking. She would be inhuman not to feel betrayed by deserters, but is she wise in lashing out by actively inviting more doubting colleagues to defect so that “they will create space for those who share our values and purpose”?
What values? What purpose? Who are these talented Conservatives that their leader is currently keeping under wraps but who may take human form with each further shrinking of the parliamentary party? Mrs Badenoch has won plaudits for showing strong leadership in expelling Mr Jenrick before he defected. Tactically she cannot be faulted for doing so. But tactics are a poor substitute for strategy. Marvellous may be the work of sappers in blowing a bridge before assailants cross it. But we should question the generalship that has caused her army to retreat so that it can dig new defence works on the less populated side of the river.
We are extensively briefed about the personal ambition motivating Tories who have crossed over to the Reform camp. And those who accuse them of ambition are honourable men. However, it is not a good omen for the Tories that some of their most ambitious politicians are defecting to Reform, any more than it is a positive sign that Britain’s most opportunity-motivated citizens are increasingly emigrating abroad. Something seems broken.
