You may have seen it on your screens recently — grizzled, miserable looking souls clashing beneath dark skies, doomed to see their centuries old culture fall, replaced by swaggering invaders. No, not the BBC’s latest historical drama King and Conqueror, but a televised spectacle that is far more tragic and bloody: the fall of the Conservative Party. The Tories have existed in some form since 1678, a fact that is enough on its own to tell a story of an extraordinary genius for reinvention, survival and continuity. Yet this ancient English political giant is set to be buried. We are no longer talking about challenge or crisis, but catastrophe.
Speaking yesterday, MP Danny Kruger announced his defection from the Tories to Reform. He did not say that his erstwhile party was in trouble, or that he could no longer reconcile his beliefs with it. He glanced at his watch and called the time of death. “And so this is my tragic conclusion. The Conservative Party is over. Over as a national party, over as the principal opposition to the left.”
Whilst Christianity is tolerated rather than welcomed on the centre right, the populist right has eagerly embraced it
There is much that could be said about how it got there. Kruger summed up the most recent failures himself: “The rule of our time in office was failure. bigger government, social decline, low wages, high taxes, and less of what ordinary people actually wanted.” Yet the roots of failure go deeper than the problems of Brexit or austerity.
Margaret Thatcher was perhaps the greatest post-war leader since Atlee, a visionary leader who remade British politics, revived flagging national confidence and brought an end to the paralysis of industrial disputes. As an individual, she was a kind of neo-Victorian, with a strong Christian faith, and a sense of moral urgency in her belief that the state had hollowed out a once vital civil society. Yet it was under Thatcher that the rot set in. On her watch, the main article of faith in the Conservative Party was no longer Christianity, but the teachings of St Milton and St Friedrich. The moral caliber of those entering the party collapsed. “Tory sleaze” was a reputation amply earned by a party increasingly composed of the ambitious and amoral.
This toxic marriage of ideological fundamentalism in economics, and callous careerism in its ranks, created a party that was at once inflexible and directionless. Fixations were found, like Brexit, and latterly the ECHR, but these negative definitions were ultimately the party’s undoing — they wanted Brexit, but didn’t know what to do with it when they had it. In retrospect, Boris Johnson’s 2019 win was a kind of internal revolt, with the new government committed to interventionist economics and greater national sovereignty. But this proved the final betrayal, from the cowardice of lockdown and the hypocrisy of partygate, to the insanity of the “Boriswave”. Every promise was broken, and the fatal character flaws of Johnson were exposed for all to see.
Decent and heroic Tories exist all over the country. They can be found farming in the shires, running small businesses in the towns and quietly incubating common sense around London dinner party tables. Such people are the salt of the earth, committed to family, faith and flag, showing a fierce sense of personal responsibility and duty. Yet this old kind of Tory is not really welcome in the modern party. You see this reality in a hundred sweaty conference rooms; in the unseemly hunger of activists and staffers for preference and advancement; in the endless grasping and petty cruelty that has come to define far too many areas of the modern centre-right.
Anyone who doubts this need only look to Danny Kruger. On the Conservative’s long yellow brick road back to power, he had the brains, heart and nerve that the party needed to go the distance. It isn’t just that he was the rare Tory MP to have ideas, publish books and to refer to the conservative intellectual tradition. Perhaps more uniquely, he is a good and decent man led by conscience rather than convenience. His conservatism is rooted in deep religious faith; a moral rather than managerial view of the British nation. So it has always been strange to me that Danny has never had a position of leadership in the party, and never been given a position in the cabinet. He represents a still vital segment of conservative opinion. Throughout the chaos of the past decade, Anglicans have been one of the most loyal and steady sections of the Tory vote. The Tories need religious and social conservatives.
Yet this group has been treated with indifference or contempt, with Tory spokesmen and publications regularly urging the Church of England to stay out of politics. The assisted dying debate was an important chance for the party to show its moral backbone, but far too many in the movement are instead committed to the most lurid extremes of social libertarianism. Prominent voices like Matthew Parris and Andrew Roberts have openly called for the dethroning of Christian ethics. It is perhaps no surprise that in the face of active hostility, moral failure and broken promises, that Anglicans have, for the first time, started to back Reform over the Tories.
Whilst Christianity is tolerated rather than welcomed on the centre right, the populist right has eagerly embraced it. Reform is alone in asserting Britain’s irrevocably Christian history, culture and identity. Despite contemporary Christianity’s evident tolerance, sanity and openness, it has been treated, just like whiteness, as the one problematic identity which cannot be included if we are to be inclusive. Predictably, this has seen Christians move towards the one political movement that does not treat them as an embarrassment.
British politics badly needs the moral values and political vision that Christianity offers in this time of crisis. Reform, the great shout of Britain’s voiceless, desperately needs coherent words and ideas to utter. Danny is both an ideas man and a man of conscience, and his new role as head of Reform’s Department for Preparing for Government is extremely welcome. Yet if this is an important step in the right direction for Reform, it is a fatal stumble for the remnants of the Conservative Party. That a man as naturally and straightforwardly Tory as Danny Kruger can no longer find a home in the party is damning. This is a party that has lost its soul, and deserves to die.
