The catastrophic fall of Cameron’s liberal faction

Good morning. Staving off a complete summer lull in news, our team has unearthed an important scoop about the future direction of green policies under the Conservatives. But I don’t have all that much to add on that, other than “this is an important scoop”.

Fortunately, I have recently read The Case for the Centre Right, a series of essays edited by David Gauke, the former justice secretary and lord chancellor. Some thoughts on that below.

Claiming back terri-Tory

One of the fascinating paradoxes of the past 13 years is that the Conservative party only returned to office thanks to the party’s liberal wing, but since returning, Tory liberals have succumbed to nothing short of disaster.

In my view, without David Cameron’s modernisation of the Tory party, they would never have been able to return to Downing Street. But Cameron’s faction has had a catastrophic 13 years. The UK has left the EU, taxes are at an all-time high and the environmental agenda is on the backburner. Instead of targeting affluent ethnic minority voters, whom Cameron spent so much time and energy cultivating, the Conservatives are now the party of retired, largely white British voters.

Now David Gauke, one of the most effective administrators of the past 13 years, has edited a volume of essays, The Case for the Centre Right. The book is a who’s who of moderate Tories, including Danny Finkelstein, Amber Rudd, Rory Stewart, Andrew Cooper and Anne Milton.

The book has any number of strengths. The essays are thoughtful and thought-provoking, but something is missing. Reading the book, it feels as if the authors think the only reason that Conservative moderates and the Tory left have lost power is the wickedness of their opponents. I don’t think that can be the whole story. There’s no account of why the liberal centre right went from the Tory party’s dominant faction under Cameron to a subordinate one under Sunak. This is surely the central question facing Conservative moderates: if they don’t have a theory to explain their internal defeats, they surely won’t be in a position to reverse them any time soon.

One of Tony Blair’s rules for opposition is “start with an honest analysis of why you are in opposition”. I’m not sure that Tory moderates have an honest analysis of why they have been defeated. Until they do, they will surely struggle to reclaim control of the Conservative party.

Now try this

As I have mentioned a couple of times, I went to see Oppenheimer and Barbie at the weekend. My view when I left the cinema was that Oppenheimer is the better film but Barbie is the more interesting conversation starter, and that there isn’t much to say about Oppenheimer other than “well, that was a brilliant movie”. Since seeing the two films, all I have done is tell people they ought to see Oppenheimer and read reviews of Barbie. (Read Danny Leigh’s take on the latter here.)

Much to my chagrin, Janan Ganesh has proved there is, in fact, an interesting and wholly correct column to be written about the film. Read his column on Oppenheimer here and Danny Leigh’s review here.

Top stories today

• NatWest boss quits over Farage row | NatWest chief executive Alison Rose has stepped down after admitting to the inaccurate briefing of a BBC journalist about the closure of Nigel Farage’s bank account.

• Chasing cars | London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan has urged the Conservative central government to provide him with more funding to finance a more generous scrappage scheme for owners of older cars caught by his plans to expand his flagship clean air zone to cover the whole of the UK capital.

• Government ‘underplayed’ Wagner | The UK government’s “completely unrealistic” approach to Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group over the past decade has made “it possible, if not probable” that it has continued to benefit from access to London’s financial markets, despite being internationally sanctioned for alleged human rights abuses, a cross-party committee of MPs said yesterday.

• Homelessness rising sharply | The number of people living in temporary accommodation in England has hit a 25-year high, according to government data.

• Can students sue their universities? | About 120,000 recent graduates and current students across the UK have signed up to sue their universities over Covid-19 disruption. If successful, the claims could result in a combined payout for the UK higher education sector running into hundreds of millions of pounds. But several solicitors and barristers cautioned that the students could face an uphill battle to win.