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The dark cloud hanging over Boris Johnson’s leadership lifted somewhat this week, but his party is fragmenting as factions vie for his next destination.
Attention may have shifted to Ukraine, and speculation about the number of letters of censure from MPs has subsided, with MPs back in their constituencies for the parliamentary recess.
But the brief respite from the Downing Street soap opera has allowed a longer-term problem for the Conservatives to come to light: the party is torn apart by division and doesn’t know where it’s going.
MPs are divided along a growing number of overlapping lines: big state versus small state, “Red Wall” versus “Blue Wall,” One Nation versus libertarian right, pro or anti-net zero, and Johnson loyalists versus those who They think it’s time for the PM to go in the wake of the “partygate” scandal.
The current vulnerability of its leader is accentuating the division. What congressmen think suddenly matters, and Johnson finds himself besieged with requests to change course to win his support.
Speaking of the many fault lines crisscrossing the party’s back seats, a senior Conservative source says: “Boris’s foundations are very wide but not very deep, so if one bit starts to wobble, everything wobbles.
“That’s why it can look stable one minute and chaos the next.”
But this could end up saving the prime minister, since, unlike Theresa May, he does not face a coordinated campaign to oust him driven by a large group of ideological bedfellows like the so-called Brexit Spartans.
“Because it’s all these small groups, those who want to oust Boris have to unite so many competing interests, which is difficult,” the source said.
And there is conflict between the factions, with accusations about some deputies exploiting the situation to “force their own agenda”.
Whether or not there is a leadership challenge, key parts of the ailing prime minister’s agenda are under pressure from different sections of the party.
In recent weeks, there has been a concerted push by MPs, led by right-wingers Craig Mackinlay and Steve Baker and backed by Johnson’s former Brexit minister Lord Frost, for the government to back down on its ambitious target of zero net carbon emissions. emissions by 2050.
It culminated in a letter to the Sunday Telegraph, signed by 29 MPs, demanding that the prime minister lift the ban on fracking to collect shale gas and cut energy bills.
Even serving ministers are skeptical of the net-zero emissions agenda, with one saying I It is “the only thing the government is doing.”
“There is a little bit of health and a little bit of education when we decide to teach children something, but everything else is net zero.
“We are in a hiding place for nothing with that. The last 10 percent (to get to net zero) is astronomically expensive.”
Will Tanner, director of the influential think tank Onward, says his research suggests that net zero could “absolutely” become a “divisive culture war issue if not handled correctly” and “the government should be under no illusions about the possibility.” that this becomes a pretty big problem.” a difficult issue” as people are reluctant to “face the costs”.
“The idea of spending £10,000 on a heat pump or £30,000 on an electric car is beyond the media and political imagination of most voters, they see it as overkill.”
But there is also a “massive opportunity” for the government and the “Red Wall” voters it now serves that is largely ignored by conservative critics, it adds.
Tanner says people in “forgotten” places like Redcar, Teesside, are “feeling for the first time in 30 years the benefits of high-skilled jobs associated with net zero” through wind turbine manufacturing, carbon capture and other industries.
“Those benefits accrue particularly in the kinds of areas that ‘levelling up’ is trying to support,” he says.
Alexander Stafford, a Conservative MP from Rother Valley in South Yorkshire, sees the opportunity and is scathing about colleagues who want to get back to fracking.
“It’s almost a weak argument to say bring fracking back,” he says. “The more renewable energy we have, the more control we have over our own energy, the less control Russia, Saudi Arabia and other countries have, the less likely we are to be affected by global fluctuations in the price of gas.”
Stafford says MPs are exploiting the leadership crisis to fight net zero, something he insists his voters care about.
“Clearly there is concern that some elements of the party are using the current situation to try to push their own agenda,” he says.
“(The PM) actually cares about net zero, you can’t fault his commitment to that and there is a concern that if there is competition for leadership, others won’t be as enthusiastic.”
He implores his colleagues: “We can’t be these Luddites smashing jennys, we want to be the country that makes jennies and sells them abroad.”
The net zero argument speaks to a broader battle for the soul of the party between Thatcherite libertarians who want tax cuts and a small state, and those who now see a role for big spending.
There has been a sustained campaign against plans to increase national insurance in April, which will raise the tax burden to its highest level in decades to boost funding for the NHS and social care.
Veteran Conservative MP John Redwood complained of a “tax attack”, while Lord Frost, once an apolitical diplomat but now a champion of free-market Conservatives, commented this week that big government was “not only wrong , but in many ways it was funny.
The prime minister’s allies have responded to this, with his new 10th chief of staff, Steve Barclay, pledging to reduce the size of government.
But among the newer cohort of Conservative MPs, however, most have been more interested in securing government spending on their seats. And, with some influential voices suggesting that prosperous Southern seats might be sacrificed to preserve a “Red Wall” majority, could Johnson have changed his party forever?
A parliamentarian says: “I am not a libertarian, it is more important to strengthen public services than to reduce taxes.”
The change in attitudes towards public spending is perhaps most clearly seen in the new Tory approach to welfare, with many MPs recently campaigning unsuccessfully to keep the pandemic-related £20 universal credit increase.
An MP says Covid-19 has helped drive a “sea change” from the era of austerity and spark a recognition that government has a role to play in helping people “help themselves”.
They added: “There is obviously a strong free-market libertarian element. [in the Conservative Party] but I think there is a recognition that there is an umbilical cord between the British people and our health service, and many colleagues are pushing to spend on education, individual seats, schools and new hospitals and roads, which probably would not have happened in the past.
“It’s not just a barrel of pork, it’s kind of a belief that we need a mixed economy. It’s not about big government or small government, it’s about good government.”
Tanner says “tension” is inevitable as Johnson pursues “economy-changing agendas” like net zero and leveling, but stresses, “We’re not in the 1980s.”
And Baker, the maverick former minister known for his notion of campaigning, has partially conceded defeat in his bid to return the party to its small-state instincts.
Addressing activists recently, he said: “I am a free-market conservative who must engage every day. There is no libertarian caucus in the party.”
Others believe that leveling up and a small state can be achieved together, but stress that Johnson should rein in spending for now given the £400bn black hole in public finances and high tax rates.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, treasurer of the powerful Tory backbench 1922 Committee, says: “After spending £400bn on Covid, you can’t run before you can walk, you can only spend what you have.”
Elsewhere, Johnson’s forays into right-wing populism, such as his false claims about Sir Keir Starmer, are falling down with One Nation MPs, with at least two letters of mistrust of him criticizing the comments.
One MP says there is “definitely a tension between MPs facing Labor and MPs facing the Lib Dems, and with a generally different demographic”.
They say, “This goes back to leadership: you need someone who can bring the two together. In the last election, Boris managed to straddle those two camps, but the question is who is going to straddle the two camps now?
They suggest the Conservatives may need to do “really clear thinking” about which seats to target in the future, as it may be impossible to keep the entire coalition of current voters happy.
One minister suggests sacrificing affluent Southern seats facing a Liberal Democrat challenge.
“It would be better to just put the other guys [Labour] go in and let them screw it up and come back with a clearer idea of what we want to do,” they said.
“We don’t need a majority of 80, we need a majority of 40; you can’t keep Chipping Barnet and Blyth Valley.”
But the minister also has a grim assessment of his party’s position: “We don’t have any [ideological] mooring, we don’t know what we’re doing.”
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