The ideological tensions inside the Conservatives are actually deeper

The General Election on July 4 won’t only be a clash between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.

Beneath this public scramble for power, another battle is brewing, one that could prove to be even more bitter — more savage — than the fight for the crown of government.

It’s the war for the soul of the Conservatives between the new ‘wets’ and the more traditionalist wing of the party.

Between woke Conservatives who think the party must relentlessly modernise and their conventional counterparts who cleave to the values and virtues of the past.

Between self-consciously trendy Tories who love the EU and put their pronouns in their social-media bios and Tories who think cutting taxes and securing borders are a tad more important than such trivial posturing.

As manifestos are hastily drafted, these rival factions are battling it out behind the scenes.

And if the wets win and the Conservatives become a slightly more right-wing version of Labour, then British politics would be utterly drained of choice. All we would have to choose between is two shades of political correctness, two versions of the same soulless worldview, two different spouters of elite consensus opinion.

If the wets win, the rest of us lose.

Rain-soaked Rishi did his best this week to pitch the forthcoming election as a clash between parties with very different visions for the future.

‘Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future,’ he said, his suit drenched with rain, his face etched with self-doubt.

He could just as easily have applied those words to the party he leads. A party where you can bump into a ‘trans-friendly’ Remoaner one day and a gender-critical Brexiteer the next.

I would go so far as to say that the ideological tensions within the Conservative Party are deeper than the ideological tensions between the Conservatives and Labour.

Hang out with the Tories for a day and you might meet someone like Michael Heseltine — wet back then, wet now — who warbles about Brexit being a ‘disaster’. And five minutes later you might rub shoulders with Jacob Rees-Mogg, who loves Brexit.

You might mingle with Maria Miller one minute, the former Minister for Women and Equalities who did so much to push ‘gender self-ID’ — the nonsense notion that everyone should get to choose their own sex.

And the next minute you might be chinwagging with the brilliant Kemi Badenoch, Secretary of State for Business and Trade, who has led a one-woman crusade for a recognition of the reality of biological sex and the right of women to have their own spaces.

Of course, it is healthy for political parties to debate things, to tussle internally over priorities and policies. The Tory Party has always been a broad church, which is part of the secret of its lasting, election-winning appeal.

The question now is who will win out: the wets who bristle at Brexit and worship wokeness, or the traditionalists who back Brexit and recognise that progressive nostrums pose a grave threat to truth and common sense?

It can’t be the wets. It can’t be that element of the party who are basically Starmerites who once read some Edmund Burke. It can’t be the wing that would drag us back to Brussels given half a chance and who probably mutter darkly about ‘gammon’ voters as they share a chardonnay in the Commons bar.

No, if the greatest election-winning machine in British history is to go on to win again, then the wets must not be allowed to seize the initiative.

Sense must prevail, reason must rise, and the Conservative Party has to be, well, conservative.

That’s why it’s time the Tories put forward a singular vision, one that will connect with the silent majority who’ve had enough of the woke derangement and Brexit-bashing of the smug elites.

The Conservatives need to find their spine. They need to remember that they were returned to power in 2019 precisely in order to shake up the system.

That tidal wave of votes for Boris Johnson was a plea from the people to ‘Get Brexit done’ and make a success of it. To clip the wings of the arrogant Whitehall blob. To keep wokeness in check. To stand up for British history and British values against a self-loathing cultural elite bent on tearing down statues and brainwashing kids to think of Britain as a racist hellhole. 

The Conservatives literally have a democratic mandate to be daring. Do they have it in them — even at this late stage — to live up to that mandate?

Here’s what they need to do. Instead of following Labour down the dull, media- pleasing technocratic route, they need to distinguish themselves — forcefully.

They should make clear their commitment to making Brexit Britain a global powerhouse of free trade. A truly independent nation willing to write its own fate.

They should loudly defend Britain’s sovereign integrity. That means fortifying our borders and strengthening our defence systems. It means no more border chaos at Dover and no more anti-male discrimination in our military forces. It means standing up for Britain’s territorial sanctity and existential safety.

They must stand up to the anti-Israel hate mob and make clear that we stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies who are defending Western civilisation from the menaces of violent extremism. A serious, non-wet Tory Party will not abandon Israel in her gravest hour of need.

They should confront the ‘multicultural’ separatism and Islamic radicalism that threaten to tear our country apart.

These scourges have worsened since Hamas’s pogrom of October 7.

We’ve seen young people on the streets of our cities singing Hamas’s praises and even demanding ‘jihad’ against the Jewish State.

A Conservative Party worth the name would be making far more noise about such antisocial, anti-civilisational behaviour.

It would be loudly making the case for Western society against the extremists who wish to destroy it.

Then there’s the economy. Conservatives should know what to do here. It’s not rocket science.

The party should commit — in clear, measurable terms, not airy promises — to cutting taxes. To leaving more of our money in our pockets. To building the new homes that Britain needs. To genuinely ‘levelling up’ left- behind communities.

And, most importantly, to wriggling free of the cult of Net Zero that imposes so many onerous blocks on economic growth. Can Rishi do this? See off all the cranky ideologies that chip away at genuine conservatism and hurt ordinary people? We will see.

One thing he needs to acknowledge, as a matter of urgency, is this: today’s Tory wets are an even bigger threat to the party and the nation than the wets Thatcher had to contend with in the 1980s.

Tory wets back then mostly kicked up a fuss about Thatcher’s monetary policy and her slashing of public spending. These were economic clashes: Important, yes, but not the end of the world.

Today’s wets are calling into question so much more. Britain’s right to govern itself, the importance of borders, the reality of sex, even truth itself.

Sunak needs to go to the voters with a crystal-clear message. He needs to convince us that his party is on our side.