Britain’s Conservatives adopt the bad habits of the Labour left

TONY BENN died in 2014 as a socialist hero to the left. But he is remembered by his opponents within the Labour Party for a singularly bad idea: the cause of “party democracy”. Labour, Benn reckoned, was “riddled with the same aristocratic ideas as deface our national democracy”. From the 1970s on, he battled to make its MPs beholden to the wishes of its card-carrying members. To his critics, that inverted the party, placing the whims of its activists above those of the wider electorate it was bound to serve.

The Conservative Party appears to be in the grip of a similar disorder. Four candidates—Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat—paraded their wares at its annual party conference in Birmingham this week. This quartet will soon be reduced by MPs to two, with the winner to be selected in November by the Tory membership. The influence of that party selectorate helps explain why the Tories are now afflicted by the habits that characterised the old Labour left—a veneration of the membership and deep ideological stubbornness. Call it Tory Bennism.

The conference thus echoed with the grovelling of Conservative MPs, not to the British people for 14 years of patchy governance, but to the membership for its worst defeat (in seats and vote share) since 1832. “I am profoundly sorry to you, the members of the Conservative Party,” said Richard Fuller, the chairman, opening proceedings on September 29th. “It wasn’t this party that failed, it wasn’t the ideas that failed, it was the centre that failed. They all let you down,” echoed Mr Tugendhat. A sorrowful Mr Jenrick vowed he would “return the party to the service of the membership”.

At Mr Fuller’s instigation, members debated with shadow ministers from the conference floor, restoring a tradition abolished in 1999. “At last the party is putting free speech into action!” trilled Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former minister. The candidates lined up to take potshots at the much-resented spotty graduates who run Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ). Local associations, all candidates promised, would be able to pick their own candidates for Parliament and end what Mr Jenrick called “parachuting in of the favoured sons and daughters of the leader, the special advisers, the press officers from Number 10”.

Mr Tugendhat said that the chairman of the National Convention, a gathering of voluntary party bigwigs, should attend the shadow cabinet “so we can hear from him directly what members think”. Ms Badenoch said that members should see the minutes of the party’s board. Such minutiae once obsessed only the Labour left.

The scenes in Birmingham were a partial replay of the response to the party’s previous defeat in 1997, says Tim Bale, a historian of the party, when party high-ups sought to assuage grassroots members who were angry at defeat and irritated by cchq. William Hague, the then leader, responded by granting Tory members a vote on the leadership, a choice that had previously been the preserve of MPs. Lord Hague now regrets this, since it did not create the mass membership he had hoped to encourage.

Instead the ranks of the Tory faithful have become thinner—the data are opaque but membership was 172,000 at the last leadership vote in 2022—and more radical. For Bennites, the right to kick out Labour MPs was essential as a way of forcing them to obey conference resolutions. Some on the Tory fringes have similar ambitions.

Claire Bullivant of the Conservative Democratic Organisation, a group born of members’ anger at the ousting by MPs of Boris Johnson in 2022, told delegates of plans for an app that would exploit the party rule book; this would trigger special branch meetings or constitutional conventions if enough members registered their disagreement “on every policy, every decision, daily”. It would, she said, “ensure that our MPs who we send to Westminster aren’t Lib Dems wearing blue rosettes”.

This is another Bennite trait: the pursuit of purity over power. In 1983 Benn notoriously declared that Labour’s crushing defeat in the general election that year was in fact a “remarkable development”, since “a political party with an openly socialist policy has received the support of over 8.5m people”. At this week’s conference Ms Badenoch declared she was excited by opposition and reckoned that insufficient conservatism was the problem, for “when we went after Labour votes, we lost our own”. In Mr Jenrick’s analysis, the Tory party needs more “religion”; it must have candidates “who are actually Conservatives to their core”.

That is a recipe for ossification. Mr Jenrick, widely seen as the front-runner in the leadership contest, announced at the conference that he would create a “New Conservative Party” but the platform is wearily familiar. He promises to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, an idea that he says will “finish what Brexit started” but which has divided the party for over a decade. He proposes legislating for a cap on migration at tens of thousands a year, iron-cladding a target that David Cameron tried and failed to meet.

He proposes a more sceptical position on net zero, to reboot the Rwanda deportation scheme and to get tough on woke institutions—all positions that were at the heart of the 2024 manifesto. If there is any deep new thinking among the Tories about Britain’s chronically low productivity and overstretched public services, it wasn’t in evidence at the hustings.

This inward turn is a cause for quiet satisfaction in Labour circles. Sir Keir Starmer buttered up Labour Party members in his own leadership campaign in 2020. But his project for power has since rested on ridding Labour of Bennite thought (promulgated most recently by Jeremy Corbyn, Sir Keir’s predecessor as leader) and downgrading the fetishes of activists with the mantra “country first, party second”.

So far, there is not a glimmer of so ruthless a turn against the membership among the Tories. “Where is the change candidate? Where’s the person writing the articles saying they need to change from top to bottom?” mused Pat McFadden, Sir Keir’s right-hand man, last month. Bennism condemned Labour to years in opposition. It’s not obvious why it would work any better for the Tories. ■

For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.