Conservative Party chairman Jake Berry last week emailed to the membership a message with the subject line: “Do you know what day it is?”
Someone at Tory HQ evidently still has a sense of humour.
Was it a cry for help? No one left working in Downing Street is bright enough to work a calendar?
Or, given that they elected Liz Truss their leader, had Berry lost all faith that the members remained in touch with reality at all, such that the very concept of days of the week bamboozled them?
In fact, the email spoke to the depths of the Conservatives’ troubles. For, when the Tories are in turmoil, they reliably turn to the same unifying force: Thatcher.
Last Thursday was Margaret Thatcher’s 97th birthday. Berry knows that, while the current Conservative party can’t agree on much, all admire the Iron Lady.
It’s why Liz Truss kept referencing her during the summer’s leadership contest, to the extent of aping her fashions in the few TV appearances that she made.
Of course, that looks like an even more foolish strategy in hindsight. Thatcher was famously “not for turning”. Truss has been a whirling dervish in comparison, her premiership nothing but a six-week series of U-turns.
Never forget Kim Campbell
But, in Westminster right now, it’s another Conservative PM on the minds of many MPs. Truss and Berry may seek to invoke the spirit of Margaret Thatcher, yet it’s the ghost of Kim Campbell that spooks their party.
Campbell was the leader of Canada’s Progressive Conservative Party in 1993. Her predecessor was charismatic, colourful and electorally successful, but past his peak popularity. She took over to avert electoral defeat. She failed. She took her party from a majority in government to two seats.
Not a majority of two. A total of two.
Kim Campbell's concession speech in 1993.
She was Prime Minister of Canada for 132 days. pic.twitter.com/JnEwkeX76g
— David McCann (@dmcbfs) October 13, 2022
Talk of the UK’s Conservative Party being buried at the next election may seem far-fetched, but it has happened before – in Canada.
And, the parliamentary set up in Ottawa is based on our own, so the shadow of Campbell’s calamity stretches to Westminster. Just as we’re entering the time of year when shadows can be mistaken for spooky ghouls and blood sucking vampires, Conservative MPs look across time and space to Canada in 1993 and they shiver.
There is no clear replacement for Truss
There are two factors in Truss’s favour. Crucially, Campbell was compelled to hold a general election; Truss is not. Yet.
Conventional wisdom flew out the window at Westminster long ago
And, there is no clear substitute waiting to replace Truss. Given that she only became PM last month, there was neither expectation that an heir would be needed so soon, nor time to fix one.
Conventional wisdom has alighted on Chancellor (at time of writing) Jeremy Hunt as the grown-up who might step in and steady the ship without the need for a full contest and the ballot of party members that would ensue. But, those who have picked him are ignoring a couple of salient facts.
The first is that conventional wisdom flew out the window at Westminster long ago. The second is that Jeremy Hunt’s new job was not the most telling appointment in Westminster last week.
Fox and IDS are yesterday’s men
Far more interesting was the election for a new chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, one of the most prestigious backbench gigs in parliament.
Given the kudos, big beasts Liam Fox and Iain Duncan Smith swaggered on to the ballot, ready to slug it out for the support of their fellow MPs.
The Speaker has announced that @aliciakearns has been elected as Chair of the Committee.
Read her full statement here: https://t.co/hdyDlQgu2g pic.twitter.com/FPNweA9P1b
— Foreign Affairs Committee (@CommonsForeign) October 12, 2022
Both were beaten by Alicia Kearns, previously best known as the ringleader of the “pork pie plot” against Boris Johnson, so called because Melton Mowbray lies in her constituency – the e-pie-centre of the pork and pastry community, you could say.
The MPs and commentators who failed to clock her in the Foreign Affairs Committee knockout were distracted by the grandees going for the job, when what mattered more was the electorate. Kearns is a Red Wall Tory who won in 2019, and the many young and hungry members elected along with her perceive Fox and IDS as yesterday’s men.
Next PM isn’t on the radar
Those who lazily assume Hunt is heir apparent in Downing Street are ignoring the fact that any unity candidate will have to appeal to all those MPs elected in 2017 and 2019, who have little loyalty to the generation of Cameroons that came before them.
Truss is plainly going down as one of our most shoddy prime ministers
Kemi Badenoch fits the bill. But, if Liz Truss falls shortly, the next PM may be someone not yet on the radar of plotters and commentators alike.
Truss, on the other hand, is already in history’s sights. Whatever happens in the coming hours and days, she’s plainly going down as one of our most shoddy prime ministers.
If she endures, she has the chance to claim a very special spot alongside Canada’s Kim Campbell as a PM who wiped out the Conservative Party and claimed a place not in history, but in infamy.
James Millar is a political commentator, author and a former Westminster correspondent for The Sunday Post
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