The Westminster parish pump kerfuffle this week over British home secretary Suella Braverman’s involvement of civil servants in helping her handle a speeding ticket has damaged yet another aspirant to be the spiritual leader of the right wing of the Conservative Party and, potentially, of the whole party in opposition.
The Tories appear to switch main contenders to lead their right flank so often that old, previously discarded ones keep on re-emerging, such as former home secretary Priti Patel. So perhaps Braverman’s claim to the mantle will soon come round again.
The hard right wing of the party has been its driving force for almost seven years, since it engineered victory for the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum.
Yet it isn’t so much a single grouping as a smattering of occasionally overlapping mini-factions, such as the traditional free marketeers, the Brexit ultras,and an anti-immigration group. They are issue-driven and their leading members interchangeable, but they are powerful together, having either crowned or deposed each of the last five prime ministers.
Throughout the last seven years, the Tory right has only ever looked even remotely close to united under one man, former prime minister Boris Johnson. Even then, his genuine ideological commitment to hard conservative values is doubted by many. Now, only the most starry-eyed of his acolytes want him back, such as former minister Nadine Dorries, and she seems set for the House of Lords anyway in Johnson’s resignation honours list.
The former prime minister aside, the carousel of fortune for the party’s right-leaning standard bearers has spun furiously in recent weeks. First to lose his grip on the safety bar was former deputy prime minister Dominic Raab, who was forced to quit last month after it was found he bullied civil servants. This week, it was confirmed he is standing down as an MP in advance of the next election.
All of the remaining contenders to reunite the party’s right are, rather curiously given perceptions of the grouping’s base, women from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Until a fortnight ago, the clear top contender was the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch. Yet she has just damaged her standing. Her predecessor in the business role, Jacob Rees-Mogg, had initiated the Retained EU Law bill, which had proposed a bonfire of more than 4,000 pieces of UK legislation that originated in European Union laws. Critics of this move warned of the potential administrative and legal chaos of rescinding so much red tape in one go.
Badenoch relented this month to cut the bonfire to a mere campfire of only about 800 laws. This infuriated the (much diminished these days) Brexiteer faction of the party. But what really damaged her prospects was her goading of them in the House of Commons and in public remarks.
Barely 10 days ago, Braverman then made what was widely seen as a pitch to present herself as the leader of the party’s right wing and a potential leader of the opposition in a speech to a National Conservatism conference.
Braverman, herself a daughter of immigrants, is the most committed of the party’s anti-immigration wing and the architect of its policy to “stop the boats” carrying illegal migrants over from France.
At the conference, she also sharply criticised the rise under Tory governments in recent years of the number of legal migrants coming to Britain, setting her apart from fellow members of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet who see immigration as a way to boost the economy.
Then came this week’s speeding ticket palaver, the third time she has been accused of breaking the ministerial code of conduct. Doubts about her political judgment and wisdom have re-emerged.
With Johnson and his short-lived successor as prime minister, Liz Truss, now viewed as too damaged to mount plausible comebacks, the way is open once again for another leader of the Tory right.
Braverman’s predecessor Patel made what was seen by many as her own bid to jostle for the front pew at yet another conservative conference earlier this month. A Johnsonite who served as his home secretary for three years until last year, she laid into the party’s centrists – code for Sunak – for “damaging our party” and its hammering at this month’s local elections in England.
Patel, who was sacked as a minister by Theresa May for holding secret meetings with the Israeli government, is being spoken of again in Westminster as a figure around whom many on the right of the party could reunite in opposition. She also tried to dissuade notions that she is merely a stalking horse for Johnson by suggesting his return “[wouldn’t] do us the world of good at all”.
But as events of recent weeks have suggested, the Tory carousel may keep on spinning and Patel could easily be thrown off it once again.