The Boundless Delusions of the Tory Wets

Hands up all those of you who are moderates. Right. Now, are any of you extremists? One begins to see the flaw in the reasoning of Prosper UK, the new “movement” for Tory wets, which has declared that the Conservatives’ means for electoral salvation is to ‘shift to the centre’ in pursuit of the millions of voters who regard themselves as being on that territory.

“We’ve done a large amount of polling and research before launching this, we’ve identified seven million people that say they’re either of the centre or the centre Right, that feel that there is no political party that represents them, and we want to go out and speak to them,” Baroness Davidson, the former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, told the BBC.

The word “former” crops up a lot on the Patrons listed on the “movement’s” website. Lots of former Conservative MPs but no current ones.

One of the supporters they announced was a bit of a surprise. It’s Claire Perry O’Neill, a former Energy and Clean Growth Minister under the Conservatives but who then resigned from the Party in 2023 and backed Keir Starmer to lead Britain in a “sober, competent” fashion.

It would seem she has changed her mind again. Prosper UK says: “Right now, the economy is struggling. Taxes are going up. Unemployment is rising. Living standards are stagnant. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have been a big disappointment.”

As Churchill supposedly said: “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”

Anyway, back to their polling suggesting the tantalising prospect of millions of Claire Perry O’Neills waiting to be snapped up by a caring, sharing new Tory Party with a progressive and inclusive message.

It was carried out for them by More in Common, a perfectly reputable polling company, which, following the rules of best practice, has quietly put the full tables up on its website. “Sometimes politics is described as being on a Left-Right scale,” begins one question. “Where do you put your own views on that scale, where 0 is very Left wing, and 10 is very Right wing?”

Among Reform UK supporters, the poll found 29% identified themselves as bang in the centre, a five. Only 9% put themselves down as a 10, in other words, “very Right wing”. Among the Green Party supporters, we found that 38% regarded themselves as completely centrists, giving themselves a five. Only 12% of this cohort thought of themselves as “very Left wing”.

One can easily imagine these Green Party supporters thinking it is ‘extreme’ to have billionaires with all this money they don’t need. Or Reform UK supporters thinking it is ‘extreme’ that we have thousands of people coming into the country illegally and then being put up in hotels. They would regard preventing such outcomes as ‘moderate’ or ‘common sense’.

Another question found that many voters felt “there are no parties that represent my views”. Again, that is unremarkable. It is normal to vote with a negative impulse. ‘Throw the rascals out,’ when voting for a change of Government. Or: ‘Better the devil you know,’ to keep the Government in power. To get any party with a set of policies that fully matched the views of any particular individual is unlikely to occur.

So the absurd proposition from Prosper UK is to suggest all those who identified as centrists and are not entirely satisfied with any political party at present are a coherent block of seven million voters ripe for the picking. All that’s needed is for the Conservatives to go back to supporting Net Zero and the European Court of Human Rights.

Another Prosper UK theme is that there should be less focus on immigration. But its own polling asks: “Thinking about the past decade, do you think that politicians have tended to pay too much, too little or about the right amount of attention to…” It finds that 47% feel there is “too much attention to providing development aid overseas”, with 23% feeling it is too little. But when it comes to “tackling illegal immigration” only 12% feel this has had too much attention. 72% suggest too little. Most Lib Dem voters agree.

Another question found strong support for the proposition: “If people who can work aren’t willing to work, we need to restrict their benefits.”

Of course, the smug elite at Prosper UK will still be convinced that increasing spending on overseas aid is moderate and that taking the necessary measures to stop illegal immigration is extreme. They ignore, or misrepresent, their own polling of such matters when it is inconvenient.

Would they regard the last Conservative government as moderate or extreme? It put taxation up to record levels. Some of us would regard that as pretty extreme. But many of Prosper UK’s patrons were ministers in that Government who took to the airwaves defending those record levels of tax, spending and borrowing. They regret that Kemi Badenoch has ‘shifted to the Right’ from where the party stood under Rishi Sunak.

The centre ground is a mirage. I don’t know how much the wets spent on their polling but it hasn’t done them any favours. Rather than chasing after these mythical centrists, they would do better to work out what they believe, state their case and offer a coherent set of policies that flow from those principles. But that would mean being ‘ideological’. Such ‘conviction politics’ were an anathema to them in the Thatcher era and still are. Thus, they will continue to flounder.