Popular Conservatism ISN’T

Today has seen the launch of PopCon, or Popular Conservatism, a bold and indeed brave concept, given that the Tories are registering a consistent opinion poll deficit to Labour of more than 20%. Who its front man is, is not totally clear: while Liz Truss, the UK’s most useless post-war Prime Minister, appears to be fronting for it, another unpopular individual claims credit.

Back in the spotlight for one day only

That would be Mark Littlewood, head man at the IEA, an Astroturf lobby group that would rather not reveal who funds it. Littlewood, a spiv of no fixed loyalty, says it’s his show. Whatever. Ms Truss has spoken to a gathering numbered just about in three figures to tell the world that she is still around. Meanwhile, her first choice as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, has done the rather more decent thing and announced he is leaving politics.

Having come close to crashing the economy less than two years ago, and then ousted as PM after just 50 days, to the great relief of all those who wished she had never been let in to 10 Downing Street in the first place, Ms Truss could have kept quiet. That would have been the sensible thing to do. But sensible and Liz Truss have a singularly transient relationship.

So what superior insights did she have to offer those attending? Get this slice of hokum: “successive Conservative leaders and Governments have discovered that a majority in the House of Commons is no longer enough to turn us away from the path of Blairite declinism”. And to that I call bullshit.

“Blairite declinism”? Is that when the NHS was decently funded? When councils were not staring bankruptcy in the face? When roads were decently maintained? When folks had a little more discretionary income, the ability to splash out on stuff once in a while without having to cut back on other spending? When Prime Ministers didn’t go round crashing the economy on the say-so of spivs and chancers in those Astroturf lobby groups?

Y’know, I rather like the sound of that there “declinism”. But let’s hear from Ms Truss herself. “Wokeism seems to be on the curriculum…there is confusion about basic biological facts, like what is a woman. Look at the net zero zealots…if you listen to the Today programme, I don’t recommend it, you’ll hear demands for more public spending”. More misuse of the word “woke”.

And look who's behind it all

As Rob Hutton noted, “So far, Popular Conservatism is pro-cigarettes, pro-Covid and pro-carbon emissions. Not clear what the party has got against voters' lungs”. Lewis Goodall added “Liz Truss says she doesn’t get invited to London dinner parties”. Perhaps it’s because she’s talking crap?

It’s the same sob story: as with the railway sell-offs, so with Ms Truss and her disastrous time in office, the refrain is consistent. If only we’d been allowed to do it properly, all would have been well. The rail transport industry, and later the whole economy, would have been utterly screwed, but it would have been achieved in accordance with the purest of orthodox economic principles.

So who was brave enough to rock up to this gathering of the irretrievably irrelevant? Beth Rigby of Sky News observed “lots of MPs here including Liz Truss, Jacob Rees Mogg, Lee Anderson, Andrea Jenkyns, Priti Patel, Wendy Morton, Alec Shelbrooke, David Jones”. Plenty of those about to be turfed out of the Commons come the next General Election.

What they heard was a combination of paranoia and ignorance: as Faisal Islam mused, “noteworthy that at PopCon ex-PM Liz Truss listed the Cameron-created Office of Budget Responsibility as one of the quangos and bureaucracies built up under Blair and ‘taken over by the left’ from which Cons haven’t done enough to ‘take the power back’”.

But what she is selling is popular, honestly. Lewis Goodall again: “Truss says Britain is full of ‘secret conservatives’ - again echoing Bennism. The voters are there really, they just have to be inspired with a true ideology”. No, Britain is full of not very secret pissed off voters who have had enough of the Tories. Ms Truss and Littlewood are deluded if they believe otherwise.

One Conservative clown car, right now, is one too many. That is all.

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