This general election marks the end of the Conservative Party. It may yet continue to resist the burial, but the party that was the default option for Middle England is dead.
Handing the leadership to a multi-millionaire may have been the final blow, but putting Rishi Sunak in charge when he was clearly incapable of empathising with a majority of his struggling electorate was just the final insult for ordinary voters.
For most who were party members, the end came much sooner. It was the issue of EU membership which, thanks to the skilful but malevolent campaigning of Nigel Farage, killed the Conservatives. In parliament, they became a desperately divided group, their predicament exacerbated by a succession of incompetent and untrustworthy leaders. In the country, the moderate members drifted away as Ukip and its lookalikes took over.
On July 4, I will be celebrating the defenestration of the Tory party – but not without regrets over what has been lost. It may now be the “nasty party” but, until quite recently, its grassroots was an amalgam of much that strengthened many communities. When I accepted a peerage and joined the Conservatives in the House of Lords, it was because I believed David Cameron when he said he wanted to “heal the broken society”.
I had never been an activist. My parents were not political, they just voted Tory. It would never have occurred to them to support Labour. When first eligible to take part in a general election, I felt rebellious giving my vote to the Liberals. But political activists are tribal beings and journalists tend to be the opposite, cherishing the freedom to praise and criticise – generally, the latter.
As chancellor, Gordon Brown was the object of plenty of my critical writings. I particularly took issue with his addiction to the Private Finance Initiative as a means of paying for new hospitals and schools, a habit which continues to cost the country a vast amount of cash. It was probably this that persuaded Cameron to call my mobile in 2011.
It was my husband who was the loyal party animal, serving as a councillor, running campaigns and being committed to the cause. He was my introduction to the local associations, genuinely socially mixed groups where political theory was as unlikely to be discussed as black holes. The planning of the Xmas party and the jumble sale were the crucial issues.
Many members were plugged into the Rotary Club or the church; they were school governors and magistrates and delivered “meals on wheels” and volunteered in the local hospital. They were not rabid, just people who believed that their community would be better served by a Tory government than by anything else.
They are not the people who now pay subscriptions to the party. As the Brexiteers became more determined, they gradually turned the organisation into a Ukip subsidiary. Cameron was not strong enough to resist them, lost the referendum and, with it, any hold on the middle ground.
Theresa May did not stand a chance of retrieving it but I continued to sit on the Tory benches while regularly voting against the party. The prospect of Boris Johnson as prime minister, however, was too much to bear and I resigned the whip in order to campaign against them in 2019.
Naively, it surprised me how many of my colleagues who disagreed profoundly with the ludicrous hard Brexit legislation put in front of them continued to troop through the lobby and obediently vote in favour. I struggle even more to understand how they can remain on the Tory benches when the government has moved so far from what they truly believe. They admit their discomfort but voice the hope that their party will return to them or suggest that they can have more impact by staying inside.
They must know that neither argument holds water. But the truth is that they cannot throw off their tribal loyalty to a party that no longer exists.
The one-nation caring conservatism I supported has been replaced by a vicious, self-serving ideology. The Rwanda policy might actually have driven those local associations I knew to wonder whether they really wanted to support a Tory government.
The country is worse off for the demise of those associations and I regret that the Tory Party they once supported will be finished off on July 4.
