How Tories can escape 'swivel-eyed cranks' taking over party – Dr Azeem Ibrahim

The Conservative Party is in an existential crisis at the moment. One opinion poll taken in the wake of the EU Parliament elections in May showed that according to voting intentions at the time, the party would be reduced to 26 MPs at Westminster, with Nigel Farage’s Brexit party eating their lunch.

The Conservatives created many of their current problems by attempting to pander to Ukip's 'swivel-eyed cranks and loons' on immigration

This extreme scenario is unlikely to actually come about, but the fact of the matter is that the right-of-centre of British politics has become increasingly polarised over Brexit, and the Conservative party’s capacity to keep all those conflicted voters under its tent is looking increasingly threatened.

And in the first-past-the-post system, which the Conservatives defended in the 2011 referendum, this reality would make a Conservative-led government difficult to envisage for at least a generation.

How did we get here? With hindsight, the answer is depressingly clear. But most leadership candidates vying to replace Theresa May at the head of the party are refusing to acknowledge it.

It all started going downhill when the Conservatives made that miscalculation in the early 2010s under David Cameron that they had space to pursue an enlarged base to the right, among the “swivel-eyed cranks and fruitcakes” of UKIP.

Of course, Cameron would stand up and say that people had “legitimate concerns”. But Farage and UKIP would never be in a position to address those concerns. So the Conservatives would appeal to those voters, but pandering to those views with tokenistic nonsense.

Perhaps the most iconic example of this is Cameron’s 100,000 net migration target which only ever produced a guaranteed bad news cycle for the government every year, like clockwork, when that year’s migration statistics would come out.

Though certainly the most consequential of Cameron’s loose gestures was to promise an in/out referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, in the party’s 2015 general election manifesto – a pledge Cameron himself never thought would he have to deliver on.

By 2016, when the EU referendum came about, the British political landscape had had six years of the Government and the Prime Minister normalising and mainstreaming the world-view of the “cranks and fruitcakes”, and very visibly failing to address their so-called “legitimate concerns”. And so, when given the chance to take matters into their own hands, the people delivered Cameron and his “clever” tactics a bloody nose.

Then came Theresa May, who as a Remainer was forced into, “Brexit means Brexit, and we will make a success of it”, “No deal is better than a bad deal” and all the rest of it. Until that was tested by parliament, and May was undone by the same division. As we all knew all along, she rightly never believed there could be deal worse than a no-deal crash-out of the EU on the 31 March. She did her utmost defying political gravity with her determination but it was not to be. And so, the Conservatives have been wiped out in the local and European elections last month.

So now the question for the future: will the next leader of the Conservative party learn from past mistakes? Or will they run headlong into the pen with the Brexit monster, thinking that this time, they will be the person to tame it.

The problem is that you do not win a contest with a monster like no-deal Brexit and the insurgent populist right, by first feeding it, and then taunting it, and then going down into hand-to-hand combat with it with a hand tied behind your back.

This is a monster that you defeat by starving it of attention and legitimacy until it withers away. And the way you do that is to fundamentally challenge the grim vision it promotes, the insane myths and misinformation it peddles, and the very nihilistic values it embodies. And instead, you offer a vision that is the very antithesis of what the Brexit Party wants, and then demonstrate that it is the better vision for the future.

As I look around the crowded field for the leadership of the Conservative party, there is one candidate who stands out to me as the most unambiguous, unapologetic rejection of the world view of the populist right and everything it embodies: that candidate is Sajid Javid – a self-made man, from a working-class Pakistani immigrant background. A man who was actually successful in the City and did not have to fall into populist politics just because he had no other talents (like Nigel Farage).

With Rory Stewart having left the leadership race, Javid is expected to hoover up much of his support as the progressive candidate whose appeal extends beyond traditional Tories – a critical feature if one is to take on Corbyn.

Add to this the endorsement of Ruth Davidson, another ‘different kind of Tory’ and you have a formidable team covering both sides of Hadrian’s Wall. If Javid and Davidson were to attain the crowns in Westminster and Holyrood, you would have a political party which has defied all forces of global political gravity where right-wing populist leaders are coming to power on the wave of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-LGBT platforms.

The faces of these Conservative leaders would reflect the faces of modern Britain. And the promise the Conservative party would hold for Britain would be bright and clear: that with hard work and a level head, everyone in Britain can find and enjoy success.

That used to be the Conservative’s promise to Britain. They would offer opportunity to all who would pursue it. That should be the Conservative’s promise to Britain once again. Brexit or no Brexit. And the Javid-Davidson duo may be the best chance to take that promise back to a divided country which has lost faith in us.