Kemi is right to flush out the wets

If there were any doubt that the Tory wets are the most deluded, self-important tribe in British politics, then Gavin Barwell’s reaction to being ousted from the party has all but confirmed it.

Barwell – former Tory MP, peer and chief of staff in Theresa May’s Downing Street – was excommunicated this week for his ‘repeated public attacks’ on Badenoch and her political strategy. Most notably, he has been highly critical of her insistence that Conservative parliamentary candidates renounce both Net Zero and Britain’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). He claimed this would bring the party into dangerous, populist territory – turning the Tories into a ‘Reform tribute act’. In a post on LinkedIn (where else?) following his defenestration, he doubled down on his criticism, warning that ‘millions’ of voters will be put off by this approach.

To which the only rational response is to ask: are these millions of pro-ECHR, pro-Net Zero Tory wets in the room with you right now, Gavin? Is there really a viable electoral coalition just yearning for a restoration of the Cameroon Tory Party? Do the masses actually believe that our out-of-touch political leaders are all a bit too ‘populist’ and overly deferential to the electorate’s demands?

Incredibly, Prosper UK, a kind of emotional-support / pressure group for Tory wets, claims that its polling has identified as many as seven million voters who could be persuaded to return to the Conservative fold, should the party adopt a more ‘pragmatic’ programme. But the problems with this claim are legion.

For one thing, just about everyone on Earth considers themselves ‘moderate’, ‘pragmatic’ and ‘rational’, regardless of where they actually appear on the political spectrum. Few voters would tick a box that says they want the next government to be ‘extremist’, ‘reactionary’ or ‘reckless’, so it is no wonder that polling appears to be so favourable for a mythical party of the ‘sensible centre’. This applies even to voters of a political disposition that could turn a Tory wet white.

Then there is the small matter of the actual policies Barwell and his ilk seem willing to die on a hill for. In 2026, supporting membership of the ECHR and the headlong rush to Net Zero are hardly signs of a healthy pragmatism. By the time the Tories had left office in 2024, it was already clear just how disastrous these policies were turning out to be.

After all, the European Convention is one of the main barriers to solving the small-boats crisis and the illegal migration crime wave. It is why so many foreign criminals are able to avoid deportation – often on the most spurious grounds imaginable. The ECHR’s ‘right to a family life’ and ‘right to avoid torture’ may sound perfectly rational on paper, but in practice, these provisions have essentially created a right for rapists, murderers and gangsters to remain in the UK indefinitely, often at the taxpayers’ expense. Is that really a ‘moderate’, ‘sensible’ position for a party aspiring to return to government to hold?

As for Net Zero, it is now impossible to deny the damage that’s been done by the uniparty’s green extremism. The headlong rush to decarbonise the energy grid has lumbered the UK with some of the highest energy prices in the developed world. This has squeezed consumers and made it impossible for British manufacturing to compete. If the Tories want to recover their (admittedly always dubious) reputation for sound economic management, then they can hardly keep banging the drum for the deindustrialisation of Britain.

Time will tell if Kemi’s strategy will bear fruit or whether her party is truly beyond saving. But her commitment to righting the wrongs of the last Conservative government will stand her in a far better stead than the prescription put forward by Gavin Barwell and the like. When all the polling suggests that Reform UK is eating the Tories’ lunch, turning the party into a more business-friendly Lib Dems or the political wing of Times Radio is hardly going to stem the bleeding.

Flushing out the wets is the least the Tories will need to do if they want to have any hope of regaining the public’s trust.

Fraser Myers is deputy editor at spiked and host of the spiked podcast. Follow him on X: @FraserMyers.