The Tories seem less scared of their shadow, but honest consistency has to be the way forward

At the very real risk of criticism from traditional working class Labour types, and their new right counter parts in Reform, I donned velvet smoking jacket and cravat last Thursday to attend at Conservative Party party.

Yes, yes “typical tory posh type, wets and bankers (they might not actually use a ‘b’)  living it up, while ordinary folk struggle with the cost of living”. I mean I sort of get it, but it was the dull the first time I heard it and it hasn’t improved with age.

I don’t, despite a friendly jibe from journalist Camilla Tominey, habitually dress in such attire but the theme of the night was the 1920’s, and almost everyone had risen to the challenge. One or two of the men had opted for the easy ‘black-tie as their dressing up option, one former Cabinet minister had not, but we excused it as him thinking it was “whatever I was wearing in the office at 19:20”

I mention bankers because this was a fundraiser dinner with a room full of people who far from thinking the Conservative party is dying, are funding it’s renewal. Yes, Reform have their backers with big pockets, as did Labour and presumably still do, just, but that old myth “the money’s dried up” seemed put to bed early on Thursday.

The 1920’s was an interesting theme: UK politics was dominated by David Lloyd George’s Liberal-Conservative coalition government, grappling with post-war economic slump, industrial unrest, and Irish independence demands. The year saw the passage of the landmark Government of Ireland Act 1920, partitioning Ireland, while Labour rapidly emerged as the main opposition to the Conservatives.

The most notable point was the mood.

The Conservative party is feeling both bullish and more confident, whilst completely aware that the brand, if not the leader needs a huge amount of work, and that persuasion is now less about appeasing the angry but persuading the indifferent.

This is the ‘delusion’ opponents like to refer to, that the Tories don’t get what is still required of them. They do, they are acutely aware of it, but they’re no longer afraid of it.

Reform have, they will under this article and online, continue their now well-rehearsed critiques. But those Conservatives who’ve stayed to fight are growing impervious to it. As I’ve mentioned before, a relentless series of attacks from Reform has hardened attitudes, as one shadow cabinet figure put it:

“Apart from giving Labour a free ride whenever they do it, the attacks on us, especially when Kemi is getting the attention they want, works both ways. Their base love it, but others are put off. People talk about indifference – well ok, but our people are starting to ignore it. They won’t be bullied off the pitch, especially when parts of Labour seem to want to do that to the PM!”

It’s a sentiment I’ve heard a lot recently. The Conservatives understand the Reform threat, and their own difficult issues, they just aren’t intimidated by any of it, even if it’s a daunting challenge with no god given rights to success.

For the avoidance of doubt, Prosper UK, and the phantom secret army of Lib Dems people like to suggest are really in control were not in attendance. Perhaps they are they exercise this ‘control’ remotely but I couldn’t see much sign of that in the Leader’s speech.

Kemi Badenoch got a great reception given her own personal renewal, because she’s leading opposition to this Government – which is her job – and because she’s sticking to her strategy (certainly, doubts about that strategy, are expressed on ConservativeHome all the time) of not being distracted and being honest with people, both party and voters.

I’m going to suggest that, whatever those doubts, her sticking to a consistent course and not being buffeted off it by events, defections or the arrival of new campaign groups, is the right strategic plan.

A year ago I envisaged the Tories like once dominant athletes, still training to get back to winning ways, laughed at by new athletes and long standing rivals as they tried desperately to re-find their form. Evidence they were, or could, was pretty scant, but they were getting on with getting on, and my suggestion was that they ignored the taunts and just kept putting in the hard yards because the big race – where it counts – was still years off – and those taunts were transparently designed to put people still running in a blue rosette off their stride.

Speaking of which the shadow Chancellor, for all the attempts to undermine him as ‘chief wet’ or old face of an old regime seemed both buoyant and as much enthused by the direction Kemi was taking the party – by any criteria not ‘left’ – as those who backed her before the leadership contest. Even the doubters, seem both on board and relieved she is not the party leader who is in serious trouble now. That’s quite a turnaround in a year.

One of the reasons the tables have turned is Labour and Starmer’s undeniably and seemingly inescapable doom loop of scandal and incompetence that dogs this Government.

Part of the reason for that is the PM’s unbreakable habit of constantly changing tack. New initiatives – mainly launched when their myriad predecessors have failed ignominiously – flip-flops, U-turns have made him the ultimate weather-vane.  Leadership in the model of a forcibly released and rapidly deflating balloon, heading in random directions, nudged in random directions by rapidly released wind, not strategic thought.

Farage, from whose iron throne direction comes in House Reform, is also prone to changing his mind. Junking his election ‘manifesto’ in a year, rapid clarification on announced policy to cover the gaps in detail, and the switchero on the two child benefit cap. If only he’d informed his two new recruits before the vote.

Farage and Reform, are not, for the umpteenth time, to be underestimated. Reform are not dismissible clowns or as extreme as Polanski, and Starmer are desperate to suggest. They aren’t however inevitable winners either. Not ones Tories should bow to and offer a free ride. They chose not to deserve that, but demanding a fight to the death with the Tories, which neither are going to win.

They themselves, on the evidence of Thursday, are the very epitome of their latest insult – NPC – ‘not proper Conservatives’ – because the proper Conservatism Badenoch and her team are pursuing is not as Reform and Labour like to portray it, and not controlled by a ‘secret cabal of wets’. It also isn’t going to be ‘stopped by her party’ if they were in power – the other canard bandied about these days  – which of course concedes the idea that they could be in power again.

So consistency, Conservative values, and telling the truth. That’s what is being offered, and in a political world where all of that’s in short supply elsewhere, that’s not a bad tack to hold to.

Here’s the fly in the ointment.

All of that said, no party, whatever they claim, including those shadow Cabinet members, and LOTO staffers, ‘Lords, Ladies and gentlemen’ who rose to applaud their leader on Thursday even before she spoke, and those that spoke to me after afterwards, none are yet articulating the full policy platform that matches the scale of the issues Britain faces.

No politician is there yet. If Farage predicts an election next year, and performatively put his party on an ‘election war footing’ – something neither Reform, the Tories or Labour are ready for, it ignores the fact that for all the slogans, from every side, there is still a gap of real credible solutions. All have supplied some, nobody the full package.

Badenoch vows they will – long before any election – Reform still seems to be offering withering diagnosis, but still short on solutions. I’m not suggesting they’ll stay that way but if they think slogans are enough, they are either mistaken, or hoping to do what Starmer did, and offer very little until they are ‘in’. Well we’ve seen how that works out.

As MPs are on recess, and have a chance to take the temperature away from the suffocation of the ‘bubble’, offering people honest consistency and a bit more articulation of the actual vision, not one filtered by opponents, might get them the increased hearing they need and that those opponents insist they can’t get.