Here are my thoughts on why I’m staying in the Conservative Party – for now – in the hope that I can help it to survive and recover its sense of purpose and self-belief.

I’m neither a tribal Tory nor a utopian. My patience is not infinite, and the Conservatives should not confuse loyalty with blind devotion.

Like many other party members I’ve watched with mounting horror the succession of train wrecks the Conservative Party has inflicted on itself since July 2016. I’ve been far from silent about it, and I’ve advocated for change repeatedly, as have so many others, to little avail.

To little surprise, we’re now in dire straits now as a party – a situation entirely of our own making due to the failure to deliver a genuine Brexit and govern in a recognisably Conservative manner. Many have walked away, and many more may be about to do so.

I wasn’t born into the Conservative family – I chose it

To explain my reasoning for why I’m sticking around, I’ll start with why I came to join. It helps provide a context.

I’m not a natural born & bred Tory. Indeed I’m a former Labour Party member and I grew up in an anti-Thatcher household. But I see Margaret Thatcher as the most creative & consistently impressive PM we’ve ever had. Despite my New Labour background, I am not a TRG type in the party .

I’m far more in favour of the enlargment of freedom, a smaller state, lower taxes and a rebalancing of the social contract to place greater emphasis on individual and social responsibility. I’m a classical liberal Conservative who doesn’t see ideology as a dirty word, and has little time for the path of least resistance, ‘cult of pragmatism’ mentality.

I joined the Conservatives in 2011 having watched with growing admiration the agenda the party had shaped in Opposition and then in Government -particularly in areas like education reform. I was sick to death of Labour’s insipid statism and resurgent chip on the shoulder classism. I saw the light and realised that I’d been in denial for many years: I was far more ideologically suited to the classically liberal centre-right of British politics.

I wasn’t afraid to join the Conservatives having been a member of Labour, and I’ve never regretted it. I can honestly say to anyone I joined because of the ideas, not with career ambitions.I’d made my mind up years before then that I didn’t want to be an MP or a Councillor.

I joined the Conservatives as I was inspired by the vision Cameron, Osborne and others had set out of a Britain on the rise, with user-centred public services and a re-balancing of the social contract to reduce dependency culture.

I’ve spent many good years in the Conservative Party since I joined, contributing to its success however I could. I started CORE , an ideas and discussion network for centre-right liberal Conservatives, that is very active today, with over 2000 members on its forum. I’ve canvassed, leafleted and stuffed envelopes more times than I care to remember. I’ve done my bit and then some, and never regretted my decision to join.

Treated like absolute mugs

But now I feel my faith in the party is being sorely tested. I had my concerns about May even before she stood for the leadership given her cack-handed approach to complex issues at the Home Office. I felt she’d been an unusually lucky Home Secretary. I was uneasy when she won the leadership, and had wanted Gove to beat her. But like many others I opted to give her a clean slate and get behind the party. The early signs were mixed – the Lancaster House speech on Brexit was positive, but many of her domestic policy initiatives were deeply flawed.

After the 2017 General Election, I was one of those who openly advocated for her to either resign or be removed. I have like many others volubly protested many times throughout the May era as I’ve seen us take wrong turn and make unforced error after unforced error.

It’s not just our Potemkin strategy for Brexit (in name only), atrocious thought that is. The rot has set in across a far broader sweep of policy areas. The membership at different points has been hectored, patronised, or – most frequently – entirely ignored as we’ve registered our concerns and implored for change. We’re treated like absolute mugs.

We were already entering an existential crisis as a party by the time May brought Olly Robbins’ deal back to the UK for the first time in 2018. We’re now in the ICU, fighting for life. Many in Westminster underestimate how serious this is, but I don’t. We‘re crumbling. Trust once broken, on such a fundamentally important issue, is not easily rebuilt.

I have many friends in the Conservative Party, a great respect for its culture and its historic achievements, and an affinity with many of the ideas of espoused by the leading centre-right & conservative thinkers of today. But like many I frequently feel I’m on my last nerve.

Last night’s revelations that we’re prepared to legislate for a customs union and a second referendum if Parliament wills it during the passage of the Withdrawal Act Bill are just the latest in a long line of kicks to the gut.

The chink of light at the end of the tunnel – A freer future

My last nerve is being sorely tested. I don’t have relatives in the party. I don’t have colleagues on a council group or voters I’d be letting down if I walked away. I don’t want to leave, but I have enough life experience to know that party politics isn’t the be all and end all. My real friends from my days in Labour stayed my real friends after I left, and many of them, to their credit, also left when the party lowered itself into the gutter under Corbyn.

I am staying in the Conservative Party not out of tribalism or careerist ambition, but on the basis of hope. It’s a kindling of hope, not a roaring fire, but it’s still there.

It doesn’t take much to work out what that hope is. The one chink of light at the end of the long, dark tunnel we’ve been desperately clambering through is the leadership contest. A rapid leadership contest, over in mere weeks, might lead to the selection of a high-quality Prime Minister capable of restoring our fortunes and leading the country to a freer, better future.

We would need to deliver a genuine clean break Brexit but we would also have to do so much more to inspire voters to trust and vote for us again. We would have to advance an authentically Conservative agenda centred around the enlargement of freedom and the cultivation of responsibility and civility in society. These are not mutually exclusive objectives.

We also need to widen prosperity by unlocking the barriers to productivity and rolling back the currents of cynicism towards free enterprise and free markets that too many in the present Cabinet have only helped to encourage.

Hold onto that last nerve

I am staying not out of blind, unquestioning loyalty to the largely desiccated top tier of a failing party. I am staying, as I’ve outlined, because I believe there is still a window of opportunity to save our party, trounce Corbyn, and build a freer, more opportunity rich future for the UK outside the EU.

But I’m not Panglossian in my outlook. We are in dire straits. And my self-respect and integrity will only allow me to go along with so much. I know this applies more broadly. If the 1922 Committee bungles it again, and May limps on for a long summer, then thousands more will leave.

I am holding onto that last nerve as best I can through the death rattle of May‘s regime. My view is that I will use my voice to urge MPs to give us a strong choice of final 2 candidates and then use my vote as wisely as I can.

If the MPs stitch it up to prevent people who genuinely believe in Brexit from reaching the member ballot, that’s on them and who knows what happens then?

I am staying for now because I’ve seen what this party can do, when at its best, to make the lives of people in this country better. I hope we can get it out of the ICU and back on the front foot. If we fail to do so, then that’s not on me, that’s on those in power who had the ability to act in the national interest, but didn’t do so.

We still have time, but precious little of it. We either have the courage and nous to transform our fortunes and inspire the country to trust us again, or we don’t. At the risk of sounding like the lamentable Change UK MP, Joan Ryan, it’s in our hands. Do we grasp the last chance we have, or do we let it slip?

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