How the Conservative "moderates" opened the door for extremists

If they were serious, they would support Labour now

Before the purge: David Gauke and Boris Johnson in 2019 (CREDIT: GETTY)

Like a rabbi leading a gaggle of mourners to the Wailing Wall, David Gauke has collected a band of distraught Conservative moderates. As they bemoan the collapse of the centre right, one question rises through their sobs.

What the hell just happened?

They failed, that’s what happened. They failed because they could not contain the extremist right and failed to even realise they had a duty to fight extremists until it was too late for them - and this country. They failed because supposed moderate conservatism was nowhere near as moderate as they flattered themselves into believing. They failed because their policy of austerity economics created the stagnation that helped push millions into voting for Brexit. They failed, and are still failing, not only because they cannot accept the faults in their past, but because they have no chance of taking back their party in the future.

Before I continue with the charge sheet, I should observe the traditional courtesies and say that Gauke is an impressive figure and has collected an equally impressive group of conservative intellectuals and politicians to produce The Case for the Centre Right*.

It tells you all you need to know about the collapse of his Tory party into know-nothing populism that it has no place for Gauke’s contributors: Rory Stewart, a former development secretary, Dominic Grieve, a former Attorney General, Amber Rudd, a former Home Secretary, and Sam Gyimah, a former science minister. Like Gauke, himself a former justice secretary, they were either driven out of Parliament in 2019, when Boris Johnson purged the Conservatives of politicians who would not go along with his disastrous Brexit deal, or walked away in despair of their own accord.

I have no doubt that the UK would be a happier country if they and Conservatives like them ran the government.

My God but they are delusional, though, and complacent with it.   For Gauke and his associates modern British history from 2010 on can be divided into two periods. There were the good years of the David Cameron administration when men and women of moderate temperament, such as themselves, governed wisely. Then came the fall of 2016 when “leave” won the Brexit referendum and populist madness ran riot, wrecking the economy, undermining national institutions and turning the good old moderate Tory party into a bawling rabble. Rewind the clock, let David Cameron win the referendum, and the UK’s descent into economic squalor and post-truth politics would never have happened.

To create the illusion requires a belief that is appealing and deceptive in equal portions.  In his introduction Gauke describes a country that, if not another Eden or Paradise Lost, was a commonsensical land.