I’LL admit it: I’m a connoisseur of the madder corners of the Conservative and Unionist Party. I always have been. I first picked up the taste for observing these peculiar specimens in their natural habitats when still a teenager.
Back in 2003, a rather earnest, pious schoolfriend decided to take himself off to London to attend a Compassionate Conservatism Conference at Tory HQ. In most respects, he was a central-casting young Tory. He carried a briefcase to school, tended towards mild priggery, practised a judgemental form of Christianity, didn’t drink, smoke or swear – and demonstrated a reflexive deference for authority.
Briefcase Bob – as he was inevitably known – represented the perfect social cover to infiltrate this alien social environment. So he signed us both up – true believer and this cynic – for a trip to the imperial capital to hear what precisely the Conservative Party of 2003 imagined political compassion might look like.
We were surrounded by 150 Conservatives in their teens, 20s and 30s and a good chunk of the Shadow Cabinet explaining their vision for social justice. It proved just as surreal as you’d imagine.
From memory, the crowd was an interesting mix. There were old-school, patrician, one-nation Tories; unideological climbers looking for social connections; gilded children of the gentry (some overlap here); sincere decent folk who seemed to believe Compassionate Conservatism was a goer; Communitarian pray-away-the-gay social reactionaries, and crypto-fascists in Union Jack underpants.
I remember one chap told me he thought “everywhere north of Manchester was basically the same” – a one-nation social justice message if ever I’ve heard one. Mercifully, there wasn’t a breakout session to allow participants to leave votive candles at a shrine to Margaret Thatcher – but you could feel the Iron Lady’s unsleeping spirit hovering over the proceedings disapprovingly.
Bubbling beneath the surface, not even very subtly, was discontent with the whole endeavour, discontent with Iain Duncan Smith’s leadership, and a sense that the Tory Party is nothing without the smack of firm government – which usually means vilifying your opponents as closet socialists, traitors or crazed leftists whose main mission in........