Baroness Davidson and Sir Andy Street have a vision of a moderate, centrist Conservative party which provides an antidote to Nigel Farage and Reform. As Andy Maciver analyses here, they have identified the only way to save their party, but their supporters may not be prepared to wait that long to get back into power

When former Scottish Tory leader Baroness Ruth Davidson, along with former West Midlands mayor Sir Andy Street, launched a new political movement earlier this year, they identified seven million ‘politically homeless’ voters. 

Self-described ‘moderate’ Conservatives, Baroness Davidson and Sir Andy formally harnessed a large group of former Tory MPs who clearly believe that by reaching the T-junction and turning right in pursuit of Nigel Farage, their party leader Kemi Badenoch made the wrong call, and should instead have turned left in pursuit of the centre-ground and the aforementioned homeless.

It is worth interrogating the choice Ms Badenoch had (and, I suppose, still has). 

On the basis that the best predictor of the future is the past, it has always intrigued me that precious few British Conservatives have taken the time to study the fate of their sister-party in Canada. They may now consider their sister party to be the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), but that party is new, formed only in this century. The traditional sister party was the Progressive Conservatives (PC) - a party which was put out of business by an insurgent alternative by the name of Reform. 

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I wonder, when the brilliant leader of the CPC, Pierre Poilievre, came to the UK earlier this month to deliver the annual Margaret Thatcher lecture for the Centre for Policy Studies think tank, whether those in the audience took the time to consider where Mr Poilievre started. Not in the CPC, which did not exist. Not in the PC. No, Mr Poilievre started his political career in Reform.

Canada’s Reform party was formed out of an exasperation amongst Conservatives in Western Canada who thought the Ottawa establishment elite and out of touch. Sound familiar? It was formed in 1987 during a period of PC government, achieving only two per cent of the vote in 1988’s election. The Tories were not worried. At the next election in 1993, it won more votes than the PC and split the right-wing vote, causing the Tory government to lose 154 of its 156 seats.

Less than a decade later, with Reform having morphed into the Canadian Alliance and created a ‘Unite the Right’ movement, the PC formally went out of business, with the leader of the insurgents swallowing the mainstream party and renaming it the CPC. That insurgent leader was Stephen Harper, who went on to become a three-time Prime Minister.

Excuse the history lesson, readers, but Britain’s Conservatives are where Canada’s Conservatives were in the early 1990s. The writing is on the wall.

In that sense, Baroness Davidson and Sir Andy are absolutely correct. Chasing Mr Farage will have the same outcome for Britain’s Tories as chasing Mr Harper had for Canada’s. Death.

Ms Badenoch is now generally regarded as a leader of some substance. She performs well in the political arena and she has begun to create a coherent augment for an economically liberal agenda. However her current trajectory is not to become Prime Minister; it is to become Deputy Prime Minister to Mr Farage after he successfully ‘unites the right’ after the next general election.

This may still seem fanciful to some, but it is what both history, and pretty much every opinion poll, points towards.

That should not necessarily be seen as a negative. Canada’s centre-right was in office for a decade (and had it not been for Trump’s impact on last year’s election, Mr Poilievre would almost certainly have been Prime Minister today). And the fact that Britain’s Tories tripped over themselves to see Mr Poilievre this month proves the point that insurgent parties tend to morph into a ‘new mainstream’ when they achieve power.

But that is not what Baroness Davidson and Sir Andy want. Perfectly legitimately, they see a country which is travelling in the same direction as many of our near and far neighbours, with populists on the left and on the right (oftentimes sharing much in common). In the wake of the Gorton and Denton by-election, Mr Farage’s populist Reform and Zack Polanski’s populist Greens are occupying first and second place. The Tories and Labour, between them, are struggling to attract one-third of the vote.

Britain will, as night follows day, emerge from the populist cycle and yearn once again for boring, centrist stability. The problem for Baroness Davidson, Sir Andy and their colleagues is that there is no indication that day will be upon us anytime soon. How long are they prepared to wait?

In the final analysis, it is highly likely that Britain’s Conservatives, their members, and their supporters will be required to make an existential choice before the end of this decade. 

If they want to save their party, turning towards a more centrist, internationalist approach of the sort advocated by Baroness Davidson and Sir Andy is almost certainly the prudent approach. In time, they would almost certainly be returned to power, perhaps as early as the mid-2030s.

The history of the Conservative party, though, is that they are impatient for power. The mid-2030s may seem a long way away to a group of MPs who, conceivably, could be part of a ‘unite the right’ government in a matter of a couple of years. Mr Harper and Mr Poilievre didn’t lash their deckchairs to the Titanic, and it is hard to imagine either will feel they made the wrong choice.

Here in Scotland, that choice may come in a matter of weeks rather than years. In any other country in the democratic world, the primary party of opposition, fighting a 20-year government with a 25 per cent approval rating, would be measuring the curtains of the official government residence. Scotland’s Conservative MSPs, meanwhile, are writing CVs, with their breakfast, lunch and dinner being eaten by Reform.

What will the rump of Scottish Tory MSPs do if, as polls predict, they will end up as the fourth, or fifth or even sixth party, watching Reform’s leader Malcolm Offord challenge the First Minister on a weekly basis? Do they try to jump on board the moving train or sit tight on the sinking ship?

This may seem vaguely irrelevant to many readers, but it is not. All governments need opposition. All democracies need a left and a right. The choices the Conservative party makes will define them, but they will also impact the rest of us. 

Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters, and co-host of the Holyrood Sources podcast

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