Welcome to The Fight for the Right, The i Paper’s new opinion series exploring the ideas, personalities and parties battling to shape the right of British politics.

Welcome to The Fight for the Right, The i Paper’s new opinion series exploring the ideas, personalities and parties battling to shape the right of British politics.

An imposing bronze statue of Sir Robert Peel, Tamworth’s most famous son, stands guard outside its town hall, commemorating his enduring contribution to Britain’s political tradition.

Upon becoming prime minister in 1834, Peel wrote to his constituents in the Staffordshire town, setting out his vision for updating and organising the feuding Tory party into an efficient and coherent political force. His “Tamworth Manifesto” effectively laid the foundations of the modern Conservative Party, which went on to become the most electorally successful political party in the Western world for the next two centuries.

Inside the town hall, adorned with a painting of Peel in his pomp, his 21st-century political descendants are an endangered minority. If the birth of the Conservative Party can be traced to Tamworth, is it entering its death throes here?

The omens are grim. Just five years ago, Tories filled 26 of the borough council’s 30 seats. Today, they are reduced to a rump of three. They failed to win any of the 10 seats up for grabs in this year’s elections – not even coming close in a single contest – as Reform candidates swept all before them to turn the council into a Labour-Reform battlefield.

What should be terrifying Tory strategists is this. On the face of it, the Conservatives have been here before in Tamworth – in 1999, they were........

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