Ignore those all too ready to write your Party’s obituary – it isn’t over until it’s over

“The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That’s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against”

Dr. Stockman ‘An Enemy of the People’, Henrik Ibsen

It’s a brave, not to say foolhardy politician who would actually subscribe to Ibsen’s famous quotation.

First, it’s not true that a small minority of clever people are always right.  Second, fighting that idea is at the heart of Reform UK’s shtick and the very idea they like to fling in the face of their opponents.

However it’s remained a famous quote because it allows the possibility that sometimes, just because a large number of people say so, and an echo chamber is exactly as described, it is possible the mass is wrong, and quieter voices are right.

So here goes.

I do not believe the Conservative Party is dead.

It’s not denial, or a last stand on the hill of my choosing, but I don’t think its future is inevitably downward, nor do I think, long-term, Reform’s success is inevitably upward and forever. Even if, or perhaps because, they might succeed at the next election.

It’s not some blind loyalty either.

I have never discounted the real possibility of Reform winning an election, or Farage being Prime Minister.

I have never discounted the possibility that Kemi Badenoch – or whoever had won the leadership last year – might not lead the party into an election.

I have never dismissed the possibility that the Conservative party might find itself in existential threat territory – and a stubborn 15, 16, 17 per cent in the polls is arguably that territory.

This time last year I warned that despite the oddly upbeat mood at Conference, there were many Conservatives felt ‘we’re not done burning yet’.

However back then, after Labour’s landslide, many thoroughly dispirited and dejected Tories believed they might be out of power for at least a decade.

Then came the big re-adjustment. Nobody, not even Farage, expected Labour to be (again, in the words of one of their own advisers) “this shit, this quick”.

So here we are with the Tories still rebuilding but unforgiven, Labour a mess and Reform the untested but untainted bright and shiny new thing on the menu. Both Labour and Reform have now agreed that the Conservatives can and should be ignored. They tell anyone the Tories are dead.

Of course they say that because they need it to be true, and are desperate for the public, and seemingly any Conservatives they can find, to give up, pack up, go home.

They want it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. That doesn’t make it true unless you start to listen too much to the siren call.

To those Conservatives who are staying to fight, rebuild and win again, whether under Kemi or another, I have to say, I’m not that up for walking away when the chips are down.

I honestly get more fired up for making the case, because Reform want us to quit, and even more when they say they want to destroy us. I’ve been in the political trenches before under heavy flak and I’m damned if I’m running away. Let alone being ‘destroyed’.

I’d be far more open to an exchange of views, votes, and experience (Nigel still says that’s what they lack) with people who didn’t wish our destruction.

It is odd logic and quite revealing to say “we want to destroy this party… that is already dead” It’s like another paradox, “we Reform, are the true and real Conservatives now, and the Conservative brand is utterly broken and nobody should want it to exist”. I’m not buying that either. There’s a lot about Reform that is profoundly un-Conservative and philosophically incoherent.

Yes, Danny Kruger’s unexpected defection, was not greeted with shrugs of ‘and?’ but sadness and regret. It’s accurate to point out in a fortnight where Kemi and the Tories really got stuck into Starmer and claimed two huge scalps – with not much input from Reform – Kruger’s defection has dragged back to the surface questions about Reform, Badenoch’s leadership and whether the Tories ‘survive’.

Kemi tried to show she won’t be ‘blown off course’ by being back hammering Labour in the Commons yesterday over the Mandelson appointment. To be fair to her, the leadership of the Labour party seems in more doubt than ours, and she knows very well the questions that hang over her.

Questions I will not shy from putting to her directly when I speak to her for Conservative Home soon.

It’s an irony that some insist ‘the Tories haven’t said anything’ two weeks shy of the Tories about to say quite a lot – on top of things they have actually already said. Cut through is the problem, and a real one.

Labour and Reform need, electorally, to believe and to convince voters that the ‘real opposition’ is Reform, and it’s a two horse race. It might well be a two horse race but there is still a say over who the two horses are.

I’d agree with Robert Colville, Director of the Centre for policy Studies and our columnist Alexander Bowen who have identified the potential problem that every time Badenoch and the Tories hit Starmer, Reform are the beneficiaries in the polls. We’ll see but it’s very possible.

We shouldn’t stop punching the bruise. That polling scenario needn’t be a hard, given rule.

According to the received narrative the Tories polling is partly because they ‘vacated the field’ to Reform over the be-flagged summer but it was Badenoch and Jenrick who visited local protesters at the Bell Hotel. It was a Conservative council that fought back in the courts.

Over the past year I have watched, fascinated as the comment section of this website has been increasingly busy with people who have already left the Conservative party and decided a long time ago that it is dead. Many are committed Reform supporters.

They are welcome. Day after day they still read ConservativeHome (a good thing) and mock or taunt the Conservatives (less good thing) urging them, urging me, to:

‘give up… it’s sad to see you keep trying… you’re politically dead, you’re toast’

In the words of Reform’s latest recruit, Danny Kruger they want ConservativeHome to declare: ‘the party is over’

Those Conservatives who made the jump long before Danny did, will happily argue that ninety per cent of the remaining Tory MPs, are actually Liberal Democrats and they should leave. This narrative has hardened and amplified to mean just about anyone. However get them to list who they actually mean and after citing three or four one nation Tories, they end up just labelling anyone they can think of, most of whom have never been a Lib Dem in their life, nor share their politics.

I most certainly do not. Not even close.

The response to Danny Kruger’s defection has proved my old adage that the significance of a defection is in direct correlation to the person defecting. Kruger leaving is a blow, and significant. Is Danny, a man I respect and admire for his thinking and eloquence, the ‘dam break’?

He might be.

I can see other wavering Tory MPs saying, ‘if Danny can do it, I can now’. But Reform still need far more to answer the question; can they credibly fill, let alone run, a government?

Will there be more defections? It would be a fool who assumed no.

I have asked many touted in the media to leave and so far, the answer has been no, but who knows, Farage has done a good job of keeping defectors under wraps.

However how do revolutions and bankruptcies work? Very slowly, then almost all at once.

If it is done, when it is done, it will happen quickly, and if it doesn’t –  then it isn’t the revolution you think it is.

Our founding editor, Tim Montgomerie, himself now a Reform supporter, and still a friend, was often brave with predictions and could accept with grace if he was subsequently proved wrong.

So, no, I don’t think the Conservative party is over, and whilst I accept our opponents want that and might succeed, I’m not just giving up because they say so.

If you are, and remain a Conservative, whatever ‘trouble’ we may be in, don’t give them the satisfaction. If it’s over, when it’s over, then I’ll accept with good grace, but it is not today. It is not now.

However hard they tell you you’re wrong, stand by your convictions and don’t just stand and watch it happen, get in the fight.

Because it really is one.