John Redwood: MPs who defect will find it harder to make a difference outside the Opposition

Sir John Redwood is a former MP for Wokingham and a former Secretary of State for Wales. He will soon join the House of Lords.

Conservatives are doing a serious job of opposition. Under the leadership of Kemi Badenoch, the official Opposition have forced some changes to government policy and rhetoric. There have been u-turns of sorts on pensioner support, taxes on pubs, fuel costs, the Farms tax, anti-business employment laws, and others.

It is true we need more and better u-turns than this government has so far managed, but their wrong policies, followed by hesitations and partial recantations, will make them more cautious about inflicting further damage, and will invite more pressure for change.

The Government has had to delay its deeply damaging and expensive give away of the Chagos Islands. Conservative MPs and peers have demolished the government’s case of why they have to do this. Conservatives have now exposed how a government of international lawyers have got themselves into a predicament where they are proposing to tear up an important Anglo-American treaty without bothering to get US agreement to do so; they seemed also unaware of the Mauritius anti-nuclear treaty, which could interfere with the running of the Diego Garcia base.

This is a government which insists on any anti-British interpretation of international law and Treaties where it suits them, yet ignores these same sources when it is in the UK’s interest to interpret them correctly.

When I and others first pointed out how our opt into the Court came with express exemptions for Commonwealth and defence matters, these government lawyers refused to accept the International Court of Justice cannot make us give Chagos away. Now these same lawyers are trying to catch up with Conservatives showing they will be breaking the 1966 treaty with the US by giving the base away, and claiming Mauritius will break its own anti-nuclear treaty obligations when it owns the base. Are they bad lawyers, or just slippery when it comes to Treaty law?

The Conservative Party is the only one telling public and government the truth: that we cannot fix the economy without first reducing spending and getting control over the benefits bill. The party has recognised that current extreme Net Zero policies will land us with dearer energy and the need to rely on imports to keep the lights on, and Badenoch’s response to the second dreadful anti-growth budget was the finest response to a budget I have heard in a good few years of listening.

I am sad that Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman have left the Conservative party. I was part of a group trying to persuade the last Conservative government to take stronger measures to implement its pledge to stop the boats and people trafficking.

When Jenrick resigned as minister and agreed with us that we needed to legislate to prevent overseas courts undermining our border controls, we worked with him. We were happy for him to take a lead on trying to amend the legislation and shared our amendments with him which he had been against as minister. We were happy too to work with Braverman after she was sacked as Home Secretary and accepted that she had been trying to change government policy from within when we were trying from without.

I could have understood if they both had not fought as Conservatives at the last election, given their strong reservations about the Conservative record on immigration in office. I find it difficult to understand why they decide to leave the party now, as the party now agrees with their views on how to stop the boats and bring legal migration down.

Braverman says she does not believe the Conservatives would take us out of the European Convention on Human Rights, yet Badenoch has made clear it is party policy and will be a requirement for any future Conservative candidate to Parliament to support. It is also a very popular policy with members and Conservative voters.

I feel sorry for the Conservative party workers of Newark and Fareham who gave their time, energy and money to help secure their re-elections. I feel sorry for the voters of the two constituencies who will not be given the opportunity to vote on whether they now want a Reform MP instead of the Conservative party they voted for. I was often told to join UKIP (or the Referendum Party or whatever) given my views on the EU during the long debates about membership. I always explained that I had been elected as a Conservative and felt honour bound to serve out each Parliament keeping my word to my electors.

As my personal manifesto as a Conservative candidate always pledged to work for a referendum or for Brexit after the vote, I did so from within the party . I And others like me showed that the way to secure the vote and the exit from the EU was by working as part of the Conservative party. It was Conservative votes in an election and in Parliament that secured the referendum, and it was Conservative votes in an election and in Parliament that secured our eventual withdrawal from the EU.

Both Jenrick and Braverman praise Nigel Farage and claim he is exceptional, consistent and clear. It is true he has long been a strong voice demanding less migration and wanting us out of the ECHR, and is a good campaigner. But as he is today a keen advocate of more elections to strengthen our democracy shouldn’t MPs defecting to his party put themselves through an electoral test.

Reform UK has removed its wide ranging tax cuts offered in 2024, saying they were not affordable. Yet it wants water nationalisation, a very expensive commitment which would take the sector back to a system which also delivered too many sewage spills and did not even bother to measure and report them. It wants proportional representation; it has voted with Labour to increase the ballooning welfare bill.

It could be that Jenrick and Braverman have suddenly become converts to these policies. But I do not recall them ever lobbying for them within the Conservative party.

It is strange that some should choose to leave the Conservative Party now, when their views on immigration and international law have been made official party policy. They could have stayed, and helped the shadow teams do their big jobs of holding the government to account. The MPs who have gone will find it is much more difficult to oppose successfully when you do not have the automatic right to reply to the government, and when you have so few votes to try to get things on the order paper.

Many other Conservative members and voters feel let down by these actions, making us more determined to show that the new Conservative party is the only party that takes the economic plight of the country seriously and has answers to the high tax, high prices, dear energy policy mix that is destroying jobs and business. It is His Majesty’s Official Opposition that is forcing the u-turns and exposing the dangers of the Government’s disastrous polices, from the Chagos giveaway through the taxes on jobs and business to the dear energy which is doing so much harm.