Peter Franklin: The left-right split in the Conservative Party has been replaced by a new divide

Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.

Many people were surprised when Sir Jake Berry — former chairman of the Conservative Party — defected to Reform.

Promoted under David Cameron and Theresa May, the then MP for Rossendale and Darwen was not a stereotypical Tory Rightwinger. Indeed, he was an outspoken advocate for public investment in the North. Puzzling, then, that he should jump ship ahead of the usual suspects.

But perhaps we ought to view his change of allegiance as a clarifying moment — not least because it took place on the very same day as a ‘defection’ of another sort: that of Rishi Sunak to Goldman Sachs. Though the ex-PM remains an MP, he’s off to the investment bank and will donate his salary to charity, which is nice. There is, of course, no causal connection between the two announcements. But the coincidence is symbolic of what has become the most important dividing line in today’s Conservative Party. In one direction, a move to a disruptive political force; in the other, towards a pillar of the establishment.

Tory splits have long been conceptualised as a battle between the left and right wings of the party. There have been other distinctions over the years — Wets versus Dries, Mods versus Rockers and Remain versus Leave, but for the most part these map on to left versus right.

Delve into the comments on ConservativeHome and you’II sometimes find a rightist headbanger accusing various Tory politicians of centrist wrongthink. Weirdly, such accusations aren’t just levelled at the last of the old Tory wets, but also economically dry-as-dust Brexiteers like the aforementioned Mr Sunak. On the other side, we have the self-described moderates who seem to think that the only way forward for the party is backwards to a time before Brexit.

Well I’m afraid I have bad news for the over-excitable right — there will be no purge of the impure. But, equally, I have to tell the opposite tendency that there won’t be any going back either. Indeed, both sides need to accept that not only are they not going to win, they’re also fighting the wrong war. The old left/right binary is losing its relevance.

Consider the sequence of leaders from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak to Kemi Badenoch. I don’t think it’s at all clear which of those four is furthest to the right. And, no, it isn’t obviously Truss — i.e. the ex-Lib Dem Remainer who drove a coach-and-horses through the guardrails of fiscal conservatism before blaming her downfall on the deep state. Nor is it Johnson: champion of Brexit, but also social liberalism, Net Zero and record immigration. Things were less confusing before 2019. For instance, we can be reasonably confident in placing David Cameron and Theresa May to the left of their more recent successors — until, that is, one remembers austerity in his case and the “hostile environment” in hers.

It’s all rather messy, but perhaps that is how it should be. As Michael Oakeshott famously argued, conservatism is not an ideology, but a “disposition“.

If I were to try to explain the current Conservative flux it’s that after decades of ideologically-driven conflict, dispositional politics is reasserting itself. The catch is that I don’t think this is happening in a good way. The authentic Tory disposition is a preference for the things that matter over the things that merely change. But in place of true conservatism, what we have today are two deeply flawed (and mutually antagonistic) dispositions — whose conflict is tearing the party apart.

To explain what these are, I’m going to refer to Dungeons & Dragons, the fantasy roleplaying game.

Non-nerds will have to be bear with me, but D&D aficionados will know that the game allows you to play as a fictional hero (or villain) defined by various characteristics including strength, intelligence, profession and, er, species. A further dimension is “alignment” — which describes one’s moral outlook on life. A player can whether decide to be good or evil, but also lawful or chaotic — i.e. a stickler for the rules or a disruptive influence.

It’s this binary that defines the current struggle for a soul of the Conservative Party. Since 2019 we’ve had two chaotic leaders (Johnson and Truss) followed by two lawfuls (Sunak and Badenoch). One might object that Johnson and Truss have next to nothing in common, so why lump them together? But that’s the thing about chaotic Tories — one shouldn’t expect much in the way of either consistency or unity from them. Lawful Tories, on the other hand, are naturally more cohesive. Those who accuse Badenoch of being a continuity Sunakite are on to something. The lawfuls don’t have to organise themselves into formal factions, they just tend to stick to the same lines by default.

So does that mean they’re much closer to the conservative ideal than the chaotics? Not necessarily.

Conservatism should be about living traditions, not dead letters. There must be room for growth as well as continuity — indeed you can’t have one without the other. Furthermore, conservatism goes hand-in-hand with restoration — that is, the kind of change that mends the broken threads of history. At its worst, the lawful tendency smothers the innovation and experimentation required to sustain the vital relationship between past, present and future — offering only stagnation and decay in its stead.

We’ve had quite enough of that lately: from Sunak’s dismally bland political strategy to Badenoch’s low-energy, no-urgency leadership of a party on the brink of extinction. Add in the debate about our 14 wasted years in government and one wonders how the lawfuls manage to perpetuate their stifling grip. But, of course it’s no real mystery — just a swing of the pendulum away from the traumatic disarray of the Johnson and Truss years.

Held up to the light, the lawful versus chaotic framework helps to explains a lot of recent Tory history. Take, for instance, the sudden collapse of Boris Johnson’s leadership bid in 2016. It wasn’t ideology that blew apart his campaign team, but a clash of incompatible dispositions.

Moving forward to his resignation as Prime Minister in 2022, why did his supporters switch their support to Liz Truss when the two blond(e) beasts had such different policy agendas? Answer: because of their shared chaotic energy and their shared antipathy to Rishi Sunak and the other awful lawfuls.

Or what about the strange disconnect between Priti Patel and Suella Braverman? Superficially, the two of them have a great deal in common: they’re both women of Indian heritage on the Right of the party with trenchant views on law-and-order and the ability to provoke helpless rage in woke lefties. They ought to be close, but appear to be on different trajectories. Indeed, their political careers are in negative alignment — when one is up, the other is down and when one is in the (shadow) cabinet the other is out. Just look at their current positions: Patel by Badenoch’s side as shadow Foreign Secretary while Braverman announces her own policy on withdrawal from the ECHR.

Again, the explanation is disposition: the former is quietly conformist, the latter a born disruptor.

The lawful/chaotic binary will also shape the fraught relationship between the Conservatives and Reform UK. The reason why Reform is doing so well is that it is a party of pure, if controlled, chaos. As such it has a lock on a section of the electorate that More in Common calls the “dissenting disruptors” who “crave dramatic change and strong leadership”. They’re described as “highly distrustful of institutions, opposed to multiculturalism and feeling disconnected from society”. Together, they constitute 20 per cent of the population.

Looking ahead, it would be tempting, but mistaken, to put the whole of the Tory Right on defection-watch.

Rather, Conservative whips should expect Nigel Farage to target individuals who might most reinforce Reform’s chaotic energy (while not threatening his pre-eminence, of course). As for countering Reform more generally, the Conservatives don’t stand a chance as long as the lawfuls remain in sole charge of the party. The current leadership simply lacks the mental equipment to empathise with the dissenting disruptors, let alone win them back.

Ideally, we need a leader who can transcend the lawful and chaotic dispositions — combining their respective strengths and discarding the flaws.

Any thoughts as to who that might be?