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The Conservative Party needs to avoid a lurch to the “extreme right” as it tries to rebuild itself from its worst ever defeat, a former party chair has warned.
Chris Patten, who was chair for the successful 1992 general election campaign where he also lost his seat, has raised concerns that the Tories will try to ape Nigel Farage as it seeks to win back supporters.
Writing for The Independent, the Tory grandee, who was also Britain’s last governor of Hong Kong, labelled two of the potential contenders Priti Patel and Suella Braverman as “extreme right” and described Farage as “Tommy Robinson in a cravat” as he urged for the party to take time over its reset.
The article has had a sharp response from Mr Farage who told The Independent: “No doubt Lord Patten has the same contempt for Reform UK voters and Brexiteers.”
An ally of Ms Braverman has labelled the former Tory chair as “divisive”.
Ms Braverman has recently made headlines attacking fellow Tories as not being Conservatives and claiming the progress pride flag for LGBT+ support represents “child mutilation”.
Lord Patten witnessed the last collapse of the Conservative Party after the 1992 election, which led to a huge defeat in 1997 and left the party out of power for 13 years.
Blaming the civil war that has gripped the Tories over Brexit, he noted that it was “not new for the Conservative Party to lose its way in fratricidal rows”.
He said: “That is the malevolent business which started back in the 1990s focused on Europe and John Major’s moderate conservativism.
“Each row has been more bitter than its predecessor and today’s arguments are not only fuelled by rival ambitions, for example, those of extreme right-wingers like Suella Braverman and Priti Patel – but also by absurd attempts to paper over the disastrous premiership of Liz Truss and the years of lies and incompetence which were the main legacy of the moral vacuum represented by Boris Johnson’s years in 10 Downing Street.”
He warned against those who believe that reversing the defeat is simply about reclaiming lost ground from Farage’s Reform UK which picked up five seats and 15 per cent of the vote in the election.
Lord Patten points out that Tory votes from 2019 had also gone to Labour and the Lib Dems.
Amid fears that the party’s membership has become more right wing, he said: “The Conservative Party membership – which has plummeted over the last few years, not least in the 34 years since I was party chair (it is now about one-eighth the size of the membership of the RSPB) – must be told very clearly that the way ahead does not lie through playing footsie with Nigel Farage’s populist Reform Party let alone merging with it.
“Farage, who led the campaign to get Britain out of the European Union at a huge and toxic cost of which we are increasingly aware, offers nothing for a healthy Conservative future.
“His saloon bar bluster, if translated into policy, would give us Liz Truss economics, Jeremy Corbyn foreign policy (which would be much loved by Putin), and an approach to our nation’s identity akin to that of Tommy Robinson (albeit Tommy Robinson with a cravat).”
He also warned that attacks on so-called One Nation Conservatives threaten to consign the party to “the political cemetery”.
The Tory peer added: “These One Nation Conservatives who are attacked include most of those who have successfully led the party over the last century. They are patriots and internationalists who believe in the central importance of properly regulated market forces, which can produce the resources for generous social and welfare provision.”
Instead, in his six-point plan, Lord Patten recommends that the party “needs to avoid rushing into doing anything except trying to pull itself together and learn how to play as a team”.
He added: “It would be best if [Rishi] Sunak would agree to stay on as leader for a short while, or alternatively to make way for an interim leader who could command support right across the party.”
Lord Patten also recommended that, under Mr Sunak, the party takes its role as “the loyal opposition” seriously and supports the new Labour government “when it is clearly trying to do the right things on the economy or social policy”.
Praising the new prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, he noted that “the Labour Party under Keir Starmer seems to have got a remarkably firm grip on the beginning of the effort to deal with the mountain of problems facing the country today”.
An ally of Ms Braverman said: “Personal attacks by fellow party members on Suella are disappointing. We have no chance of fixing the problem unless we are honest about why we lost. And it isn’t because we were too right wing. It’s because we governed as liberals and were defeated as liberals.” Ms Patel declined to comment.
