The Wets have won and the Tories won’t recover

Just over a week after the most consequential decision of my political life, I find myself with one overriding thought: I should have done it sooner.

Outside the Conservative Party, and now a member of Reform UK, I can finally speak plainly. Not just about the grotesque failures of the last Conservative administration but about something far more important: how Britain is to be repaired.

This was not a decision taken lightly. In Fareham and Waterlooville I have worked alongside dedicated local Conservatives for more than a decade. Many remain friends. This was never about them. But it inevitably affected them. I have been deeply heartened by the number of local members who have backed my decision – or joined me – because they see what I see: the Conservative Party is no longer a viable Right-wing force.

The truth is that the Conservative Party is now, in substance, more of a social democrat party than anything else. Conservative In Name Only. This evolution began under Cameron. Exactly 10 years ago, as a new MP, I rebelled against David Cameron to vote Leave. I assumed it would be a one-off. In fact, it marked the start of a long Leftward drift by the Conservative establishment.

Theresa May’s Brexit fiasco forced my resignation from ministerial office and led me to vote three times against her Betrayal Bill as one of the 28 Spartans. When Boris Johnson entered Downing Street, I thought the Right had prevailed. It turned out to be an illusion.

In retrospect, Brexit became a kind of Right-wing façade for a deeply statist agenda: record immigration, submission to the ECHR, the highest tax burden in 70 years, net zero zealotry, woke takeover and welfare spending at historic highs.

Rishi Sunak, despite the posturing, merely continued this agenda: big spending, big government, technocratic managerialism – closer in spirit to Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau than to anything recognisably conservative. Applauded in Davos. Punishing for communities at home.

Today’s leadership repeats the mantra that the party is “under new management”. But slogans cannot erase history. Nor can they substitute for action. Throughout the Conservative Party’s long ideological surrender, the leader failed to take a stand for authentic conservatism. Kemi Badenoch was absent – or actively obstructive – during my battles to cut migration, leave the ECHR, ban hate marches, or prosecute grooming gangs.

Even now, the party refuses to commit to repealing the Equality Act, one of the Blairite relics that underpins today’s DEI madness. Having stood aside for years, she now presents herself as the standard bearer of the Right, as though the record does not matter. Nobody believes it.

The betrayals have annihilated the Conservative Party’s credibility. It now attempts to sound serious but the accumulated lies and failures cannot simply be brushed away. Too many people are still living with the consequences.

Inside the party, Right-leaning MPs are being hurriedly reassured by the whips (a word of advice to former colleagues: keep your misgivings to yourself, otherwise you will likely find yourself attacked by the leader’s team as mentally unstable or suffering a nervous breakdown).

They will be told the familiar patter: that the party is Right-wing; that it will leave the ECHR. But the centripetal pull of the party’s centre always wins. The Right simply does not have the numbers.

Look at the recent evidence. If a party cannot even acknowledge that Britain is broken, how can it contemplate radical repair, let alone deliver it?

When Conservative MPs urged recognition of Palestine, the leader said nothing. When Tory councils postponed local elections, she did nothing. When large numbers of MPs oppose, albeit quietly, leaving the ECHR, there is silence. When party grandees support ID cards or endorse Kamala Harris, again: silence. When MPs campaigned for the return of El-Fattah, there was no rebuke.

Of course we need to ban the burka to fix the integration problem, yet the leader lacks the backbone to support that policy. And, with perfect timing, as Right-wingers leave, a new centrist faction – Prosper UK – emerges, stacked with Remainers and party power brokers staking its claim. For all the rhetoric, nothing has changed. The Conservative Party is not a conservative party.

The consequences are now visible everywhere. It is not just me who could no longer tolerate the hypocrisy and delusion. Millions of voters have walked away. After May, the Conservatives will cease to function as a national party. They are already finished in Wales. They would be lucky to limp into fourth place in Scotland. They may lose their deposit in Gorton and Denton later this month.

And the arithmetic is brutal. To form the next government, the party would need to more than double its seats. Where, exactly, are they supposed to come from? Not the Red Wall, which has moved to Reform and is not coming back. That leaves a handful of leafy Home Counties – Maidenhead, Witney, perhaps parts of suburban London. Even on the rosiest assumptions, it is nowhere near enough. The numbers simply do not add up.

It is painful to watch the party of Churchill and Thatcher come to this. But sentiment cannot override reality. The Conservative Party is no longer recoverable. Millions already understand this. Reform UK exists because of it, and has now replaced it.

The only remaining question is whether the last few Right-wing conservatives still inside the parliamentary party will see this truth, before it is too late for them.

Suella