When Tory activists gather in Manchester over the coming week, the country may be in crisis with fuel shortages and warnings that Christmas is under threat, but for the first time in five years the Conservative party is not in a crisis of its own.
Because of Covid, the last time the Tory grassroots assembled for their annual meet was in 2019, before Johnson’s landslide election victory. Back then, the UK’s exit from the EU was in doubt and an election loomed that could boot the Tories out of power. The two conferences before that were defined by the disorder of the Theresa May years. In 2017, the party witnessed her disastrous cough-ridden conference speech, and the following year’s event was defined by opposition to her Brexit deal and speculation over who might replace her.
Now things are much more sedate. “We’re leading in the polls and the prime minister is in a good place,” says one government adviser, predicting a rather static, perhaps dull, affair.
“It’s a midterm conference when politics is starting to get back to normal,” says one MP, who believes a lot of members will “just log in online rather than travel 200 miles to get there. It’s probably a safer option with the fuel shortage anyway.”
Even ministers find it bizarre that the party is comfortably polling ahead of Labour at a time when the country is at a standstill. This week’s Labour conference didn’t exactly send chills through Downing Street. If anything, it’s been viewed as a welcome distraction from the fuel crisis.
As well as sharing banners online criticising Angela Rayner’s comments suggesting Tories were scum, MPs took to their Tory WhatsApp group to critique Keir Starmer’s speech – mocking the Labour leader over its 90-minute length and the fact that he didn’t mention any of the Labour metro mayors, such as Andy Burnham, by name. “He’s too insecure to, he knows they are circling,” says one Tory.
With no opposition to worry about for the time being, the plan is to use the four-day conference to fire up Boris Johnson’s domestic agenda with a focus on the NHS, crime and jobs. Covid dominated Johnson’s first year after the general election, and his team want to move the conversation to the recovery and the issues he campaigned on during the election campaign.
“Delivery” is the word of the day. With the next election just two or three years away, time is of the essence to show that Johnson can add some muscle to current vacuous slogans such as “levelling up”.
So, will Johnson’s first in-person conference since winning a majority of 80 be a jolly affair? The prime minister is in an optimistic place – boosted by the cabinet reshuffle and his recent trip to the US. There’s talk of making his leader’s speech different in format to the others – more resembling a rally. But too much has happened both in Covid and No 10 since that result for the party to be in the full celebratory mood that one would have imagined back in 2019.
Plus, there is still plenty of space for things to go wrong: No 10 has taken a very hands-off approach to conference planning this year. And the reshuffle means that many ministers will be speaking on their brief for the first time in numerous fringe meetings.
There are deep nerves in government over the coming cost-of-living crisis – exacerbated by a combination of rising taxes, the universal credit cut, labour shortages, supply disruption and the risk of inflation.
Even if the fuel crisis eases as hoped, it is seen as only one of the problems – with energy prices and driver shortages being long-term problems with no easy solution. Any trigger-happy conference performances could jar with a put-out public.
But given the poll lead has so far been so undentable, Johnson’s bigger problem could be his own activists. While there is happiness that the party is comfortably in power, you only need to speak to a handful of supporters to pick up concern over its current direction. Under Johnson, the Conservatives are moving to the left on the economy – and the tax rise to pay for the NHS backlog and social care was accepted by Tory MPs with an absence of enthusiasm. They backed it because the prime minister was set on it and he had the power to push it through.I haven’t spoken to a single MP who believes social care will actually get the money it is meant to – everyone assumes the NHS will take it all up.
Ministers complain that they didn’t go into politics to raise taxes. Some come close to doing so publicly, with Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of three ministers to speak against the idea in cabinet, declaring on the eve of conference that Britain is already taxed “as highly as the country can afford”.
A four-day meet-up in which low-tax thinktanks and true-blue activists turn up in their droves has the potential to be rather bruising for a Tory prime minister who appears to have little in the way of ideology. “Being un-conservative and raising tax is becoming a much bigger issue,” says a senior Tory. Add to this any boosterish mentions of net zero carbon emissions, and expect questions from the grassroots over the cost.
The prime minister’s first conference since winning that majority finds him in a stronger position than a year ago, when Covid dominated the agenda. But for him to galvanise his support he would be wise, when he hits the stage, to answer a question his MPs and activists are asking all too frequently these days: what is his Conservative party for?
Katy Balls is deputy political editor of the Spectator
