The Conservative party is threatened by a right-wing insurgency after a “leftward drift” under the warning of Rishi Sunak, one of its major recent donors, amid growing tensions on the Tory right.
Peter Cruddas, the peer who has given the party more than £3.5m, said the Tories were “no longer a centre-right party” under Sunak, adding that he refused to support him financially until to change course.
His intervention comes as the latest Opinium poll for the Observer shows support for Reform, the Brexit party’s successor, is up to 8% of the vote – up 2 points and almost neck and neck with the Democrats liberals The survey also found that a fifth of voters (19%) are considering voting for the Reform. This includes 23% of Conservative voters in 2019 and 11% of Labor voters in 2019.
In a sign of the political pressures Sunak already faces, Cruddas, a former Tory co-treasurer, said the recent tax hike budget, as well as Brexit and immigration policies, meant the party could face – to a threat of reform if Nigel Farage. choose to lead it in the face of the next elections.
“There is a conduit for center-right and center-right people to find a new home and that is the Reform party, especially if Farage comes out and says he will lead the Reform party,” he told the Observer . “What you are seeing today is a coup d’état and a hijacking of the conservative party by people from the centre-left. Senior Conservatives I’ve spoken to are also frustrated. Something will come to a head because the members don’t want Rishi Sunak. The odds are stacked against him.
“As long as the party is a centre-left party, I don’t consider it a conservative party. I will give to the Conservative party, the real Conservative party, which is a centre-right party. I will not donate to any centre-left party.”
The Reform Party would be more likely to pose a threat to the Tories under Nigel Farage, says Cruddas. Photograph: Olivier Touron/AFP/Getty Images
Meanwhile, Richard Tice, the current Reform leader, told the Observer that the Tories had “betrayed the country”, including over Brexit. “I want the Tories out,” he said. “I want them destroyed. They’ve ruined our economy. People are underestimating us. They don’t think we’re going to be in 630 seats. I already have 600.”
He added: “Nigel [Farage] He called me the other day and said the day we hit 8%, remember that day. It took Ukip 19 years to get to 8%.
The challenge demonstrates the difficulties Sunak faces as he tries to stabilize his party’s fortunes, end internal feuds and restore faith in the economy. Some Tories believe that after winning large numbers of pro-Brexit voters in the last election, they are now more vulnerable to the emergence of a right-wing party. Although Reform’s support remains low, it could end up costing the Conservatives seats if it wins a share of the electorate.
MPs told the Observer they believed the issue of refugees crossing the Channel in small boats risked swaying voters to support reform. Jonathan Gullis, the Red Wall Tory MP who led a rebellion over asylum policies last week, warned there would be political consequences if the issue was not addressed.
“If the Conservative Party fails to deliver on stopping illegal immigration and deporting people to Rwanda, Albania and other safe countries, the Conservative Party will be ousted by the electorate and Rishi Sunak will be the Leader of the Opposition, not the prime minister. , after the next general election,” he said. “Reform will come, it will take enough of our vote to let Labor sneak through the middle and back into power. We have to show that we can do it.”
A former cabinet minister said: “[MPs] they are right to worry. If we fail to deliver in small boats, this flank will be wide open. But to be fair to the government, they have shown a clear direction in this regard.”
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Cruddas, who was given the peerage by Boris Johnson, led a campaign over the summer to reinstate Johnson as a leadership candidate. It is now funding the newly formed Democratic Conservative Organisation, which aims to give members more power over MP and leadership elections. He said thousands of members were already involved and he would use his “deep pockets” to ensure the party changed course.
“What we’ve seen since 2010 is an engineering by the Conservative party to take us to the centre, possibly to the left, and there are a lot of MPs who we consider not to be conservative,” he said. “We are a center-right conservative organization that wants to empower members and adhere to our principles. We believe that the Conservative Party has been infiltrated by non-Conservatives.
“Jeremy Hunt, who failed to become party leader twice, is now chancellor of the exchequer. After that anti-Tory budget, he convinced me that the Tory party is no longer a centre-right party.”
Other senior Tories are urging their colleagues not to panic about a possible threat from the right. David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, said: “The best inoculation against extreme parties is the success of sensible policies. The more successful the government’s policies on the economy and on migrants, the safer my colleagues will be. leagues in their seats from any attack from any direction. The most important thing for them to remember is not to distract from success in the next six months to a year.”
The right-wing threat played a major role in bringing down previous Conservative leaders David Cameron and Theresa May. Ukip’s success in the 2014 European elections contributed to Cameron’s decision to hold the EU referendum. Meanwhile, May was finally ousted after the Brexit Party won 30% of the vote in the 2019 European elections. Conservatives worried about the current threat stress that reform would only need to win a fraction of that support to have an impact on the performance of the Conservatives in the next election.