Ruthless: party with no use for mavericks

MOMENTS after Rory Stewart announced he was resigning from the Conservative Party and standing down at the next election in order to (drum roll, please) run for Mayor of London, Ruth Davidson tweeted her views.

‘Very sorry to see,’ she wrote. ‘Our party should have room for talented, experienced and committed people from across the Conservative spectrum.’

You couldn’t make it up. For if ever two Tory politicians embodied that Conservative spectrum, it was Stewart and Davidson. Stewart, on paper the embodiment of the old Tory guard – Eton and Oxbridge educated with a background in the diplomatic service – has been a voice of reason during the madness of 2019, an intelligent and visionary thinker who believes in a different way of doing things.

During the summer’s leadership campaign, when he got tantalisingly close to taking on Boris Johnson for the top job, he became the non-Tory’s Tory, the chap who walked everywhere, actually listened to what people had to say and who the New York Times amusingly described as ‘the maverick lawmaker’.

Davidson, meanwhile – workingclass, gay, Christian, forthright – twinkled at the other end of that Conservative spectrum. The yin, if you like, to Stewart’s yang. She turned round the fortunes of the Conservative Party in Scotland at a time when nobody thought it could be done and, by the looks of it, had a ball in the process.

STEWART’S departure, on the back of Davidson’s relinquishment of the Scottish leadership for a backbench role – partly to focus on motherhood and partly because she simply could not stomach Johnson – is a disaster.

Because while politics itself may be languishing in intensive care thanks to the increasingly polarised extremism of the major parties, it’s the Tory party which is calling up the priest and inquiring about the last rites.

What happens when you push out good people, the moderates, the ones who think differently, the ones who aren’t afraid to stand up for what they believe in even when it clashes with the views of your leader? Well, it turns out you don’t just turn off your own politicians, you turn off voters too.

Sam Gyimah, another promising Tory who was expelled among the rebels last month, tweeted yesterday to say that the Conservative Party’s ‘soul has been captured by those who want to turn it into a nationalist party. There’s no way back’.

Worrying, perhaps chilling, words. Does Johnson know any of this? Does he care? Is any of it getting through that thick thatch of blond hair? Or is he just blundering along, a Hereford bull in a Royal Doulton outlet store, with no concern for the party he claims to love, or those who are abandoning it in their droves?

I have absolutely no doubt that Stewart will run a thoughtful and creative campaign which might just tip the balance for Londoners, who are clearly as fed up as the rest of us about the way the country is going.

He might just win. Either way, a bright future awaits the young man from Crieff who had the nous to try something different.

As for the Tory party? Even if they do ‘get Brexit done’, the future looks very bleak indeed.