If the Tory party refuses to accept reality, it faces years in opposition

The PM’S critics are indulging in the comfort of fantasy. He has little time to undo their errors

While its opponents have indulged in ideology and factionalism, the historical success of the Conservative Party has always rested on its longstanding membership of the reality-based community. If the party tears up its membership cards – as some MPS seem willing to do – it will spell disaster for its electoral prospects, and the future of the country.

It is true that the Tories are polling about 20 percentage points behind Labour. But those rushing to blame Rishi Sunak have short memories. The party trailed Labour throughout 2022. When Boris Johnson departed amid controversies about Covid rulebreaking and misleading Parliament, the Tories were 11 points behind. When the Liz Truss mini-budget spooked the bond markets and brought the economy to the brink, they were 30 points behind. Sunak has narrowed the gap, but the damage done last year is clear. The road to recovery is long, and time is short.

Sunak has paid a political price for trying to keep the peace among his party’s warring factions. He could have defined himself more clearly in the public mind by contrasting himself with his predecessors, trashing Truss for her mini-budget and bashing Boris for his careless impropriety. But he has not done so, preferring to keep his party in one piece and judging that his only way to lead the Tories to the next election is by avoiding all-out civil war.

Not that those party factions thank him for it. Yesterday, Liz Truss launched her comeback, claiming, “I was not given a realistic chance to enact my policies by a very powerful economic establishment.” This is either the stuff of conspiracy theory – believing she was brought down by shadowy forces inside the Office for Budget Responsibility or the Bank of England – or a statement of the obvious. With a stock of debt and budget deficit the size of ours, Britain cannot just ignore the bond markets. It is the job of a prime minister to enact change within the realms of the possible.

Supporters of Boris Johnson are also on manoeuvres. But the case for Johnson relies on the fantasy that the last three years did not happen. His premiership ended because so many ministers resigned he could not form a government. He left office amid by-election defeats and a net satisfaction rating of minus 44 per cent. He remains under investigation for allegedly lying to Parliament, and whatever his supporters protest, his time in office saw taxes go up, the Channel crossings go on, and legal immigration soar to record levels. He reportedly seeks a safer seat because he fears losing his Uxbridge constituency at the next election.

Most complaints about the Government are completely obvious observations without realistic alternatives. Asserting that we need faster economic growth, for example, should win politicians few prizes. Productivity growth, economic growth and income growth have all been too slow since the financial crisis of 2008. Truss is correct to observe that median incomes in Britain are well below those in countries like the US and Switzerland, and below the average in developed countries. On existing trends, we will soon be no better off than Poland and the Czech Republic.

The idea that we can magic growth out of thin air by cutting a tax or two and scrapping some regulations is just not grown-up politics. Instead we need a sustained plan of thought-through structural reform: industrial strategy, comprising sector-specific ideas and place-based plans; targeted tax and regulatory reform; skills and retraining programmes to improve our labour market; more and better-planned decentralised decision-making; reform of the state to improve the quality of government and efficiency of public services; and social reform to reduce long-term demand for state services caused by struggling families and communities in crisis.

A real plan for growth would require not an unrealistic lurch in fiscal policy but a detailed programme of microeconomic reforms, all pointing in the same strategic direction. As Dame Kate Bingham, hero of the Vaccine Taskforce, said recently when she warned that Britain risks losing its world-class life sciences industry, this might include specific tax decisions. But big shifts in the overall level of tax are only possible once we have less demand for the state and sustained economic growth.

Inevitably, Brexit looms large in the battle between fantasy radicalism and realism. The decision to leave the EU was not a trigger to slash taxes and get rid of regulations that safeguard the environment and workers’ rights. It was a decision to restore sovereignty and democratic control. It may be reasonable to ask whether ministers have their post-brexit policies right, but it is not reasonable to claim that Brexit has not been done simply because Britain has not become a deregulated, libertarian tax haven – not least because most Tory voters, like the country at large, detest the very idea. We should note that some of the biggest Brexit changes – free ports, the replacement of the Solvency II insurance framework, and Britain’s application to join the Indo-pacific CPTPP trade area – were all pushed by Sunak as chancellor.

Similar arguments apply elsewhere. On the Channel crossings, for example, some complain that people coming here illegally should, within existing legal frameworks, simply be sent elsewhere: to their home countries, France or Rwanda. But as various legal rulings show, immediate detention and rapid deportation is at present almost impossible to achieve, at least on the scale necessary. The Government will soon bring forward new legislation, and Sunak has said he is ultimately willing to leave the European Convention on Human Rights if that is what is necessary. Taking such a big call – rather than proposing things we know cannot work – is the only realistic solution.

There is a good reason why we keep returning to that word: realism. A willingness to engage with reality – and deal with the world as it is rather than how we wish it were – is what marks out parties that are fit for government and those condemned to opposition. That is the choice that now confronts the Conservative Party: the original thinking and hard work required by reality, or the pointless comfort of fantasy that leads unavoidably to national irrelevance.

It is the job of a prime minister to enact change within the realms of the possible