The crowd fell silent without being told, almost as if it sensed the presence of Liz Truss in the building.
One troublesome journalist heckled: “Here comes the bride”, but didn’t get many laughs. The audience was genuinely excited to be in the presence of the former Prime Minister.
After a period in the proverbial wilderness, Liz Truss marched back into SW1 to properly command a new band of loyal MPs demanding grassroots debates about future Tory policy.
For an hour, we were treated to a concerto of populist Tory policy: on everything from abandoning Net Zero (Lee Anderson) and abolishing the Supreme Court (Jacob Rees-Mogg); to reversing Mr Sunak’s incoming ban on cigarettes (Mhairi Fraser) and an end to “wokism” in schools (Truss).
The audience liked it; the assembled press – forced to stand for two hours due to the packed audience – lapped up the continued Tory infighting and SW1 personality politics.
The main hurdle for Ms Truss et al, however, was to explain the purpose of the group. I remain unconvinced that she succeeded in this endeavour.
Since Ms Truss was ousted in 2022, the number of right-wing Tory factions has near-doubled, making it hard for even those of us in Westminster to keep up.
The European Research Group (ERG) is 30 years old; The Northern Research Group (NRG) came about during Boris Johnson’s era; the Common Sense Group in 2018.
But since 2022 we’ve seen the New Conservatives, the Conservative Growth Group, and the Conservative Democratic Organisation spring up.
Then there’s the China Research Group, the Net Zero scrutiny group, and that’s before you mention the centrist caucuses like the One Nation faction.
The fact that many of these groups largely consist of the same right-wing, trouble-making MPs doesn’t help with understanding their differences. It often appears like a dedicated parody of Monty Python’s ‘People’s Front of Judea’ sketch.
So where exactly do the PopCons fit into this ecosystem? One individual involved in organising it said that it’s grassroots, unlike the Conservative Growth Group which is MP-led; It’s less culturally right-wing than the New Conservatives; it’s like the Conservative Democratic Organisation insofar as being focussed on the Tory grassroots, but not as interested in internal party constitutional change.
Does that clear things up for you? Because it didn’t really help me.
The event took place in the evangelical Emmanuel Centre, with all speakers preaching beneath the engraved Bible quote: “My little children let us not love in word, neither in tongue but in deed and in truth”.
There was a lot of talking today, but few plans for ‘deeds’, let alone changes to Tory Party policy.
Ms Truss argued: “Britain is full of secret Conservatives – people who agree with us but don’t want to admit it”.
That may be true. The country certainly isn’t full of Starmerites desperate to put Labour in power to achieve the square root of nothing.
However I remain unconvinced that Ms Truss is the person to spearhead a Popular Conservatives movement. She may be right on many issues, and a star in Westminster, but the public remains frosty to say the least.
One former No.10 special advisor who served under Ms Truss texted me afterwards: “That was classic Liz”. Her diagnosis is correct, but she is simply far too unpopular to fight for the solutions needed.”
The event was also overshadowed by the news that Kwasi Kwarteng, Ms Truss’s Chancellor who presided over the disastrous Mini Budget and found out he’d been sacked via Twitter, is to stand down at the election. Combined with two of Ms Truss’s closest MP allies not attending (Simon Clarke and Ranil Jayawardena), and you get the sense many of those even on the Trussite wing of the Tory Party no longer think the project is quite as popular as billed.
In the meantime, Rishi Sunak will once again have to exert energy getting Westminster to focus on his Government, rather than the never-ending blue-on-blue circus.
