The recriminations and a battle for top jobs among Britain's Conservative MPs began long before Labour's heavy election defeat on Thursday, which some insiders say has left it facing the prospect of a decade out of power.
After 14 years in power, the last eight of which have been marked by post-Brexit chaos and division, the Conservatives now face a new infighting among MPs, membership and donors over whether to move further to the right or return to the centre. .
The Conservative Party suffered its worst performance in its long history amid voter anger over falling living standards and the resurgence of the UK's right-wing Reform Party.
Rishi Sunak immediately resigned from the post of Prime Minister yesterday and said that he will step down as leader of the Conservatives after the process of selecting his successor.
Reuters interviewees said Sunak's expected departure would set off a battle between the institutions that support the party - with right-wing media, financial backers, think tanks and prominent members vying to influence its direction.
The Conservative Party suffered its worst performance in its long history amid voter anger over falling living standards and the resurgence of the UK's right-wing Reform Party
The outcome will help determine whether the party, which has ruled Britain alone or in coalition for around 100 years since it was founded in 1834, can recover from a significantly weakened state. One former Conservative MP has predicted "bloodshed" as the party plans to return to power.
"The party will suffer a kind of nervous breakdown, which will last for some time," said the former MP, who wished to remain anonymous. "And then it will be necessary to find a way forward."
According to party sources, several MPs are expected to compete for Sunak's position, with the right wing likely to promote two former home secretaries known for their tough stance on immigration - Priti Patel and Suela Braverman - as well as former trade minister Kemi Badenoch. who was named minister of the year in 2023 by the website ConservativeHome for her strong stance on transgender issues.
Sources of the party said that the candidates of the center are also preparing campaigns, and that the ministers of internal affairs and security in Sunak's government, James Cleverly and Tom Tagendat, are in the game.
Veteran party adviser Peter Botting described the leadership battle as a contest between those who became Conservatives because of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher - a staunch champion of the free market - and those who followed modernizer David Cameron, with his paternalistic "one nation conservatism".
"People will want big personalities that are easy to identify," Botting said. There are a lot of people who are easily forgotten, but they all think they can be prime minister."
Threat from Faraž's party
The former MP said the Conservative Party would need to move to the right to meet the challenge of Nigel Farage's Reform Party, which won a parliamentary seat at the eighth attempt.
Although Labor won about 34 percent of the national vote, far less than in 1997, the revival of the Reform Party split the right-wing vote and gave Kier Starmer a huge majority under Britain's "first-past-the-post" system in which the candidate with the most votes wins. , but not necessarily with the majority.
Faraž's party won only four seats, but more than four million votes, about 14 percent of the total.
Reuters reports that the Reform Party has frightened many conservatives, with Farage, a staunch Brexiteer, vowing to pursue the Conservative Party and become the main voice of the opposition.
His success could encourage members of the Conservatives to push for a more populist strategy on the radical right to regain popularity, which is not acceptable to the wing of the party closer to the centre.
Several conservatives told Reuters that the party's membership felt increasingly marginalized by Sunak's appointment in 2022 without their votes, and wanted the party to reclaim what they saw as its traditional values of a small state and free markets.
Shedding
The current situation is very different from that of 2010, when Cameron ended the dominance of the so-called "New Labour" led by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who had ruled for 13 years. Although winning the election, the Conservative Party was increasingly difficult to govern due to disagreements and resentment over the vote to leave the European Union.
Almost everyone Reuters spoke to agreed that the party had sunk so low that it would struggle to make a strong electoral showing at the end of Labour's five-year term.
More than 70 MPs resigned before the election, including former Prime Minister Theresa May and several other ministers. Dozens of advisers and researchers left the ship looking for new jobs, and 12 ministers lost their seats in this election, a record number.
Some conservatives doubt that the party will manage to be an effective opposition for some time.
"There will only be a very small, very inexperienced conservative parliamentary party left," said one of its MPs, who retired from the political scene after the election.
"This essentially means that, at least in the next couple of years, the Labor Party will have a free hand. We will not be any opposition."
He assessed that the conservatives need to change and admit that the center and the right wing of the party have not functioned as a tandem in the last seven or eight years.
"We have to admit that the current state of affairs is not sustainable," said the right-wing MP.
Ryan Shorthouse, head of the independent centre-right Bright Blue Institute, said the party had reached an "electoral and economic impasse".
"There will be a big battle of ideas in and around the Conservative Party," said Shorthouse, whose institute advocates centre-right policies but is not affiliated with the Conservative Party.
His organization is conducting a strategic review to position itself as a cross-party organization that can influence the Labor government, Shorthouse said.
"We want to ... essentially create a new center-right option."
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