Why would I, or anyone else, ever trust the Tories again? Their brand is broken

The sense of betrayal felt by millions of 2019 voters will not be undone by a new leader

A good friend of mine worked on one of the Conservative leadership campaigns over the last few weeks. Whilst the media were busy focusing on the personal rivalry between Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch, the real problem for the Conservative Party is not personal, but ideological. My friend says that, as he’s been travelling around the country, he’s clearly seen that there are two Conservative Parties.
One group tends towards Reform, like me, and very much wants the Conservative Party to adopt our policies. The rest he describes as the Liberal Democrats. In the old days, we might have called them the One Nation wing. But these are the Remainers. These are the status quo Conservatives, and these are the people who haven’t even begun to recognise why the general election went as badly as it did.
The Jenrick campaign has been very interesting to watch. The Remainer centrist, who in the past stood up for nothing in particular and used to be known as “Robert Generic,” has undergone a Damascene conversion. His resignation as Immigration Minister and his focus on reducing the numbers coming into Britain have led many to say he is now the leader of the Faragist wing in the Conservative Party.
Whether this is a serious conversion or simply posturing for political gain is very difficult to judge at this stage. But let us, for a moment, assume that he is genuine, and consider what his positioning really means. There is no doubt that the cross-Channel illegal immigration crisis hurt the Conservative Party in an enormous way.
Jenrick has now followed the Reform line: we will never sort this out if we remain subject to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Furthermore, he understands that the incorporation of the European Convention into EU law means our judges too often reject deportation orders. He has rightly said that we should leave the court and amend the Human Rights Act 1998 to remove the convention.
To counter this position, the grandees and their centrist media friends did everything they can to ensure that Badenoch won. It is like the Brexit referendum debate all over again and shows that the centrist One Nation group is still very much in charge of the Conservative Party. The policy divide between the Conservative Party and Reform remains intact with this result.
The Badenoch campaign has also been backed and supported by the very same apparatchiks who have held sway for the last 40 years. From Michael Gove downwards, a Badenoch win represents an unchanged, unreformed Conservative Party. She will, of course, pose as tough as ever, but her record – if you compare what she has said with what she has done over the last few years – makes for dismal reading.
Very often, Badenoch has been seen as tough on immigration, yet she campaigned hard for foreign students coming into Britain to be allowed to bring dependants. On the European Union, once again, she talks about being a Brexiteer, yet, as a minister, she ran away from the chance to repeal thousands of EU laws.
In the country as a whole, the problem for the Conservative Party is far bigger than they realise. Whilst Labour has had an awful start and is falling rapidly in the polls, that is not enough for the Conservatives to win the next election, as many current MPs believe. The sense of betrayal felt by millions of 2019 voters will not be undone by a fresh set of promises now. The fundamental problem is that the brand is broken and will not recover for many years to come, if ever. The gap in the common-sense ground of British politics is still enormous, and Reform intends to fill it.
People talk to me about a deal, but remember that in 2019, I got Reform to stand aside in 300 seats only to be horribly let down. Why would I ever trust the Tories again? Their brand is broken and they have lost the trust of the British people.