Is it really popular if you have to tell people it is?

It is perhaps a sign that a number of senior figures in the Conservative Party are looking towards a future out of office where their particular world view defines where it goes from here. And today’s launch of “Popular Conservatism” suggests that, if you are enthused by the idea of a sensible conservative political force, you may have to wait a while for one to emerge from the expected electoral wreckage.

A group led by Liz Truss, managed by Mark Littlewood and with Lee Anderson and Jacob Rees-Mogg as key figures is likely to be pretty disruptive as the Conservative Party seeks to recover in the next Parliament. It does strike me though as having some built-in self-destructive tendencies though.

Firstly, the whole low-tax, small state libertarian schtick, much beloved by Liz and Mark, and based on the idea that allowing people to spend their own is better than having the state do it for them. It’s superficially beguiling - who likes paying tax, after all? - but given Mark’s record of claiming that the public support the notion without telling them how he proposes to do it (answer - a whole bunch of things that a large majority of people would be horrified by), and Liz’s utter incomprehension about markets, you can hardly expect honesty in terms of the choices to be made.

But how do you marry libertarianism with the “Red Wall interventionist” stance of Lee Anderson and the moral hypocrisy of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Anglo-Catholicism?

Now, I do see some emerging themes - opposing the “nanny state” in the form of a smoking ban, for example, is consistent with support for personal freedoms. And whilst I don’t take a particularly strong view on Rishi Sunak’s approach, it does seem an unlikely policy from a Conservative Party. But modern-day Conservatives do have a very erratic approach to personal liberty based, it seems, on their personal prejudices. They’re currently against the right to protest, the right to organise, and free and fair elections. You might, and I would, suggest that their support for freedom extends as far as that which they approve of and no further.

So, when Mark talks about “transferring power to families, communities, businesses and individuals”, he might be talking about balancing the needs of those different groups, but he’s more likely to be calling for a minimalist state where no group has protection from the predations of others. In other words, don’t be poor, don’t be vulnerable, don’t be a minority, for might is right, weakness is to be punished.

But, if he’s serious, he and his friends are going to have to undue vast swathes of Conservative legislation designed to limit our freedoms and to make it difficult for us to choose who rules over us. And he’s not going to do that, partly because his friends ultimately won’t let him, but also because freedom requires transparency, and his record at the Institute of Economic Affairs demonstrates his lack of commitment to that.

For me though, the biggest thing that stands in the way of this new ginger group is the word “popular”. Having one of the country’s least successful and most ridiculed politicians at its head isn’t a great start but, if you have to explain to people that what you are calling for is popular, that suggests that you’re simply trying to convince yourself that you have support beyond your narrow circle of friends.

I wish them luck though, for if they succeed, the Conservative Party could be out of power for a generation…