At Prime Minister’s Questions last week, Shadow chancellor Angela Rayner accused the Conservatives of preparing for opposition. This follows the appearance of several high profile conservatives at NatCon, a conference for those on the far right of politics.
The conference was attended by two cabinet ministers: Michael Gove and Suella Braverman. Other high-profile Conservatives joined, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg. This added to the controversy surrounding the conference where cabinet members who attended went ‘off message’ from their cabinet agreed positions.
The radical nature of the conference was highlighted when Braverman appeared to call out academics and policy professionals. She stated that her party should be “sceptical of self-appointed gurus, experts and elites who think they know best what is in the public’s interest, even when that public is quite certain that they need something different from what those experts are proposing”. She also attacked Keir Starmer’s views on gender arguing: “given his (Starmer’s) definition of a woman, we can’t rule him out from running to be Labour’s first female prime minister”.
At PMQs, Rayner argued that “It’s absolutely amazing that while the Labour party is preparing to govern with a majority, they have started to prepare for opposition”. She illustrated this through Rees-Mogg’s admittal of gerrymandering, saying that he “really let the cat out of the bag” after he appeared to admit that the Conservatives introduced photo ID at elections with the aim of it working in their favour.
There has been an argument made that the NatCon conference is one in which the Conservative factions have been further exposed to a clear divide in Rishi Sunak’s cabinet, looking almost like the divide following a General Election in which members create a new vision for their party. However, following the loss of just over 1000 seats in England’s local elections, there has been a divide between those in the party who blame Sunak’s leadership, and the majority who blame previous leaders Liz Truss and Boris Johnson. It is yet to be seen how this will affect the party at the next General Election.