Rory Stewart will take London by storm. And the Conservatives only have themselves to blame
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Today Rory Stewart officially resigned his membership of the Conservative Party and announced he will not be standing to be an MP at the next General Election. Instead, he will be standing as an independent candidate for London Mayor. Although his departure from the party will be unsurprising to many Conservative Party members, this resignation represents the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Whatever people on different wings of the political spectrum may like to think, this resignation is not just about Rory Stewart. It is not about his leadership bid, his views on the EU or even his belief in expanding the UK Aid budget. This is about a Conservative Party that no longer has space for discourse.
Already, across social media, there are Conservative Party members, supporters and worst of all, MPs, celebrating the departure of Rory Stewart. This is short-sighted in the extreme. Without even getting into the fact that calling someone who voted for the Withdrawal Agreement three times (for clarity, that is twice more than Prime Minister Boris Johnson), a ‘die-hard remainer’, the level of discussion and debate is almost non-existent.
You do not have to agree with his politics or his policies to acknowledge that his unique approach to engaging in political discourse with the public has cut through in a way many other elective representatives would struggle to replicate. His campaign rallies attracted people from across the political spectrum, not just Conservative voters, but Lib Dems and centrist Labourites too. After his announcement this morning, my phone was peppered with messages from individuals from all three major parties asking how to join his campaign team.
When campaigning for Rory in the Conservative leadership election, the standard refrain from the so called right-wing members of the Conservative Party was that if there is so much support from Lib Dems and former Labour candidates, why not just leave the party? Sadly for the Conservative Party, this view is not only pervasive but also seems to forget that winning elections requires non-party members to vote for you too.
The idea that to be a Conservative Party member you must be exactly aligned with the message of the current leadership is not only grossly misjudged, but enormously hypocritical. The Conservative Party has a long-standing history of dissent, that has not just been accepted but encouraged. The ERG was founded in 1993 and despite not representing the majority of the Conservative Party for many years, its views and opinions were respected, listened to and, in many instances, acted upon. The Conservative Party was a party that could lay down the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act in 2013, while still accepting that some Tory MPs on the right of the Party would vote against it.
The Conservative Party has a proud legacy of supporting free speech, both from its members and from the public, but the current fervour over Brexit purity has seen this tradition decimated. The forced departure of the current rebel intake shows that the Party doesn’t care for difference of opinions anymore.
The message of love and unity espoused by Rory may seem trite now, but when #RoryWalksOn through the London Mayoral campaign, attracting support from the centre ground of the Conservatives, politically homeless Blairites, uninspired Lib Dems and anyone else who was losing hope, the party only has itself to blame.
