PopCon: Liz Truss attempts to make conservatism popular again
Image Courtesy: ITV News
For most of Britain, ‘popular’ is not a word associated with Liz Truss, whose premiership was famously outlasted by a lettuce. Yet, this Tuesday, she launched a new Tory splinter group called Popular Conservatism at a conference attended by many familiar faces, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nigel Farage, Preeti Patel, and Lee Anderson.
The leading sentiment of the PopCon faction is a belief that left-wing ‘elites’ have too much influence over the nation’s judiciary and media institutions. They believe that the Conservatives – despite currently being in power – are forced to water down their opinions due to an insidious culture war, often dubbed ‘wokery’ by Tory politicians.
In a speech at the rally, Truss criticised Sunak’s government for not tackling ‘left-wing extremists’ who she believes have hijacked British bureaucracy. The goal of this new faction is to pressure Sunak to cut tax, enforce more stringent immigration policies, and to leave the European Convention on Human Rights – the latter potentially standing in the way of the Rwanda bill.
In another speech, guest-of-honour Jacob Rees-Mogg said the ‘age of the Davos man is over’, referring to attendees of the annual World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland. It’s indicative of the PopCon resentment of globalised business people, calling for an end to the ‘international elites’ supposedly controlling Britain’s institutions. Some have called out the hypocrisy of Rees-Mogg’s comments, as he himself was a City banker for many years.
Rees-Mogg also criticised ‘the unaccountable, the faceless, the bureaucrat and the pious platitudes of pompous politicians which have been running this country for too long’, an anti-elite, populist sentiment seen increasingly across the world, be it Donald Trump in the US, or Eurosceptic parties such as Germany’s AfD, the Netherlands’ PVV, or France’s National Rally.
PopCon is one of many Tory splinter groups, indicative of a party with increasingly polarised views. Last May, Suella Braverman, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Gove attended the NatCon (National Conservatism) conference, which primarily discussed culture war issues and the dangers of the ‘woke left’.
Yet, will PopCon actually have any impact on the upcoming election? Members have stated they have no intention of replacing Sunak as leader of the Tory party, and are mostly focused on pressuring the existing cabinet, as well as shaping the Conservative manifesto. Yet, some argue Liz Truss’s track record seems ill-suited to influence the party, or indeed to increase the popularity of Conservatism.