Jeremy Hunt has dispatched Treasury mandarins to finally crack down on woke waste across Whitehall. Guido hears from multiple Treasury sources that the Chancellor asked Civil Service officials to pore over Conservative Way Forward’s bombshell report, published last month, after the group revealed “politically motivated campaigns” were costing the taxpayer more than £7 billion a year. 40 Tory MPs signed a letter telling Hunt to take action…
While the work is ongoing, sources say the Treasury are taking the report “really seriously”, with multiple teams working on potential areas to reduce waste – including the thousands of “equality manager” jobs that spawn every five minutes. Of course, Sajid Javid once vowed to row back on these non-jobs during his tenure as Health Secretary, and still they appear…
Even so, it’s an obvious area to find savings. At least the Treasury aren’t sitting on their hands…
The new-look Conservative Way Forward (CWF) is finally gearing up for its full launch. While the proto-Thatcherite group had hoped to launch some time in April or early May, it looks like it’s now battle ready to drum up support for free market policies within the parliamentary party. Convenient timing given the events of the last week in SW1…
Group chairman Steve Baker and Westminster spinner Ed Barker have joined forces to lead the charge, with both now listed as directors on the campaign’s Companies House page. Barker is a seasoned political campaigner who worked with Steve Baker throughout the Brexit years, including in the running of the Covid Recovery Group. Who also in a previous life played as a saxophonist for George Michael…
A few careless whispers throughout SW1 last week led to Baker’s pre-launch memo spreading like wildfire with Tory MPs ahead of Boris’s no-confidence vote, and Guido’s got his hands on the full pitch. It’ll come as no surprise that Baker’s view on the current state of the party is pretty grim, although he’s keen to stress that CWF’s antidote won’t be “a reheat of Thatcherism”:
“It will not try to return the Conservative Party to Thatcherism, but take these principles and adapt them for a 2022 society that is wholly different to the society in which Thatcher rose to power in 1979, and society when CWF was first founded in 1991.
[…]
We want the government to:
- Make the UK the most attractive and competitive place for investment in the world by reducing regulation, control and coercion over the economy and our lives, and by breaking down the barriers to private entrepreneurship.
- Reduce state spending and debt so that we can lower taxes and the cost of living for working families, giving them a greater a say over where their money goes, and for businesses so that they can reinvest and grow.
- Restore honest money, control state power and make government more effective. Genuine cost benefit analysis in Government, reform the way in which expert advice is provided to ministers including an Office of Research Integrity, and a new Public Health Act to ensure the most important decisions ministers make on our basic liberties are truly scrutinised by Parliament.”
Yet another attack on government policy from the right flank…
Guido understands Conservative Way Forward (CWF) organisation will relaunch next month, with chairman Steve Baker set to unveil the leading members of the group’s parliamentary council and drum up much needed support for free market policies within the party. Just in time for the government’s tax hikes…
The plan is to spend the next few weeks fundraising ahead of the launch. The big policy focus, Guido hears, will be on housing. They’re also keen to present a softer, more ‘pro-social’ side to their campaigning and policy agenda. “Acting as radicals, dressing as moderates”…
There’s a real concern within the CWF ranks that the unstable political climate – tax hikes, the energy crisis, inflation – could lead to backsliding into Corbynite policies dressed up as fiscal responsibility and “levelling up”, instead of the nominally Conservative government actually offering conservative ideas again. Last night Guido was surprised to hear an actual Tory grandee expressing the old fashioned idea that cutting taxes would help with the cost of living rising. Free markets, deregulation, and personal responsibility all need to be back on the policy agenda. Guido’s told to expect a few surprising faces leading the charge…
Arron Banks’ attempts to rejoin the Tories may have stalled but that has not stopped him from getting back involved with Tory politics. Guido has learned that Banks has been appointed Treasurer of Thatcherite pressure group Conservative Way Forward. 100 Tory MPs joined CWF’s new parliamentary council two months ago, including 8 sitting Cabinet Ministers (now 7 following DD’s resignation). It is a group with significant clout…
100 Tory MPs have tonight formed the new parliamentary council of the Thatcherite group Conservative Way Forward. Eight Cabinet ministers – Sajid Javid, Chris Grayling, Liam Fox, Michael Gove, Esther McVey, Jeremy Hunt, David Davis and David Gauke – are among them. This is a much needed push from the sounder wing of the Tories to fight back against the ever wetter direction of the party. And the increasing prevalence of Corbyn-friendly views among some voters.
At a reception at the IoD this evening, new CWF chairman Conor Burns made the case for freedom and talked up CWF’s nine principles of democracy, capitalism, deregulation, freedom, community, enterprise, nationhood, security and choice. Some good words on Brexit too:
The British people voted to again be and independent self-governing country. We – unlike the establishment – believe not that this is some disaster that needs to be mitigated but rather an opportunity to be embraced. We want to build a modern, outward looking, liberal country that trades with the world. As we approach the second anniversary of that historic vote we hear the quiet but strong instruction of the people. Insistent they tell us clearly: get on with it. We are not renegotiating our membership of the EU. We are leaving. The public knew exactly what they were voting for – indeed the Government used millions of their money to tell them.
We are leaving the Customs Union. Leaving the Single Market. The Supreme Court in London will now be THE supreme court of the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister could not have been clearer on Britain’s Brexit red lines. And she will have the support of Conservative Way Forward as she delivers them. Every one of CWF’s new Parliamentary Council will be in the lobby next week supporting the Prime Minister and upholding the democratic decision of the British people.
Boris was the keynote speaker, calling for his colleagues to back leaving the customs union and remake the case for free trade. He branded Corbyn a Chavez apologist and vest-wearing Marxist condoner of anti-Semitism.
About time this wing of the Tory party stood up to Theresa May’s joyless statism of sugar taxes, energy caps and price controls, and the Ruth Davidson / Philip Hammond view that they need to tax more, spend more and regulate more. 100 MPs and eight Cabinet ministers is an impressive and encouraging reminder that there are some friends of freedom left in the Tory party…
