The Conservatives have been likened to right-wing populist political party UKIP following an eventful party conference in Manchester.
Despite the media gaze being focussed on the scrapping of the northern leg of HS2, moves to drag the party away from the centre ground were also evident and made all the more poignant by the ever-present figure of Nigel Farage.
Policies to court the right were deployed at every opportunity to distinguish the Tories from Labour, with banning transgender women from female hospital wards, protecting controversial statues and taking on the unions among the proposals.
Ministers even flirted with conspiracy theories when Transport Secretary Mark Harper suggested councils could “decide how often you go to the shops, and that they can ration who uses the roads and when” with “sinister 15-minute city plans”.
And Claire Coutinho was challenged on having a flimsy grasp on the truth for using her speech to claim Labour is ”relaxed about taxing meat”, despite having no such policy.
Rishi Sunak is acutely aware that it was the party membership – generally more to the right than his MPs – who selected Liz Truss over him in the first of last year’s two Tory leadership elections.
And he took the opportunity to woo them over.
Speaking on PoliticsJOE Pubcast podcast, Ava Evans pointed to the similarities between UKIP’s 2015 manifesto and current Conservative policy.
Check it out below:
Related: The Death of the Tory Party
