Conservative Party conference 2022: can things only get better?

The Conservative Party conference gets underway in Birmingham this weekend and the contrast with the Labour Party’s generally harmonious gathering in Liverpool last week is expected to be stark.

The Tory conference comes “amid simmering discontent” among the party’s backbench MPs, The Telegraph said, due to the “financial chaos” that has emerged in the wake of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget last week.

One senior Tory MP told Politico’s London Playbook that the conference would be “dismal” as MPs struggle to hide their frustrations with Liz Truss’s new administration. “You won’t witness us tearing ourselves apart like the Labour Party has traditionally done in its bad years, but it will be difficult to keep things calm,” the MP said.

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The four-day event starts on Sunday, with a host of party grandees scheduled to appear – as well as some notable absentees.

What did the papers say?

The conference is expected to be a “fractious” affair, The Times said, as fallout from the mini-budget continues to rankle backbench MPs.

The non-appearance of high-ranking members of the party is also being read as a sign of discontent within the party. Rishi Sunak is the most notable absentee, but also sending their apologies will be David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, Sajid Javid, the former health secretary, home secretary and chancellor, and Mel Stride, the former leader of the Commons.

Boris Johnson is not expected to attend conference, while Dominic Raab, the former justice secretary, and Priti Patel, who resigned as home secretary earlier this month, are also conspicuously absent from the Birmingham agenda.

Still, the timing of the conference does offer an opportunity for some damage control. One Tory MP told The Guardian that it could help calm disaffected party members, and gives Kwarteng a chance to reassure delegates after a turbulent week.

“Everyone needs to stop shitting the bed and just calm down,” the unnamed MP said. “And hopefully at conference, if not before, Kwasi will set out in a much more considered way how he’ll address some of the issues with the markets.”

Truss is likely to suffer from a “Tory conference headache”, the Telegraph said, with arch-critic Michael Gove scheduled to appear at half a dozen fringe events over the course of the conference. Gove backed Rishi Sunak in the leadership election and has described the new PM’s economic plans as a “holiday from reality”.

Morale among backbenchers is reportedly low, with some saying that they will be skipping conference for the first time in years.

“I don’t want to go and spend a miserable three or four days where there is complete false fawning from the stage from her newly appointed Cabinet,” a former minister told the Telegraph. “It’s depressing enough not being there. I don’t want to get even more depressed by going.”

What next?

As Tory delegates converge on Birmingham, the mood among locals towards the conference has “veered between fury and contempt”, said Mark Townsend in The Observer.

“Only the most bullish Conservative party strategist” would have thought that Birmingham would be a hot-bed of Tory support, Townsend added. But “anyone even contemplating a Conservative victory in central Birmingham should now be judged beyond delusional”.

Truss won’t speak until the final day of the conference, as is tradition. The new PM is due to speak during the “Getting Britain Moving” segment on Wednesday, following Tory chairman Jake Berry and Nadhim Zahawi, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

Truss’s keynote speech may come as a “bittersweet moment” for some delegates, said Liam Doyle in the Express. Usually a triumphal moment for an incoming prime minister, Truss’s address will have to be carefully pitched, given, as Doyle wrote, “the early days of her premiership have been hit by crisis”.

“We may be reaching the point where the least bad option is to announce a face-saving postponement of last week’s most voter-repellant measures, even if it leaves her a live mouse rather than a trapped lioness,” said ConservativeHome editor Paul Goodman.

This does not mean that Truss must renounce all her ideological positions to win back favour, but she should “grasp that government is not a laboratory, budgets are not experiments, blowing the roof off isn’t home improvement, and communication isn’t telling everyone that you’re always right”, Goodman added. “Perhaps competence is too much to ask for, but can we please have a little humility?”