David Gauke:
‘Trump Would Be Very Problematic for the Conservative Party if It Tried to Turn Into the British Equivalent of MAGA’

The Conservative Cabinet minister under David Cameron and Theresa May, who had the whip removed by Boris Johnson during the 2019 Brexit wars, speaks to Simon Nixon about the future he sees for the sort of liberal conservatism he still believes in

SN: How did the Conservative Party of David Cameron become that of Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick in less than 10 years?

The Brexit Referendum was a crucial moment.

Once there was a result, politics became an exercise in implementing that result – and those who had campaigned to leave the EU could claim a moral authority to be speaking ‘for the people’. Suddenly, we were left with a position where the political mainstream of the Conservative Party – remember, most Tory MPs and the vast majority of ministers voted to remain – were left at a disadvantage. That cleared out a lot of the leadership. It was the end of the careers of David Cameron and George Osborne. For others, we were put in a defensive position, and the difficulties of implementing Brexit exacerbated that. That fundamentally weakened the old mainstream.

Then there are the wider issues common to pretty much every developed country: greater concerns about immigration, greater concerns about social issues, and the rise of populist voters who could be described as being on the right of the Conservatives but, economically, are very often to the left.

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