EXCLUSIVE Why David Cameron and his Tony Blair-loving Notting Hill clique are the REAL ones to blame for this year's crushing Tory defeat, writes LIZ TRUSS By Liz Truss Published: 01:43, 3 November 2024 | Updated: 02:10, 3 November 2024 e-mail View comments I joined the Conservative Party in 1997 and went to that autumn's conference in Blackpool after our then historic election defeat by Tony Blair 's Labour Party (since dwarfed by our catastrophic defeat this year, the Conservatives' worst election result since the party was founded in 1834). The mood was bloodthirsty, with a lot of flak being directed at what had been a sleazy and self-indulgent parliamentary party. Yet the direction taken by William Hague's leadership of the party was to increasingly dismiss the grassroots and centralise power at party HQ.
He veered between gimmicky stunts that sent very different messages – whether it was purporting to drink 14 pints of beer as a teenager, appearing at the Notting Hill Carnival or visiting a theme park in a baseball cap that read 'Hague'. At the heart of this, he and the party were unsure about how to take on Blair. Instead of crystallising a vision for a post-Margaret Thatcher/ John Major Conservative Party, successive leaders opted for the easy route of going along with the Blairite consensus.
Rather than allowing a true grassroots conservative movement to flourish, the party was centralised and controlled by those who favoured publicity over action. There was limited.
