In his latest column, PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood, looks back at our first year. 

A year ago, I and a few others launched PopCon in a blaze of publicity in Westminster. Everybody felt like we were in the dying days of the Conservative government and although nobody (other than the media) was especially keen to begin a post-mortem before the patient had died, it’s fair to say that quite a few pre-mortems had already begun.

It’s also fair to say that there was a certain healthy scepticism about whether the Tory Party really needed yet another clan, faction or – using mafia-style descriptions – “family”.

But we were determined to be different. Rather than being an “inside the beltway” gathering station for Parliamentarians of a certain tendency or proclivity, we wanted to reach out to grassroots conservatives to change the whole framework of debate on the centre-right. Our view was that if we didn’t reset the entire machinery of government, it was of secondary and rather limited importance to argue about how to and when to turn the dials on the machine.

Most pundits and commentators felt pretty sure that a general election would happen in the autumn, the Conservatives would lose badly and around about now we would be in the final stages of a leadership contest. As it was, for reasons that remain a mystery to most, Rishi Sunak caught everyone on the hop by going to the polls in July.

PopCon never really had a specific leadership candidate in mind (for one thing, we felt sadly certain that a vast swathe of Tory MPs would lose their seats) but we did know how we wanted the Conservatives to approach the question of re-establishing themselves in opposition.

Rather than listing out a whole series of desirable ends – low taxes, a smaller state and more freedom for individual men and women – we were determined to talk about the means required to get there.

This would mean tackling the sprawling state infrastructure which had grown up under Tony Blair and was acceded to, even encouraged, by subsequent Tory administrations. Power had seeped away from Parliament and had been transferred to a mixture of quangocrats, arms-length bodies, civil servants and judges. Or as Dr David Starkey likes to put it, we had government “of the blob, by the blob, for the blob”.

Closer to home, it would also mean returning democracy to the Conservative Party. Afterall, if we are determined to end non-transparent and unaccountable groups making decisions behind closed doors - thwarting the will of the people - we need to ensure that the Party practices what it preaches.   

One year on and you might well argue things have got worse. A Labour government that has surprised even its staunchest opponents with its sheer level of ineptitude is doubling down on all the things that the Tories got wrong in office. However, I think the medium term looks brighter. More and more people are realising that Britain is thoroughly broken and doesn’t merely require a change of management but a complete reset of the entire system.

None of this suggests that there is a guaranteed route back to power – and there certainly isn’t an easy one. But PopCon’s main role is not to make sure that a return to office is easily achieved but rather to ensure that if it is achieved that it was worth it.

Through media appearances, online events and meetings up and down the country, I think we really have helped shift the debate towards looking at the root causes of Britain’s ills rather than just the symptoms. Intellectually – if not electorally – it’s been a good start and I’d like to thank all of you who have done so much to help spread our message as well as hone it.

It is often remarked that in politics, it is only at the point that you have bored yourself rigid with putting forward your own arguments that you have started to get public cut through. I haven’t got remotely bored of the case we are putting forward which suggests to me that in year one we made a good start, but in year two we have a lot further to go.

Keep the flag of freedom flying.