Tory gatekeeping has failed
The Party of Rob Roberts and Tiger Patel
Seven days after the Israel-Gaza conflict broke out in October 2023, some 2200 miles away, on the steps of a neoclassical town hall, local celebrity and Tory politician Altaf Tiger Patel addressed a sea of Blackburn residents. Councillor Patel told the crowd amassed in solidarity with Palestine that the situation there was nothing short of a ‘genocide’, and that ‘the Conservative Party, which I once thought of to be a beacon of righteousness has instead chosen a path of moral bankruptcy on the issue’.
Altaf styles himself as a devout Muslim. Perhaps only his God knows how his conscience kept him inside a party led by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss: postbox jokes, abortion lies, rampant infidelity, and all. But the real question here is not Councillor Patel’s moral judgement or character. It is how the Conservative and Unionist Party ended up approving, promoting, and funding such a man as Tiger Patel in the first place.
The Hostile Ideologue: Tiger Patel
Tiger Patel first came to prominence after going viral on social media. He appeared in videos confronting explicit graffiti in his neighbourhood, with beats taken directly from Imran Khan’s election campaign playlist serving as a musical backdrop. He became so highly rated that the mainstream media called him the ‘Boris Johnson of Blackburn’ (yes, really).
Eccentric, impressive, diverse, modern: party members and apparatchiks alike nodded in approval. Tiger Patel’s ward, Audley and Green Park, was a safe Labour seat, and just 8.5% had voted Tory in the previous election. But in 2021, Audley and Green Park made Tiger Patel the only Muslim Conservative councillor in all of Blackburn. Breaking through in a traditionally non-Tory voting community — just 20% of the population of the ward is white British — and in the middle of the ‘Red Wall’ to boot! — was seen by many as a stroke of political genius.
‘People may have laughed and they’re laughing at the other side of their faces now… It’s low budget, it’s different, but crikey does it work!’, the local party chair told the press. Crikey! Can you feel his air of optimism, pride, and indeed — smugness?
Presumably, the chair had no idea what Tiger’s political views were before he was elected. To be fair, he was probably selected as a ‘paper candidate’ in what was seen as an ‘unwinnable’ ward. But a betting man would still be quite safe to wager that the chair still had no idea what Tiger’s political views were even after he was elected, and that the chair’s state of blissful ignorance presumably would have continued unabated for years, even decades to come — at least in more quiescent times.
This was, of course, until the Israel-Gaza conflict suddenly intervened, and Councillor Tiger Patel publicly tendered his resignation from the Conservative and Unionist Party — all while rallying a cheering crowd of over one thousand flag-bearing demonstrators with not a single Union flag in sight.
Through complacency or incompetence, Tiger Patel was pushed and promoted by the Party for a number of reasons that we can guess with reasonably high degree of accuracy. He may have been a regular, sociable, or active member of his local association — a decent chap. He may have delivered many leaflets — a hardworking activist. He may have been the local Conservative Party’s only chance of ever winning a safe, ‘ultra-diverse’ Labour ward — an effective campaigner. Tick, tick, tick. With internal party policy set to contest every election across the country, and a likely shortage of forthcoming candidates in Blackburn, Patel would have been waved through.
It is probably fair to say that nobody ever asked Tiger even the most cursory of questions about what his political views were, let alone conducted any kind of due diligence on him as a candidate. This would be hardly surprising: some have observed that many local party associations are much more of a social group than a political party, perhaps a holdover from a time when the Young Conservatives alone boasted a national membership greater than the membership of the entire party today. One political analyst hypothesised that the average party member likely does not remember the last time that any Officer in their local association actually spent more than fifteen straight minutes asking them for their personal views on any policy issue, local or national.
Local parties being a social network is no new thing. But then also expecting them to be at the vanguard of Party gatekeeping is something of a tall order. As such, it is hardly surprising that a man like Tiger Patel, who appears to hold no common ideological ground with the Party that he supposedly represents, managed to slip through.
The Rank Opportunists: Shabnam Nasimi, Richard Walker, Christian Wakeford
In general, any successful political party needs a healthy dose of opportunism; and, equally, any successful political party needs leaders with some degree of personal ambition.
However, opportunism that entirely lacks any serious ideological grounding that is tethered to the national interest is just rank opportunism, serving nothing more than a selfish desire for personal advancement. Here, we will explore the curious cases of Shabnam Nasimi, Richard Walker, and Christian Wakeford.
If you have not previously come across Shabnam Nasimi — currently the Executive Director (and Founder) of the Conservative Friends of Afghanistan (CFoA), and formerly a Civil Service policy adviser — it may be worth reading her glowing profile on the Conservative Friends of Afghanistan’s website, which describes her as ‘the first person of Afghan origin to become a political commentator on British politics in the UK’. It goes on to list sixteen media outlets and programmes which she has either written for or spoken on. It is fair to say that Nasimi has been given substantially greater access to the media than most first term MPs.
Politically, Nasimi was also faring well. Michael Fallon, the former Defence Secretary, and Tom Tugendhat, then the Chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Select Committee, both supported and attended her CFoA launch. In fact, Nasimi has become quite the role model: Nasimi is also an Ambassador for ‘50:50 Parliament’, a cross-party campaign to raise the number of women involved in politics. An inspiration!
But now, the twist: unfortunately, Nasimi’s seemingly perfect CV was not worth the paper it was printed on.
In December 2022, columnist Poppy Coburn detailed what she described as ‘a plagiarism success story’ in The Critic, providing a breakdown of the most egregious examples of Nasimi’s plagiarism. Coburn pointed out similarities between a piece by Andrew Mitchell, the former International Development Secretary, and one of Nasimi’s pieces in The Guardian. Freelance journalist Charlotte Gill subsequently reported the plagiarism to The Guardian, who eventually took down the article in question. Gill further highlights an almost preposterous scene, featuring Nasimi allegedly ‘reading out Nigel Biggar’s article on air [LBC] and pretending it’s her own opinion’. The link to the recording and article is provided; it is up to the listener to decide what they think.
With two journalists picking up on this story, it would be curtains for most would-be politicians. But then again, most of us are not represented by agents — not least The Blair Partnership — and so, somewhat surprisingly, our story does not end here. As within two months, Nasimi returned to business as usual: panels with Wendy Morton (former Tory Chief Whip), appearances on Deutsche Welle, Parliamentary meetings with Baroness Warsi (former Tory Party Chairman, ‘A-Lister’, and repeated failed Parliamentary Candidate), and roundtables with Penny Mordaunt (House of Commons Leader, Tory Leadership contender, and author of one of the worst books in British political history). By December 2023, she was obtaining interviews with UN Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett, more roundtables in the House of Lords, and last, but not least, an appearance at Buckingham Palace with His Majesty, King Charles III. As the casual observer watches in amazement, the grift keeps grifting for Nasimi.
Richard Walker, the scion of Iceland (the supermarket, not the country), was, until recently, an approved Conservative Parliamentary Prospective Candidate (PPC). He later found himself put on deferment notice. Although there is no clear reason given for this development out there in the public domain, a cursory assessment of Walker’s history in political activism raises a number of questions.
Not long ago, he chaired ‘Surfers Against Sewage’ — a campaign that had collaborated with Extinction Rebellion — to protest against the Government’s position on sewage management. His digital footprint as Executive Chairman of Iceland includes one gaff suggesting that his staff had contracted HIV from needle attacks (which, needless to say, did not happen) and another gaff about Iceland losing ‘customers to food banks’. Not perfect, but also not unsalvageable, if Teflon Nasimi is anything to go by.
Where it gets interesting is Guido Fawkes’ revelation that in May 2023, Walker wrote directly to Rishi Sunak to intervene on his deferment so that he could stand in his home constituency. In the public domain, nothing appears to have come of it. But reports suggest that Keir Starmer was planning to announce a defection, until his plans were apparently leaked and thus shelved. One week before the Labour Party Conference in October, Walker penned an article in The Guardian, declaring ‘today’s reality is that we have a nominally Conservative government, yet I struggle to name a single thing they are actually conserving’.
This, my friends, is a totally new political conundrum that you may not have come across before. And, as logic dictates, it is one that can only be solved by working directly with the Labour Party.
This leads us neatly to the ultimate opportunist: Christian Wakeford, MP for Bury South. In January 2022, Wakeford, a first-term Conservative backbencher, crossed the floor to join the Parliamentary Labour Party. By this point, Wakeford had been active in the Conservative Party for around a decade, rising slowly, first as a councillor, then as a Conservative Group Leader on a Borough Council, then a parliamentary staffer, and, finally, as an activist on Boris Johnson’s 2019 Leadership Campaign. This journey would have involved, at a minimum, several thousands of hours of knocking on doors, campaigning and leafleting for the Party, advocating each and every party line (no matter how stupid), supporting hundreds of colleagues, and attending both local and national events. But, perched on a 0.8% majority, and with the Conservatives behind by double digits in the polls, there really was not much room for sentimentality or loyalty to former friends and colleagues.
Labour had bagged a defection from someone who was clearly a very principled man. In fact, he was so principled that early in his parliamentary career, Wakeford signed a Bill for a compulsory triggering of a recall petition for a by-election if an MP crossed the floor during a Parliamentary sitting. The bill fell.
(Did he volunteer for a by-election over his own crossing? He did not. Surprised?)
The Perverts: Jamie Wallis, Rob Roberts, Chris Pincher
Jamie Wallis, a Welsh Tory backbencher, has a number of convicted driving offences to his name. Nothing too unusual, except that they were not quite your run-of-the-mill speeding incidents.
In 2021, Wallis, the MP for Bridgend, crashed his car into a lamppost and fled the scene. Shortly after this incident, Wallis came out as Britain’s first openly transgender MP, but announced that he would continue using ‘he/him’ pronouns.
Most reacted online with bewilderment. It was unclear at the time what his sexual orientation had to do with the incident in question. The public waited with bated breath until the trial. Then, in July 2022, Cardiff Magistrates’ Court heard from a witness who saw ‘a white male wearing a white long-sleeve top which was tight to the body, a black leather PVC mini-skirt, tights, dark shoes with a high heel and a pearl necklace’.
(Judge Ikram: ‘I am going to be upfront, I didn’t find the defendant credible in the evidence he gave’.)
During the Covid pandemic, various semi-official Young Conservative outfits popped up, bringing activists together for campaigning, socialising, or to talk ‘policy’.
One of these groups — or more precisely, their 27-year-old founder — drew the attention of Rob Roberts, MP for Delyn — another Welsh Tory backbencher first elected in 2019 (what is going on with Welsh Tory MPs?) — who attended a number of their online socials. This culminated in Roberts securing the group special recognition via a video endorsement from no less than David Cameron himself. What a triumph!
Unfortunately, the political blog Guido Fawkes later published a conversation between Roberts and another young activist, in which Roberts admitted that
…I had an idea. So I got in touch with [Cameron] this morning… I’m basically going to get to the point of – look, I’ve done some lovely things and you [the group’s founder] keep saying how lovely I’ve been – let’s commit to going out at least 4 times… I deserve at least that…
This raises a follow-up question: what did David Cameron do to deserve this in his post-premiership sunset years? (Answers on a postcard please.)
By 2023, Delyn Conservative Association was reportedly put into special measures, as it had fallen into debt. Fundraising has no doubt proven a particular challenge for an Association whose MP has been suspended by Parliament and is now sitting as an Independent.
But unrivalled on the top of the list — at least for greatest damage done — is Chris Pincher, MP for Tamworth until his resignation in 2023. The former Deputy Chief Whip was trailed by a series of sexual assault allegations against his name, but was nonetheless reappointed by Boris Johnson. In the end, the revelations of Pincher’s behaviour brought down the beleaguered Johnson Government. Johnson was accused of being aware of the allegations all along; he even joked ‘Pincher by name, pincher by nature’ (quite funny, we must admit) before appointing the minister. Boris Johnson, the ultimate Teflon politician, then, was finally brought down, but not by an action that was directly committed by himself, but rather for his colleague’s sexual misbehaviour.
Perhaps rooting perverts out of your ranks is an intractable ‘gatekeeping’ problem. It is possible that politics just attracts too many individuals with ‘dark triad’ personality traits, and that this in turn raises the chances of encountering a pervert, with no obvious solution in sight. In a society increasingly comfortable with rolling back the frontiers of morality, and politicians often standing at this frontline, what do we make of today’s world, where gross sexual impropriety remains the last bastion of public life able to permanently end a politician’s career, freeze local party associations in its steps, and dismantle governments with eighty-seat majorities?
Unless a miracle befalls the Conservative and Unionist Party, it is hurtling towards a landslide defeat at the upcoming General Election. If polling data is to be trusted, the Party will be lucky to hold 130 seats. With Starmer mooting unprecedented gerrymandering by extending the franchise to the 3.4 million EU Nationals in the country and to 16- and 17-year-old children, the next election has the potential to leave the British Right out of power for a generation or more.
This piece has tried to provide a starting point for reform by assessing some of the key elements of the rot inside the Conservative Party, and identifying its gross failure at gatekeeping in the last few years. It is this failure that has allowed ideological opponents, rank opportunists, and downright perverts to slither into the Party apparatus. This is all rather ironic, given that CCHQ has otherwise become notorious for, in many other respects, its ‘ultra-conservatism’ — both big-C and small-c — in candidate selection, in effect demanding that only the most unthinking lobby fodder without a shred of talent or capacity for independent thought be selected.
The manifest lack of ability on the current front bench should be evidence enough of the dangers of this choice: how can you possibly provide ministers and govern the country with such a candidate selection stategy? And, when your eighty-seat majority collapses in part due to the predations of some serial pervert, it seems even more clear that Central Office was taking seriously the wrong sort of risk all along.