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Shortly before recess, when the Commons shut up shop and Theresa May packed her Converse and Colgate and took a hike, a group of young Conservative MPs and politicos met for dinner. This was not a Cameroonian-style Notting Hill affair with a good Pauillac and Marlboro Lights. It was in Finsbury Park, Labour heartlands, and no one at the table was over 40. The mood was of brewing rebellion.

‘The feeling was — and is — that the current Cabinet doesn’t represent us,’ says an MP who was present. ‘They are not attracting younger voters and there’s a genuine fear for the party’s future.’ Another MP adds: ‘The generation on top — Boris Johnson, David Davis — are bluffers. Things are serious at the moment. We don’t want bluffers. There’s a real dismay at the level of mediocrity in Theresa’s team.’

All summer, they say, there has been a palpable crackle of frustration. Ruth Davidson has broken ranks on immigration. David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, has been heckled by Dominic Cummings, head of the Leave campaign, who described him as ‘thick as mince and as lazy as a toad’. There’s that feeling, says one Tory, ‘of the generals having failed and it’s time for the colonels to act’. As the horror of June’s election recedes, so the anger builds. Many are still spitting fury at the manifesto, which one prominent Tory MP describes as ‘so arrogant. They thought, “We can literally put a s*** in a folder and people will vote for us.”’ There are no ideas they can get behind, no one to represent them. ‘If you talk to any backbenchers, they say, “Oh it’s all terrible. No one listens,”’ says a former Tory minister. Worse still is May’s partnership with the DUP — whose ideas are as alien to progressive Conservatives as Jeremy Corbyn’s. ‘The gulf between backbenchers and Cabinet — and even junior ministers and Cabinet — is huge,’ he continues. ‘That’s partly generational, but the PM made a mistake not promoting fresh blood. First to create a sense of newness; second, because it’s always dangerous to leave clever, talented, pushy people sitting around with not enough to do.’

So where are the new ideas? Where is the positivity? What the hell is going on with Brexit? Where is the Conservative’s answer to Labour’s activists Momentum? Where are the Bright Young Things?

‘The rumbling of rebellion is there,’ says George Trefgarne, public affairs consultant and former journalist credited with first identifying the ‘Notting Hill’ Tories. ‘But it’s inchoate. It’ll be like a kaleidoscope: you’ll start to see these people, they’ll start to emerge and start grouping together. They’ll be seeing each other at weekends, in the evening. They’ll find somewhere to congregate. We’re waiting to see that obvious gang emerging.’ Back in 2004 the Bright Young Things were easy to find and not just in the wisteria-decked villas in Notting Hill. Many had been to school and university together, others gravitated to their gatherings with a shared desire to modernise the Tory party and upend the existing order. The mission was to dethrone ‘bed blockers’ like David Davis (yes, even then) and usher in a new era of Cameroonians — who arguably had more in common with Tony Blair than Margaret Thatcher.

In the intervening elections — 2010 (described as the ‘golden generation’), 2015 and even 2017 — young ‘modern and progressive’ Tory MPs flooded the party. They were clever, aspirational, liberal minded and believed in the ‘fast track’ pace at which David Cameron had rocketed to the top, not plodding though decades of worthy jobs and rising without a trace à la Theresa May. ‘Then after the Brexit vote,’ says a former chief of staff, ‘once Boris and Michael had killed each other, the Conservatives just wanted nanny to come and hold their hand. Theresa was the status quo candidate.’

The young MPs of the past three elections — who make up the majority of the parliamentary party — did not expect to be ‘ignored’ and ‘sidelined’ so quickly. In the top echelons of Cabinet, Amber Rudd, elected in 2010, is a lone representative. Many feel deliberately turned against. ‘We saw a chance disappear in front of us,’ says an MP elected in 2015.The déjà vu of David Davis hovering at the wings certainly serves to sour the mood of the lower ranks. That plus the backbiting, the briefing, the backroom plotting, played out against the backdrop of hubris that was the election. ‘No one wants to see any more seedy election campaigns,’ says one high-profile Tory.

And indeed it was with vituperative zeal that May swept away all trace of Cameron’s influence (even blocking proposed public appointments of his allies). She brought back the banished men of grey Conservatism — parochial politicians more village fete than Wilderness Festival. Under May all things metropolitan were suddenly bad, all things regional good. ‘A citizen of the world is a citizen of nowhere,’ she boomed in her 2016 conference speech — instantly alienating progressive MPs, the Financial Times (40 per cent of readers subsequently voted Tory, 39 per cent Labour) and most of London. ‘Arguably,’ says one MP in his 30s, ‘if she hadn’t damned citizens of the world she wouldn’t have lost Kensington.’ So the debate in the Conservative party is this: Kensington or Bishop Auckland? A young Tory explains: ‘Do you look at the election result and say, “Oh my God, look at all these seats we lost like Kensington and Canterbury, do we need to reconnect with the salaried, university educated professional classes?” If you think that is the problem, someone like Amber Rudd is probably your answer.

‘The other argument says, “Things went wrong but we’ve got this big increase in working-class support, we are in touching distance of taking Bishop Auckland off Labour, so we should double down on being the party of Brexit.”’ Is that the Donald Trump direction? ‘That’s not a bad shorthand. Essentially the choice is between being more Cameroonian because that’s what delivers seats like Kensington, or appealing to Northern working-class seats and people who didn’t have a voice. The person who wins the Tory leadership is the person who can reconcile those two strategies.’

Some see Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson as the living embodiment of the reconciliation of those apparently contradictory strands. She is both a lesbian, kick-boxing former BBC journalist and an Army reservist, practising Christian. Her recent much-celebrated article for the new centre-right news site UnHerd (started by Tim Montgomerie, the founder of right-wing website ConservativeHome.com, and pitched as a rival to those sites proliferating on the left) showed she is certainly thinking about the national, not just Scottish, challenge for her party. But maybe it will be all about who among the Westminster crowd she throws her weight behind; some saw it as significant that she was recently seen boozing with Amber Rudd.

But how to force change on an enfeebled government? ‘We have such a small majority, everyone has to make their views heard and influence the Government without rocking the boat,’ says a well-known Conservative MP. ‘Back in 2010 backbenchers could be a pain in the neck: we could sign letters and threaten to rebel. Now you feel things are so fragile you might knock her off her perch by being clumsy. We’d end up in general election territory and with a communist government for five years, for which the public would punish the hell out of us.’

As for bringing on new talent to the top of government, right now the sacking of any senior individual in May’s top team ‘is like removing a supporting wall’. So how will the young talent be tested and measured? Fresh faces — like Cameron and Blair — tend to come through in opposition not power. Many feel May’s only option is a gentle reshuffling to promote younger talent when she is stronger — ‘perhaps in the new year or spring’. Most would like to see her slough off ‘dead wood like Andrea Leadsom’. The appointment of Gavin Williamson, 41, as chief whip is seen as a nod in this direction. ‘Gavin is really good at this. He was Dave’s right-hand man and I really rate him,’ says a former Downing Street official. But it has to be done with subtlety and cunning. ‘Remove anyone senior and she’s creating enemies who will just go out and slag her off,’ says the official. Instead she needs to build bridges and be collaborative — not least to show at least some remorse for her catastrophic handling of the election.

What is striking is that the party’s members, who have the final vote on who will be next leader, seem to agree that no one among senior ministers fits the bill to succeed May. There are fewer than 150,000 of these members, two-thirds less than Labour, and their average age is well over 50. Typically they are much less liberal than many younger Tory MPs. But more than a third said in a recent survey by ConservativeHome that they didn’t want anyone in the current Cabinet to lead the party when May goes. Their most popular potential candidate was Davis, with backing from 20 per cent. Only 9 per cent opted for their former darling Boris Johnson — not many more than voted for the relatively unknown right-wing Brexiteer, Dominic Raab.

So who? Well in the survey’s ‘other category’ they were allowed to name their ideal candidate — and on that basis the right-wing, umbrella-carrying, pinstripe suit-wearing Jacob Rees-Mogg got almost a quarter more votes than Johnson. That 48-year-old Rees-Mogg shares traits with Corbyn is not unnoticed by commentators. Both have languished on the backbenches, both are the scourge of centrists (so much so that central office under Cameron’s leadership tried to block Rees-Mogg’s selection as a parliamentary candidate), both are ‘authentic’, ‘honest’ and have a cult following among millennials — not least because of their mastery of social media. Rees-Mogg has the slight advantage here in that he is mercilessly self-deprecating, especially on Instagram, which has won him thousands of followers within weeks of him joining up.

But his entertainment value is seen as a distraction by progressive MPs. He has voted repeatedly against same-sex marriage (because of his Catholic faith) and in favour of stricter asylum laws and mass surveillance. He makes no secret of the fact that for him the idea of progressive conservatism is an oxymoron. But one former minister says his form of absolutism will not succeed: ‘The Conservative party will not survive unless it occupies the centre ground. We need to promote social issues that matter today — what May originally meant when she talked about the “just about managing”. The minute we disappear into the arcane interests of factions to the right of the party [such as no deal with the EU and total inflexibility over immigration] we are lost.’

Another anxiety, say rebels, is that the wrong ministers — perhaps most noticeably David Davis, Philip Hammond and Boris Johnson — hog the limelight. ‘They don’t represent either the majority of the parliamentary party nor most of the people that vote Conservative, yet they are very keen to be on television. Most younger MPs find them as objectionable as most of the public.’

So how can the younger generation become more visible? A significant opportunity comes with the ‘Conservative Ideas Festival’ on 21 and 22 September, organised by George Freeman, MP for Mid Norfolk, with the aim of oiling the cogs of Tory thinking. Freeman, 50, chair of the Conservative Policy Forum, expects around 200 attendees — ‘no Cabinet’ — made up of party members, activists, counsellors and candidates, as well as people involved in renewal in society, economy and politics (‘but who don’t feel able to be mainstream Tories’), plus commentators and thinkers who might be ‘from the centre-left as well as the centre-right. They might have voted Labour all their life. Our team shares a concern that party politics has become too narrow, partisan and detached.’

The event will have a philosophy tent, a politics tent, an economy tent and a society tent. For example, James Morris MP is hosting a discussion of Shakespeare and politics. ‘The role of theatre in democracy — stuff you wouldn’t see at Tory conference.’ Fears that Momentum will try to sabotage the event mean the exact location is still secret, but Freeman hints at ‘central east Midlands, an hour and a half by train from London.’ He hopes the festival will be annual and that people will be able to ‘camp, glamp, stay in a B&B. It’s not Glastonbury, but it’s not the preserve of the party elite.’ The event will feed into the Conservative Party Conference, where — if there is not too much scab-picking over the election — insiders expect ‘a beauty pageant not just at the senior level but at other levels, too.’ When the rampant speculation about who will save the Tories starts, as it will in the autumn, who will be cursed by being fingered?

From the 2010 intake Dominic Raab, say former No 10 insiders, ‘will be first off the rank’. The 43-year-old former solicitor, the son of a Czech Jewish refugee, is MP for Esher and Walton. He was justice under-secretary below Michael Gove in 2015 and was recently made junior minister in the justice department. As hotly tipped is Rory Stewart, 44, whose constituency is Penrith and the Border and who was appointed junior minister at the department for international development after June’s election. He is an old school polymath: a writer, documentary-maker, academic, historian, diplomat (he was a governor in Iraq by the age of 30) and explorer (he walked 6,000 miles on foot in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal). But Raab is considered ‘too right wing’ by many, and Stewart — although a Hollywood biopic of his life is planned — ‘too eccentric’. One acquaintance remarked: ‘Stewart would have been an outstanding PM in the 19th century, if we still had an overseas empire to run.’

Another points out Stewart’s serious handicap: he is an OE. ‘And the Etonian quota can’t be high. We’ll probably have to operate a one-in, one-out policy.’ A former No 10 adviser also suggests ‘brilliant’, ‘bullet-proof’ Amber Rudd, 54: ‘If there was a leadership election in a year and a half, coming to the end of Brexit, you could see a situation where people might say, “We’re not daring enough to go for one of these Rorys or Rees-Moggs, and we don’t want all the obvious men, frankly. Amber could come through.”’ The adviser dismisses fears over Rudd’s ultra-marginal of 356 votes in Hastings, saying it would be very unusual for a Prime Minister or party leader to lose their seat. ‘I’m not sure it has ever happened.’

Fans of James Cleverly, 47, MP for Braintree since 2015, are enamoured indeed. He is backed for being ‘good on TV, comfortable in his own skin and happy to pick fights with the other side’. And he is droll. When Corbyn talked about unlocking the potential of ethnic minorities, Cleverly posted a series of mocking photos of Tory MPs with captions such as: ‘Nusrat Ghani, Conservative candidate in Wealden. Waiting for Corbyn to unlock her potential.’

One star, also from the 2015 arrivals, is Tom Tugendhat, former principal adviser to the head of the Army and MP for Tonbridge and Malling. The 44-year-old was elected chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee just two years after coming into Parliament. ‘Chairing a committee is traditionally the domain of grey beards,’ comments an admiring colleague. ‘The fact that he stood and won reflects the general impatience.’

A No 10 staffer adds her vote for Tugendhat: ‘He listens. He’s quite liberal, very personable, speaks incredibly well, is very kind and was a soldier. He has a good strong Conservative vision and communicates it very effectively. He’s also quite good looking, which helps.’ Another former soldier — turned writer — from 2015 is Johnny Mercer, 36. ‘Have you read his book?’ I’m asked. ‘People say it’s good.’ I haven’t but it’s called We Were Warriors: One Soldier’s Story of Brutal Combat and sounds like a middle-class Bravo Two Zero. Mercer hadn’t voted before running for his seat, self-funded his campaign (appearing topless in a shower gel advert for Dove) and caused an upset in the selection for Plymouth Moor View.

Another selection upset in 2017 came in Saffron Walden — a rock solid safe seat — where May’s team had reportedly hoped to parachute in Stephen Parkinson, one her closest advisers, in a ‘stitch up’. He was beaten by Kemi Badenoch, a 37-year-old former member of the London Assembly who was brought up in Nigeria. ‘She can dazzle. She’s very strong, very opinionated and without a doubt will be a big name going forward,’ says one MP. Another adds: ‘Everyone is raving about her maiden speech’ — in which she said that she would not wish the socialist policies she grew up with in Nigeria upon anyone — ‘she has an immigrant’s confidence in the country and the Conservative Party needs a bit of that positivity.’

And — crucially — as well as young MPs the Conservatives need younger voters. In 2014 two polls showed a marked increase in the popularity of the Tories among young people. First the British Social Attitudes survey recorded that millennial support had doubled since 2003 (to 20 per cent); then a Guardian/ICM survey showed 54 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds would consider voting for the party in the 2015 election. Any such youth revival was smashed this year — as young people turned out to vote for Corbyn and Labour in numbers unseen for decades. Supporting Labour has become so fashionable among the young that instinctive Tories even lie about their allegiances at parties.

So what can the Tories do? ‘No one knows yet,’ says a former adviser to the party. ‘One of the things about Momentum is that they’ve brilliantly created a bottom-up Labour party organisation that is not part of the Labour party. They’ve played a blinder. ‘If Tory donors set up a Tory Momentum, that would be rumbled immediately as a top-down thing and wouldn’t work. So it has got to be about ideas and connectedness. And coming together. That’s how societies self-organise. There needs to be a clear message: “Join the Tories because…”’

Well, why? That is the work in progress.