Conservative constituency groups backed the PM after Salzburg, but many are livid about her Chequers plan

On a Friday night at a Conservative club in a slightly run down part of Hornchurch in east London, local party members gathered for a pint, a round of darts and to chat about the week gone by. Around a table in the corner, under the watchful eye of portraits of the Queen and Winston Churchill, the local constituency chair, Bob Perry, sat with several of his members.

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As they sipped their drinks, the conversation turned to Brexit. Earlier in the day, Theresa May had issued a message of defiance from No 10, having been humiliated by the EU rejecting her Chequers plan at the end of the Salzburg summit.

The activists were dismayed. “They’ve treated both her and us appallingly,” said Perry. “She’s been tough today but I don’t think she’s gone far enough. But my respect for the prime minister has grown after today. A lot of people say she doesn’t have a backbone, but I think she’s shown them wrong. She has my sympathy.”

Sandy Scott, a retired accountant, added: “This is going to be a terrible year for her. She’s trying as hard as she can, but the way she was treated was despicable.”

There was a general murmur of agreement from around the table. Even though the Tory party grassroots were furious about May’s Chequers plans, the EU appears to have overplayed its hand.

The prime minister’s decision to metaphorically wrap herself up in the union flag with her message of defiance in the wake of Salzburg has achieved its aim, boosting her street cred with the Tory grassroots.

“We just want to get through party conference,” said one Whitehall aide. “We had been hoping for warm words at Salzburg to tide her over, but we didn’t get them. So we had to pursue a different strategy.”

Downing Street has been starkly aware of the danger posed by bringing together thousands of febrile MPs and party activists at a time when May’s Brexit strategy was still hanging in the balance.

“It’s going to be difficult,” acknowledged one senior No 10 adviser. “The PM knows the country, let alone the party, is very polarised and that she needs to get on the front foot to address that.” Uniting the UK after Brexit was expected to be at the heart of her conference speech.

If this country had a chance ... it could look after itself. In the second world war we were feeding ourselves Sandy Scott

Back in Hornchurch, which sits in the Brexit-supporting heartlands where London merges into Essex, it is clear that while the membership’s sympathy could get May through conference, she still faces fierce opposition over her Brexit plans longer term.

Perry described her proposals as unworkable. Scott added: “She’s trying her best to get a deal but personally I’d rather have no deal than a bad deal … If this country had a chance and an opportunity it could look after itself. In the second world war we were feeding ourselves.”

Elsewhere in the Tory party the atmosphere has been more hostile. In a wood-panelled private dining room at a members club in central London last week, the executive committee of the group Grassroots Conservatives met to discuss the government’s approach to Brexit.

Afterwards, the group’s chair Ed Costelloe, a former constituency chair from Frome in Somerset, set out his concerns. “The government and the prime minister have utterly failed to explain how we can do international trade deals while also following EU rules and how will that work,” he said.

“If you’re selling something, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a washing machine or a treaty, you’ve actually got to say this is how it works. We haven’t had any of that. I cannot understand what kind of politics it is that says ‘this is a great deal, I’m the PM, I say so’, and there it stops.”

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A poll last week by the Tory grassroots website ConservativeHome found that, post-Salzburg, just one in 10 party members thought May should stick with her plan – down from a quarter before the EU’s rebuff.



The Tory party has, over the last few months, been trying to win over constituency chairs on Chequers. May’s chief-of-staff, Gavin Barwell, has had groups into No 10. Costelloe described one of the meetings: “It was probably 99% to 1% who said ‘I don’t like this’. The atmosphere in the room was absolutely dreadful. They simply weren’t buying it.”

Grassroots, a campaign group not officially affiliated to the party, has been deluged by hundreds of emails and letters from activists worried that the prime minister was going to compromise still further with Brussels.

“Most people cannot conceive a situation where Theresa May can give any more concessions without totally losing face in the party and the country,” said Costelloe. “Unhappy would be far too mild a word. The membership would be absolutely incandescent.”

Delyth Miles, another committee member and former constituency chair from Wales, added: “She has categorically stated that she won’t move her boundaries this time. I want to believe her very much but the outcomes she’s selling to us just don’t make any sense to me and not to thousands of our supporters either.

“In all my years as an activist and building up the profile of the Conservatives and the membership, I’ve never experienced such anger and sense of betrayal from people. She’s totally betrayed us.”

Hostility towards May runs deep. Costelloe, who has chaired two different constituency associations and speaks regularly to local chairs across the country, believes it has its origins back in 2002 when she offended thousands of members by describing them as “the nasty party”.

The options available to the membership, currently thought to be around 125,000 strong, were limited. Their only real power, beyond lobbying local MPs and threatening to withdraw financial and campaigning support, was the final say on who becomes their next leader.

Costelloe said: “We’re not making a big stir because of this business of loyalty to the prime minister. We’re not campaigning to change the leadership. The question to ask is would the next general election campaign be led by Theresa May? That’s the key question because I think she has lost the trust of the average Conservative voter.”

CCHQ and a certain caucus in the upper echelons of the party hold the local associations more or less in total contempt Ed Costelloe

May’s departure has been widely regarded as a matter of when, rather than if, and activists have openly discussed who might succeed her. Brexiters Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson’s names come up the most frequently. In Hornchurch, Rees-Mogg will be the star guest at next month’s constituency dinner. Tickets sold out immediately.

Others believed the party needed a fresh face, although they conceded May could hang on. Grant MacMaster, a 17-year-old student who has just joined the Hornchurch Tory association, said: “I’m moving towards somebody who isn’t particularly outspoken about Brexit because after Brexit I think there needs to be domestic consensus.”

There has been deep frustration at local level at the party’s perceived lack of interest in the grassroots. “They don’t want to know. Talk to any Conservative association. Many will feel that CCHQ and a certain caucus in the upper echelons of the party hold the local associations more or less in total contempt,” said Costelloe.

But they have a warning for the government. “They rely on us for financial support and our time but they need to remember we are also expressing the views of Conservative supporters in terms of voters. At the moment there’s real bitterness and frustration out there in the country,” said Miles.

While they may feel dejected that the MPs harbour most of the power in the party, rumours of deselection of remainers to assert their authority seem wide of the mark. “There is a mechanism, but why would we want it?” asked Perry. “The possibility exists but it would be extremely rare,” Costelloe said.

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Tory MPs warned of the threat of entryism over the summer after the former Tory donor and Ukip backer Arron Banks urged thousands of Leave.EU supporters to “flood” the Tory party to elect a “true Brexiteer”, such as Johnson or Rees-Mogg. But the threat did not come to pass.

“We have a new computerised membership system which would enable us to recognise a spike, and we haven’t seen one,” said one senior CCHQ official. “Banks is good at publicity but rubbish at logistics. I could be a teenager having a party at my parents’ house with 100 people and say there were loads of people. It’s all relative.”

In Hornchurch, over another round of drinks, the group, which also includes Perry’s wife Carol and MacMaster’s mother Karen, agreed that despite the prime minister’s desire to strike a deal, they would prefer to crash out rather than accept Chequers.

“We’d all love a deal but the deal has to be on our terms, not the EU’s terms,” said Perry. “I know he’s Ukip but Nigel Farage made a very valid point when he called them gangsters. These people are just bully boys.” The fragile truce in the wake of Salzburg could come to a brutal end.