Red Wall MPs fight the culture wars as they call on Rishi Sunak to take on the ‘blob’ and fight ‘propaganda’
Tory MPs have urged Rishi Sunak to “blow up blobonomics” and stop woke “propaganda” infiltrating classrooms, as they called on the Prime Minister to double down on the culture wars to win the northern vote at the next general election.
At the Northern Research Group’s (NRG) annual conference in Doncaster on Friday, MPs representing constituencies in the north of England claimed that winning the “war on woke” would prove Mr Sunak’s greatest challenge over the next 18 months.
Jake Berry, the former chair of the Conservative Party, called on the Prime Minister to be “brave enough in our manifesto to tackle the greatest enemy of change: orthodoxy in Whitehall and inertia – or ‘the blob’”.
He suggested arbitrary civil service red tape had “failed the north and its people” by stifling devolution and halting plans to extend HS2, adding that it was “time to to blow up blobonomics” in order to level up the region.
Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, suggested the Tory party would push on with its proposed crackdown on “Mickey Mouse degrees” ahead of the next general election as Mr Sunak targets education as a key tenet of the culture wars.
Asked if she would deliver on previous Tory pledges to weed out so-called Harry Potter degrees from British universities, Ms Keegan told i: “It’s always important that people do quality degrees, whether local students, domestic students or international students. Our university sector is one of the best in the world, and it’s always important that we ensure it’s high quality.”
The Education Secretary also suggested Mr Sunak’s appointment last week of England’s first ever “free speech tsar” marked a ramping up of the culture wars as the Conservative Party prepares for election footing.
She repeated four times that Arif Ahmed’s appointment as the inaugural director for freedom of speech and academic freedom “sends a huge signal” to the country, adding that it would “get the voice of common sense back into the debate”.
Miriam Cates, the Tory MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge near Sheffield, called on the Prime Minister to “end the indoctrination” of children, ahead of an expected review into sex education guidance to be published in the coming months.
During a discussion of how to level up education policy across the UK, Ms Cates said “propaganda” being taught in schools was contributing to a “lack of free speech in sixth forms” across the country.
“The issue that we have… is that so many of what are contentious political issues in our country and in the whole of the western world are being taught as facts in schools,” she said. “Sadly there’s so much propaganda in schools. But the way that [these topics] should be presented is in a neutral way… For example, ‘Some people believe there are 72 genders, some people believe in biological sex. Discuss.’”
It comes amid growing expectations that the next general election will be largely fought on ideology, with both Labour and the Conservatives blaming one another’s respective “woke” and “anti-woke” policies for stirring division across Britain.
But other northern Tories suggested Mr Sunak would be judged on his policy delivery by the next general election, not his words.
Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor for the Tees Valley, said the party needed “to be able to go into the next election and point to real, tangible things that people can touch and smell” in order to stave off a potential Labour government.
“What Boris Johnson did in 2019 is he tapped into the sort of thing that was off the back of Brexit, that people were fed up, they wanted politics done in a different way. And they want [to see improvement] in communities that have been left behind for years and years,” he said.
“[Tory voters] will want to go into that ballot box in the next general election and say: ‘You know what? In 2019, I did that. I did it on chance, but I knew I was right to do it. And I’m going to do it again.’”
It comes amid concerns that Mr Sunak’s party will struggle to retain Red Wall seats at the next general election that paved the way to Boris Johnson’s resounding victory at the 2019 vote.
Polling for i last week showed that just over half, or 52 per cent, of those who voted Conservative in 2019 say they would do so again, suggesting the swathe of Red Wall seats won by Mr Johnson would fall back into Labour hands.
Mr Sunak shrugged off concerns that Mr Johnson’s gains would return to red at the next national ballot, insisting that he was “a Prime Minister for the north”.
“This is a Government and a party that is absolutely committed to [the NRG’s] vision and indeed the north,” he told audience members at the group’s annual conference on Friday. “We know that our majority runs through the north and that there is no route to electoral success without you.”
John Stevenson, the chair of the NRG, said it was time to “put flesh on the bones” by delivering policies that would “lead to a renaissance of our northern towns”.
He called on Mr Sunak to create a northern rival to London’s Elizabeth Line, to connect Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Bradford, and to draw up a commitment to build 500,000 homes in the North by slashing building red tape and harnessing brownfield land.
Mr Stevenson also repeated his previous demands for a northern minister with Cabinet-level responsibilities, adding that the post should come with £5 billion a year to invest in the region.
Meanwhile, Peter Gibson, the Tory MP for Darlington, said he was confident in the Prime Minister’s ambitions for levelling up the region, but that there was still more work to be done.
“I don’t know what more he can physically do in demonstrating that real tangible connection to the north,” Mr Gibson told i, noting Mr Sunak’s recent meeting with the chief executive of Google in his Darlington constituency. “But it’s not a destination,” he said. “No one is ever going to turn around and say: ‘Oh, we’ve been levelled up.’ There’s still a long way to go.”
