The Conservatives are embarking on another purge

With the Conservatives languishing at 19 per cent in the latest YouGov poll, Kemi Badenoch has decided she knows what her party's problem is. It's appeal is too broad.

So, according to both Conservative Home and the Spectator, a new purge of its membership and elected representatives is underway. 

Oliver Dean writes on Conservative Home:

In a move which properly began last Friday, Badenoch announced that only those who back the Conservatives’ commitment to scrapping net zero and leaving the ECHR will be approved as parliamentary candidates. Anyone who won’t fall in line will be blocked, or have the whip removed altogether.

And he has worked out why those 14 years of Conservative government were such a disaster. It was because of Liberal Democrat infiltration:

One of the most enduring puzzles of the 14 years of Conservative rule was that, too often, it would talk right but govern left. It would big itself up, but falter at close to every opportunity. 

The gap was not an accident. It was the product of a parliamentary party which had, over the years, taken in a number of MPs that were too wet for their own good. That had adopted their Liberal Democrat values and changed the colour of their rosettes to sky blue. 

It became so persistent a problem that one can only label them as an infestation amongst the Conservative benches.

"Infestation"? I think we're getting a glimpse into the seething darkness of the writer's unconscious there.

Meanwhile Steerpike in the Specatator is troubled that:

the likes of Amber Rudd, former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson and former West Midlands mayor Andy Street remain in the party.

 I have lived to see the Conservative Party - the Conservative Party - putting ideological purity before the ability to win elections.

All this, of course, is good news for the Liberal Democrats, who gained dozens of seats from the Conservatives at the last election because people had come to see them as too extreme. Becoming more extreme isn't going to help the Tories fight back there.

Let's leave the final word to Adam Bienkov:

The thing about Kemi Badenoch's purge of any Conservative member to the left of Enoch Powell is that she's so close to a Tory revival if she only realised it. All she needs to do is to lead a party that is not obviously mad and wait for Reform to crumble, but she can't even manage that

— Adam Bienkov (@adambienkov.bsky.social) 14 July 2026 at 09:44

Jamie Greene MSP joins the Lib Dems after quitting Tories over "Reform-lite agenda"

I wrote a short post about Jamie Greene leaving the Tories and then went shopping. As soon as I did, he joined the Lib Dems and it was announced at the Scottish party's conference. So I have rewritten the post and given it a joyous new headline.

Jamie Greene, the West Scotland region MSP who resigned from the Conservative group at Holyrood yesterday over its "Reform-lite agenda" and "Trumpesque narrative", has joined the Liberal Democrats.

His move was announced at the Scottish Lib Dems' conference in Inverness this afternoon.

The STV News report on Greene's resignation from the Tories  says he warned that the party is "deserting the middle ground" in an effort to "chase the votes of Reform Party supporters" and "fringe right-wing" Scottish voters:

"The party now rests its hopes on a Reform-lite agenda that appeals to the worst of our society, and not the best. ...

"I cannot be part of a narrative which has become Trumpesque in both style and substance."

"Instead of proudly leading on equality, we now run the very serious and immediate risk of becoming once again the party of social division and morality wars."

Greene has been a West Scotland region MSP since 2016. His resignation is confirmation that the liberal approach that brought the Scottish Tories some success under Ruth Davidson is no more.

The danger for the Tories now is that the far-right voters they are chasing will still prefer Reform, while disenchanted liberal Tories will look elsewhere. In Greene's case, to the Liberal Democrats.

Jim Wallace says a Boris Johnson leadership would cause problems for the Scottish Tories

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Lord Wallace of Tankerness - the former Scottish deputy first minister and Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland Jim Wallace - is interviewed by The Press and Journal.

He suggests that Boris Johnson becoming Conservative leader would cause problems for the party in Scotland and its leader Ruth Davidson:

"I think the Scottish Tories will have a problem. Ruth especially will have a credibility problem. In that final debate she did in the referendum she basically called him a liar. 

"I suppose in politics today you can actually stand up two years later and say that he is god’s gift to humanity, but I do genuinely think she might find a real credibility problem because a lot of the things she said will come back to haunt her."

London Conservatives to declare UDI?

Will Heaven says in the Spectator that London Conservatives are braced for disaster in next month's local elections. Which must be good news for Liberal Democrat candidates in Richmond and Kingston.

He also reports that:

The decay of basic Tory infrastructure, for example, means the party is running out of foot soldiers. Things are so bad that, for the first time ever, CCHQ has paid for a full-time employee in every London borough to chivvy local activists.

So what are the London Tories going to do about it?

Heaven reveals a fascinating possibility:

Over the past year, a series of meetings has been held at venues including Tory HQ. On the agenda was a radical idea: that London’s Tories should formally break away from the national party and become a separate entity with their own brand and leader, like the Scottish Tories under Ruth Davidson. 

It would create clear water between them and a national party that, in the words of one insider, is becoming ‘very provincial’ under Theresa May. 

Borough leaders, Greater London Authority members, association chairmen, London’s remaining Tory MPs — the vast majority were in favour of the idea. But word came down from the very top: nice try, but it’s not going to happen. 

Someone familiar with the meetings reveals: ‘We are a very centralised party now — and we were told to shut up, basically.’ 

In another moment of desperation, the Conservative party asked Ms Davidson if her team — after their outstanding performance at the general election — would consider heading south to mastermind the London campaign. The answer was a polite but firm ‘no’. 

The Scottish Tories had performed an astonishing recovery — but it was not (just) due to a well-run campaign. The renaissance came after painstaking work to identify why national Conservatism wasn’t working in Scotland. It was a long process, and the London Tories have yet to make the first step.

But as long as they continue do nothing, the threat of what, Heaven reports, one Tory councillor calls "hipsterisation" will grow across the South East of England.

Ruth Davidson, racism and the modern non-apology apology

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Politics Home reports on an extraordinary decision by the Scottish Conservatives:

A row has broken out after two Conservative councillors who were suspended over anti-Catholic and racist tweets were re-instated to the party. 

Alastair Majury and Robert Davies were disciplined shortly after being elected to Stirling Council in May. 

Mr Majury tweeted in 2012: "Why is the Catholic Church against birth control? Because they'll run out of children to molest." 

He also used the term "tarrier" - an offensive term for Catholics - in other posts on his Twitter page. 

Meanwhile, Mr Davies was suspended after a series of tweets he posted in 2013 below a picture of black people waiting to board a plane were unearthed. 

One read: "In the interests of security keep your loin cloths with you at all times. Spears go in the overhead locker."

Those who believed that the Scottish Conservatives under Ruth Davidson were pointing the wider party towards a Conservatism that is at ease with 21st-century Britain have been sorely disappointed.

It is hard to disagree with the worlds of the SNP MSP James Dornan, as quoted by Politics Home:

"She is keen to call out racism, sexism and other unacceptable behaviour, except when her own colleagues are the guilty ones."

I was also struck by the statement from a spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives:

"Having served a suspension, both councillors have been readmitted to the party after offering unreserved apologies for any offence caused."

There you have it: the modern non-apology apology.

Majury and Davies have not apologised for sending their tweets - and sending them while councillors in particular - they have apologised for other people's reactions to them,

This "I am sorry if you feel X" formulation often carries with it the implication that you are being unreasonable in your reaction.

But the problem lies with Mafury and Davies and no one else. The Scottish Conservatives should not have readmitted them.