By far the most puzzling aspect of modern Conservative politics is how people - including many people I respect and tend to agree with on virtually everything - think Boris Johnson is a right-wing true blue Conservative, and Rishi Sunak is to the left of him.
It defies all logic and is contrary to all the evidence. By any objective measure, Boris Johnson is a left-leaning Conservative and Rishi Sunak is almost certainly the most right-wing Conservative Prime Minister since Margaret Thatcher.
Let us look at the evidence. The biggest issue 2019 Conservative voters - including me - are frustrated about is immigration - both legal and illegal. So let's take each in turn.
When we left the EU, and we no longer had to abide by free movement of people within the EU, we had the opportunity when Boris was Prime Minister to set new stricter immigration rules.
Philip Davies claims that Rishi Sunak is more right-wing than Boris Johnson
PA
Instead Boris set the most liberal immigration rules imaginable - for example allowing universities to sell immigration rather than education, allowing students to bring in dependants, stay for two years after their degree had ended without condition, and he introduced too low a salary requirement for people wanting to enter the country or sponsor someone to enter the country - leading to net immigration on his watch of over 600,000 two years running.
He also allowed a huge number of people to come to the UK from Ukraine and Hong Kong - something Mrs Thatcher had rejected when she was PM ahead of the transfer of Hong Kong to China.
It should come as no surprise. Boris was always a liberal when it came to immigration when he was Mayor of London.
Even my good friend Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris' biggest supporter, said in his GB News monologue that the high levels of immigration were down to Boris.
These high immigration figures were inherited by Rishi not created by him.
In his short time as PM, he has already changed those rules to stop dependants of students and other workers coming into the country, and raised the salary threshold for immigrants and sponsors - measures that will reduce immigration by 300,000 per year - with other stricter measures being actively pursued.
When it comes to illegal immigration from across the Channel - which became a huge problem under Boris - Rishi has introduced a Rwanda Bill which the government admits is not compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights but wishes to proceed with anyway.
Did Boris bring forward anything remotely outside the ECHR to tackle the issue? Of course not. But the myth perpetuates that Boris was tougher on immigration than Rishi - despite it being palpable nonsense.
Those people who want us to ignore the ECHR either haven't noticed that the government are doing that, or are hiding that fact from people.
I recently heard one of my colleagues say, without any sense of irony, that we should bring back Boris and in the same breath say that we should stop the net zero agenda.
Surely they must know that Boris was the biggest fanatic for getting to net zero with indecent haste.
Until the very end he was wedded to banning all new diesel and petrol cars by 2030 as well as all new oil and gas boilers.
Rishi - on the other hand - has pushed back the ban on new petrol and diesel cars and new oil and gas boilers.
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Philip Davies claims Rishi Sunak has been harder on immigration than Boris Johnson was
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Now - as one of the five MPs who voted against the original Climate Change Act - I would like him to go further still, but in a head-to-head with Boris, it is clear that Rishi is pursuing a more Conservative agenda.
We shouldn't forget that Boris was the man who introduced the unnecessary blanket Covid lockdowns - the single biggest triumph for state control socialism in our history - which caused financial and economic ruin, something we know from the Covid inquiry Rishi argued against throughout and from the start.
Boris was still committed to the ludicrously expensive HS2 even when the bill for it had reached over £150bn. Rishi thankfully scrapped it - a much more Thatcherite approach.
In short Boris is a good old-fashioned believer in high government spending and high taxes to pay for it - which is the reason Rishi resigned from his government.
Indeed, Rishi sought the advice from the late great Lord Nigel Lawson about the economy who advised him to only cut taxes when inflation was under control - advice that Rishi has followed to the letter.
Boris passed nanny state rules to ban buy one get one offers on products the Department of Health considered unhealthy - Rishi scrapped that policy, although his policy on banning smoking is a step in the wrong direction.
Indeed if this were a boxing match of "Right-wingness" the referee would have stopped the fight in the first round so clear it is that Boris is a million miles to the left of Rishi.
So how has this "right-wing Boris" reputation been able to flourish without any evidence to back it up?
There are I think three reasons:
- Boris supported Brexit and managed to untie the Gordian Knot of ensuring Parliament eventually passed our withdrawal from the EU - for which we are all grateful. But let's not forget that Boris only supported Brexit after a last minute coin toss, whereas Rishi supported Brexit and Liz Truss actively campaigned for Remain in the referendum, despite many people thinking Liz Truss to be more of a Brexiter than Rishi which is quite incredible.
- Good right-wing Conservatives like the aforementioned Jacob Rees Mogg continued to support and defend Boris despite the left-wing agenda he was promoting. People therefore thought Boris must be pretty right-wing if people like Jacob still supported him.
- Boris was elected on a mandate to deliver a true blue Conservative agenda and so people associated him with that.
- Despite being an old Etonian, Boris managed to develop a reputation for being anti-establishment which is certainly popular in the country.
Philip Davies claims that Boris is a "good old-fashioned believer" in high government spending and high taxes to pay for it
PA
I supported Boris to be leader - and I still maintain that nobody could have united the Brexit vote in 2019 as he did for which we should always be grateful - and I should make clear that I didn't submit a letter of no confidence in his leadership (I have only done that with Theresa May), but unfortunately the fact is he wasted the 80 seat majority we won and with which we could have turned the country more conservative for a generation.
Indeed - taking away the not insubstantial issue of Europe - Boris is a modern day Ted Heath. Both were elected on a right wing true blue Conservative mandate and both of them buckled and didn't deliver it.
Maybe people don't care about the policies and just think Boris is more of a character and has more charisma than Rishi, and maybe that is true. But that doesn't make him more right-wing.
Maybe some people had reasons of ambition to prefer the Boris regime to the Rishi regime, but again that doesn't make Boris more right-wing.
As someone who has never had any desire for Ministerial office from any Prime Minister I am far more interested in policy than personality.
On any measure Rishi Sunak is much further to the right than Boris Johnson. If anyone believes otherwise perhaps they can tell me how on tax and spend, immigration and net zero to name but three major issues, how Boris was pursuing a more Conservative agenda than Rishi.
That Boris was much to the left of Rishi on all of those issues - and more - is not really a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact.
Has perception ever been so far removed from fact in the world of politics? I somehow doubt it.
Maybe this is the true genius of Boris. But it certainly doesn't make him right-wing or anything remotely close to it.
But in Rishi we have a true Conservative who is quietly moving the policy area to the right, and all Conservatives should celebrate that, and get behind him.
Otherwise, we will sleepwalk into a Keir Starmer true left-wing nightmare and repent at our leisure.
