‘To win back votes, Tories must face up to Reform’

AS the Conservative Party conference wrapped up in Manchester, two former ministers laid out their visions to return the party to power at the Henley Literary Festival.

Conservative peer Michael Heseltine, who was MP for Henley from 1974 to 2001, urged his party to distance itself from far-right party Reform UK to secure votes.

The former deputy prime minister’s appearance at Phyllis Court came a day after he had warned Tory leader Kemi Badenoch about parroting Reform’s anti-immigration rhetoric during a conference speech.

Lord Heseltine said growing intolerance was one of the “hardest issues” facing the party. He said: “You can’t escape, and it is one of the hardest issues facing the Conservative party, you have got growing across Europe and indeed in the United States an intolerance of the stranger.

“You all know what I’m talking about and there is nothing new about it. It was the Jew in the Thirties, when the fascists came to power in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Mosley marched his fascists through the East End of London.

“Enoch Powell made a monstrous feature about the rivers of blood in the Sixties in this country, and yes, it’s all happening again.”

Lord Heseltine urged his party to “expose” the far-right party “for what it is”.

He said: “If you can’t see the similarity with that and what is happening with immigrants today and the language — it isn’t just Donald Trump who talks about them as being rapists and people damaging civilised behaviour — this is the underlying message that people like Farage want you to believe.

“The Tory party has got to win back its votes from that party and never come to terms that involve some sort of partnership. It has got to face up to that man and that party and expose it for what it is.”

Lord Heseltine spoke about his successor in Henley, Boris Johnson, whose role he said was critical in selling the country the “delusion” that it had a future outside Europe.

He said: “I like Boris, I got along very well with him, he was a very supportive placement when I was in my last time as Member of Parliament here.

“He has one weakness — he hasn’t a shred of moral integrity. He will say anything, do anything, for cheap applause.”

On Thursday last week, former chancellor Jeremy Hunt spoke about his book Can We Be Great Again?

After a party conference during which 20 councillors had defected to Reform, the MP for Godalming and Ash said: “I was someone who was brought in to solve the problems the last time we had a chancellor who made unfunded commitments in a budget. Well, that’s a walk in the park compared to what Nigel Farage is promising. I think that we are in a very difficult situation now, Reform is a very big challenge.

“Right now, people are in no mood to look at us again but, as we get closer to the next election, they will be asking which party is offering the best solutions to the problems we face.

“That is the job of an opposition — to be responsible in working out what those solutions are.”

Gavin and Stacey star, Joanna Page, who lives near Henley, discussed her autobiography Lush! last Friday.

She told of her troubles with retaining the Welsh accent and often losing out on roles to Keira Knightley.

Since beginning her acting career at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), in her twenties, she said she had never been accepted due to her thick Welsh accent.

Laurence Olivier, who worked to soften Margaret Thatcher’s public image, worked with Page to rid her of hers.

She said. “After the first term, everyone walked around with amazing posture and the only way to talk with an received pronunciation accent was to get very low. I basically walked around being a bit like Margaret Thatcher the whole time I was there.”

She returned to RADA after graduating in 1998 to perform monologues for agents, where she was told that they thought she was bad at acting, but in fact, it was just her accent.

When Page left RADA, she found regular work but lost out to Knightley for roles in Bend it like Beckham and Pirates of the Caribbean.

She said: “I just couldn’t go that extra mile. I either didn’t have the right accent or voice, or I didn’t have famous parents or wasn’t with the right people.

“For years, I couldn’t watch her in anything and it was only recently when I started watching Black Doves on Netflix and I absolutely loved it and loved her.”

After being rejected for a part in Dirty Dancing, Page took herself away for a night in the Savoy, devouring all the contents of the mini-fridge, before returning to her job in the Crocs shop. Two weeks later, her agent sent her a script for Gavin and Stacey.

She said: “I remember sitting in my bedroom when I opened the front page and I remember reading it and thinking ‘This is my voice, it’s me’.”

Dame Mary Berry, who lives in Henley, took to the stage at Phyllis Court on Saturday.

She spoke about her new book, Mary 90, a career-spanning collection of recipes which she said are “practical” but would still impress.

Dame Mary said: “Everybody is working and busier and busier. I think, with your Deliveroo and all of these boxes and things, that you can do a bit of cooking. There is nothing wrong with those but [I prefer] to actually know where your food comes from.

“We’re so lucky in Henley, we have a market on Thursday, you have a wonderful butcher, good supermarkets and if you choose a simple recipe, it’s much better to make it at home. I like to know where my food comes from, don’t you?”

Berry, who was 75 when the BBC approached her to become a judge on Great British Bake Off, recalled the process of casting her co-judge, Paul Hollywood.

She said: “They got in several male chefs and I had to go into a kitchen [and make a recipe] and then they said at the end of it who would you like?

“I said, it’s not who I want, it’s who goes well with me’, and I got Paul Hollywood and good job that I did. He is so different, quite tough and he loves someone to have a little tear.”