Anna Firth is the former MP for Southend West and Leigh
Just over a month ago, both Conservative seats in Southend turned red for the first time. As the penultimate Conservative MP to join the last parliament, I watched with incredulity as colleagues battled for their brand of conservatism at the expense of the wider party.
Like many colleagues, I face a decision as to whether to join the fight back or move on to pastures new. Key to that decision is the identity of the new leader. Now that we have 6 candidates to choose from, here are my reflections and the three questions that I believe every aspirant leader must be able to answer.
The most startling observation from the 2024 GE is that this was an election where the weak beat the weaker. Keir Starmer’s astonishing 174 majority achieved on less than 34 per cent of the vote looks almost princely beside the 24 per cent that we achieved – a truly diabolical performance.
I am not as pessimistic as Henry (Chips) Channon MP, one of my esteemed predecessors in Southend, who dramatically declared after the 1945 general election defeat that “the Conservative Party is dead”. But, equally, we should be very wary of taking false comfort. Starmer does not have a track record of underperformance, despite a promising start.
A period of serious reflection is needed, crucially, as to why the only group we won were retirees and the over 70’s – a coalition that will never win a general election. National recovery with those of working age is essential.
The Conservative “stay-at-homers”, of which there were many, will only come back if the back-biting stops. 14 years of scandal-ridden Tory governments coupled with a clear failure to deliver on our promises were insurmountable, but it was the unremitting in-fighting right up until the week of the poll, that broke the camel’s back.
So my first question for Leadership candidates, is how are you going to restore party discipline? I no longer care if it is with positive messages of hope or iron discipline. But if we cannot present a united front to the British electorate in 2029 there is little point in us turning up.
Assuming such basics can be achieved, I believe the “stay at homers” will come back to us, hopefully returning many narrowly lost Conservative seats, not least because by then they will have had a belly full of tax rises, cosying up to Europe and free passes for immigrants. Indeed, Labour have already started raising taxes to pay inflationary pay rises. For those of us who are a little older, we have been here before.
However, attracting conservative Reformers into the fold is the real challenge. In my opinion, simply tracking to the right on immigration is not enough. We let the country down badly on immigration, both as a party and as a government that talked tough but delivered little. We have little, or no credibility on this issue, so simply offering Farage-light won’t cut it.
Besides, a commitment to tackle immigration was not Reform’s only appeal. As a former US Democrat told me at a party last week, “I couldn’t vote for Starmer, I liked Rishi Sunak but he was never going to win, so I voted Reform”. The mere presence of another credible right-wing option on the ballot paper is a problem since, for many, the message vote Reform, get Labour just did not resonate. Sadly, tactical voting, of which there was plenty, worked against us, not for us.
In many ways, Reform’s manifesto reads like a Conservative manifesto of yesteryear. Denouncing wokery, banishing trans activism in schools, scrapping net zero, committing to producing our energy, supporting marriage and the traditional family unit, restructuring the NHS, rewarding work with decent wages, properly funding our armed forces, and, of course, controlling immigration and stopping the boats.
Perhaps our traditional voters switched to Reform not because they are closet “racists, fruit cakes and loons” but because they are right-of-centre Conservatives?
So my second question for all candidates is: how do you intend to deal with Reform? If we stand at the next election, with similar faces and similar policies with Reform against us, we will lose. Simply waiting for Reform to blow themselves up, whilst eminently possible, is not a strategy.
Finally, the scale of the Conservative defeat shows that this is not a single policy problem. This was a crystal clear, unmistakable signal that Conservative voters simply did not believe that the party was any longer Conservative or held traditional Conservative values.
Until the Conservative Party is led by someone not just recognisably Conservative but passionate and able to articulate a positive Conservative vision for the country, the party will continue to struggle. Other than 2019 when Boris Johnson won a general election on a promise to deliver a specific outcome, the Conservatives have not won a sizeable, outright majority since 1987 when Margaret Thatcher won a second landslide victory. That was nearly 40 years ago.
We need to be sticking up for the vast bulk of UK citizens who are not interested in the Westminster psycho-drama, European summits, or socialist five-year plans straight out of 1970s Moscow. They just want to work hard, look after their families, and trust the Government to do the basics well: control our borders, cut crime, provide decent public services, back our armed forces, believe in Britain, and be compassionate to those in need.
Most normal people don’t want their children being taught that there are 101 genders, they don’t want the Government taking bigger and bigger slices of their money to fund ideological vanity projects, and they certainly don’t want the Government giving their hard-earned money away to people who have come here illegally.
The Tories should be at the forefront of saying all this – but the party has shied away from every opportunity, leaving the way clear for Nigel Farage to state the obvious about the problems we now face, after years of uncontrolled immigration without any meaningful integration.
So we need a leader who is unashamedly Conservative and who is not afraid of being criticised by journalists in the mainstream media. We need a bold leader with ideas about how to harness our country’s natural spirit of hard work, grit, enterprise, and aspiration.
A conviction politician who believes in the power of individuals, communities, and small businesses to solve our problems, not governments, quangos, commissions, or reviews. A politician who believes not just in talking about lowering taxes but delivering them, in a competent and grown-up manner. A person who will stand up for what is right, rather than what is fashionable. Most of all we need a politician who can speak from the heart but govern with a clear mind.
So my final question to all aspiring leaders is: what makes you a Conservative? How will that influence your decision-making? What policies will you pursue to release the power of individuals?
In short, we need a Conservative leader capable of making Conservativism popular again.
