Ben Knight is a 26-year-old former civil servant turned Parliamentary Researcher, who embarked on a three-year career in adult social care at the beginning of the pandemic. He has since worked in sales.
18 years. 13 years. 14 years.
It can take opposition parties, fresh from defeat, a long time to tread their way back into government.
Since 1979, it has required profound change in the party seeking a return to office.
In that year, it was a fresh female leader and her embrace of free market economics that allowed the Conservatives to take back Number 10.
In 1997, after nearly two decades in the wilderness, it was the profound change in Labour under Tony Blair that made it a credible government.
In 2010, David Cameron had spent five years detoxifying the Tory brand. And in 2024, Keir Starmer has mercilessly rooted out the left-wing excesses of the Corbyn years.
There are reasons for hope. Labour’s majority is broad, but it is shallow; this is the most marginal Parliament in history. And the mechanism behind the Labour landslide was not one of overwhelming public enthusiasm or hope; simply by representing a change, any change, Starmer has done enough to win on a thoroughly modest platform.
Tory soul-searching now will seek to address the existential challenge facing our party: almost nobody under 40 is voting Conservative.
There will inevitably be debate about whether the party should move to the right, or towards the centre; whether it should pursue Reform UK voters, or disaffected Liberal Democrats.
But that debate misses the key point.
It is an often-repeated adage that elections are won from the centre ground. But voters, on the whole, do not think of themselves in terms of left or right, nor can they be easily ideologically pigeonholed. They are increasingly non-tribal and vulnerable to political swings.
In truth, elections are won by the candidates who best straddle the Overton window of popular policy. Whether they are rooted in the sensibilities of the centre, the left, or the right hardly matters: what makes a difference is their ability to convincingly narrate a vision for the future which encompasses the breadth of people’s aspirations and beliefs.
Blair demonstrated this perfectly in the 1990s with the immortal line: “tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.” At once he appealed to both right-wing and left-wing sensibilities: yes, let’s be strong on law and order, back the police, put criminals behind bars, and safeguard our communities.
But let’s also address the problems that cause people to lose touch with society and turn to crime: low aspiration and achievement; poverty; family breakdown; and drug addiction. In a single sentence, he dominated the Overton window and offered a solution that covered all bases.
The New Labour project which he built successfully “triangulated” the false binary of British politics, syncreticising beyond the boundaries of the traditional dichotomy. In so doing, it made itself the natural party of government for 13 long years of Tory heartache.
Debates about the moderate centre versus the radical right rather miss the point. Reform UK attracted as many disaffected Labourites as it did Tories; are we to imagine that these people are intrinsically right-wing on economic issues? The Brexit vote was delivered by a broad coalition of free marketeer sovereignists and the “red wall” old left.
Looking to history for the most successful election results for our party, we can identify 1983 – when Thatcher’s policies such as the Right to Buy granted her appeal with the traditional working class whilst her liberalisation of the economy curried favour with the middle and upper classes in the home counties – and 2019, when Boris Johnson’s unique brand of Brexit-backing levelling-up economic futurism delivered a previously unthinkable blue landslide.
The eventual victor in the leadership contest will face a brutal uphill struggle. Flipping a supermajority on its head after just five years will not be easy; indeed the “default” at this stage is for an incumbent government to be re-elected. To persuade people to vote again for change, we will require either an extremely unpopular Labour Party – which we cannot depend upon – or a Conservative Party which people feel positive, enthusiastic, and proud about voting for. The latter is within our power to deliver.
But we can only do so if we cast away our ideological rigidity.
For the first 12 or 18 months, nobody will want to hear from us. In this time we should show humility, and cordiality, and conduct ourselves as a rational, reasoned, and respectful Opposition. Already, Rishi Sunak is drawing plaudits for his measured and respectful tone towards the Prime Minister in the House of Commons: this is the right approach.
Offering critique based on a cogent policy analysis, constructively challenging the government, working in our communities to address local issues, and inviting people to “be part of the conversation – join the Opposition” will be the mainstays of our success. For this period, we should not stray into the overtly partisan or partly political.
In the Parliamentary mid-term, we will need to distinguish ourselves with an unparalleled ability to communicate and inspire. We should be prepared to have some of the fundamental, abstract debates and answer questions about why we believe what we do.
We should make the arguments that, for instance, equality is a pipe dream in a world of individuals; but that equity, of having a stake in society, of a decent shot for everyone, is what we want to deliver. We should talk about the instinct of wealth creation, of opportunity, of liberty partnered with security. We should promote the virtues of the small but strong state, of individual responsibility, free markets, and free speech.
In the final two years approaching a general election, the Conservative Party will need to build a compelling policy agenda that straddles the Overton window and addresses the public’s priorities. We will need to fashion those policies into a bold, visionary, and radical narrative that promises that things can be very different, and much better.
We will need to have clear pledges on reducing immigration, enabling development, reforming public services, creating growth, and uniting society around a bedrock of shared opportunity. We will need, to coin a phrase, to be tough on inequity and tough on the causes of inequity: building on our successes in government on education, on raising the personal allowance, on support for small businesses, by finding a way to offer something that appeals to the broadest possible demographic across left/right boundaries.
People will get behind a platform that offers a tangible improvement in their fortunes, and a credible redirection of what feels for many like a long legacy of managed national decline. Admiral Nelson said that the boldest measures were the safest; and against the politically flaccid Sir Keir Starmer, a bold and thrusting agenda will inspire confidence.
So as the leadership contest sparks into fire, the important question for contenders should not be “Are you on the left or right of the party.” It should be: how will you dominate the debate? How will you sit abreast of the Overton window? How will you get the country behind your vision? How will you build enthusiasm behind a Conservative movement which is again the natural party of government – and how will you do it in just five years?
