Hal Turkmen is a former chairman of the Broadland and Fakenham Conservative Association.
The Conservative Party’s recent spectacular electoral defeat was largely due to voters switching to the Reform Party (about 4 million) or abstaining (about 2.5 million). Another 4 million supported other parties away from the Conservatives like the Greens, Liberal Democrats, and Labour.
The belief in governing from “the centre” was proven wrong in this election. Some MPs thought avoiding the immigration issue or doubling down on Net Zero strategies would attract centrist voters, but this approach failed. Instead they lost the real Conservative voters along the way.
We must recognize that nearly 14 per cent of former Conservative voters now support the Reform Party. This isn’t just a protest vote; it’s a vote of no confidence. The 2.5 million who stayed home were a protest vote against the Conservatives and we don’t know if they are coming back.
The majority of the public and Conservative Party members remained conservative while Conservative governments have oscillated between Conservative and Labour policies over the last 14 years. We became a managerial party rather than one that aims to mold society into a Conservative vision. The lack of a Conservative vision from leadership and ministers led civil servants to drive managerial changes, usually with the agreement of directionless or visionless ministers. For instance, various ministries knowingly poured money into woke and anti-government charities.
The first three Prime Ministers since 2010 attempted to leave legacies: Cameron’s “Big Society,” May’s “Civic Society,” and Johnson’s “Levelling-Up.” All three concepts focused on increasing “local democracies” but failed due to the absence of comprehensive Local Government reform. The approach was always ad-hoc, with governments using bribery from central coffers to coerce local authorities into conformity. While they used the term ‘devolution,’ in some cases, they were proposing to strengthen central decision-making from Westminster for local authorities.
Thus, all three tried to reinvent Conservatism (failing to see what was right in front of them) and all three failed. I won’t comment on Liz Truss’s premiership in this article, and the last Prime Minister was appointed more for firefighting duties than as a premier with a vision.
Members like myself warned several peers to change policies and strategies as liberalism will cost us the election, not conservatism as Suella Braverman repeated the same sentiment after the general election.
We cautioned against implementing mandatory Net Zero targets and the dangers of uncapped legal immigration. We warned about May’s horrible policies, like the Energy Price Cap, where the state determines prices for one of the most crucial commodities, workers on company boards, to become Europe’s highest minimum wage economy, pay caps for bosses of big companies, and of course more spending, debt, and higher taxes.
We alerted Boris Johnson to the inflationary consequences of his first budget’s £300 billion spending targets, long before Covid hit the nation. I could elaborate on many other ill-conceived policies like the smoking ban and sugar tax.
Today, some One Nation conservatives still regard Margaret Thatcher as an extremist right-wing politician, despite her winning three consecutive electoral victories in the 1980s. Indeed, during Thatcher’s era, we lacked a fully developed internet or any social media. Many of us were even willing to acknowledge that she made mistakes.
However, leadership requires actions that align with Conservative policies, such as reducing taxation, quangos, and regulations while expanding freedoms rather than curtailing them.. None of the recent Conservative leaders have shown any indication of implementing these Conservative policies. As a result, voters were not convinced of our conservative credentials; in fact, quite the opposite occurred – voters became convinced that we were no longer truly Conservative.
The left wing of the Conservative Party needs to accept that right-leaning members like me have patiently supported various leaders and MPs for the past 14 years, even while disagreeing with many of their policies.
It’s time for the left of the party to hand over power to the right if we wish to keep the “big tent” intact. Left-wing Conservatives have been in charge for 14 years, and now it’s time for a change. Otherwise, there will be a further split of the Party as some members do not have the patience to wait another 14 years for another Conservative leader to come along.
I’m asking One Nation Conservatives to vote for a leader they might even despise. This is the only way to maintain party unity under the circumstances and give ourselves a chance to win the next election. You’ve had your turn for the last 14 years; now let one of your right-leaning colleagues take the lead.
