David Gauke is a former Justice Secretary, and was an independent candidate in South-West Hertfordshire at the 2019 general election.
For the last thirty years, there has been something of a formula that exists for opposition parties winning back power in the UK.
Beginning with Tony Blair, successful leaders of the opposition have made the case that their party has changed; that they were no longer the parties that lost power and/or lost subsequent general elections. Whereas once the party was self-obsessed and had lost touch with the interests and values of the British people as a whole, now it was engaged with what really mattered to the electorate.
Blair’s radicalism was extraordinary. He defined himself against his party’s past, changed its constitution, did not flinch from taking counter-intuitive positions to emphasise his narrative and all but changed the name of the party. He was no longer Labour, he was New Labour.
There is no doubt that the Blair model – which resulted in a landslide in 1997 – influenced David Cameron. He too made the case for change. In tone, style and policy, Cameron’s Conservatives presented themselves in a very different way to what went before.
Critics on the left argue that this modernisation was synthetic and not sustained, but there can be no doubt that the Tories in 2010 – even though advocating a robust programme of fiscal conservativism – were perceived as more modern and moderate than had been the case in 1997, 2001, or 2005.
The third example is that of Sir Keir Starmer. His greatest vulnerability was that he had been part of the team that had tried to make Jeremy Corbyn the Prime Minister in 2019.
But, again, central to his pitch to the nation was that his party had changed under his leadership. Corbyn had been expelled from the party and subsequently other Corbynistas had been purged on the eve of the election.
In 2019, Labour was perceived as being anti-business and anti-British; in 2024 their campaign featured prominently letters of support from company directors and union flags displayed at every opportunity.
Where Starmer differs from Blair and Cameron is that this was not the platform upon which he was elected.
Blair, when running for Labour’s leadership in 1994, was always clear what he was about. He had been impatient at the pace of change under John Smith; he was always the candidate who was going to take Labour out of its comfort zone. Similarly, Cameron’s party conference speech in Blackpool in 2005 was one that was unashamedly about modernisation; about how the party had to change.
Both Blair and Cameron had a mandate to pursue a strategy that took both them and their parties to power.
Starmer, in contrast, was something of a continuity candidate in 2020. He set out an agenda consisting of ten pledges that looked very similar to the programme pursued in 2019. He was never a convincing Corbynista, but his pitch was that of a unity candidate in which Corbynistas would still feel at home in the party.
As such, he was widely seen as something of a caretaker leader, destined to lead the party to a less disastrous defeat before handing over to someone capable of doing better.
But after the local and by-election results of 2021, there was a change of strategy. No longer was he a unity candidate but one who recognised that his party needed to be led, not followed. He was fortunate that, by the end of the year, Boris Johnson’s government had begun to implode – but the change of strategy was still crucial in winning in 2024.
I mention all of this because it is relevant to the challenge facing the Conservative Party today.
It finds itself in opposition having received a defeat more crushing than any major British party in modern history. To win again, like the three previous examples, it is going to have to distance itself from those aspects of its past which the electorate finds most unattractive. It will have to broaden its base well beyond those who supported it last time and, in doing so, it will have to take positions that are designed to appeal to the voters the party wants, not just the voters the party already has.
In other words, the party is going to need the radicalism – in terms of departing from what came before – of Blair, Cameron and Starmer.
This brings me to the Tory leadership race. We are still in the relatively early stages of this process, but it would be fair to say that the contest so far has not featured much that could be characterised as being radical.
At one level, it is the type of contest that might be something of a relief to the party. The party is not tearing itself apart, the candidates appear to like and respect each other, and there is little sign of vicious negative briefing. On policy issues, there is little outright disagreement, merely differences in emphasis.
Whilst there is recognition of failures of the previous government, no-one is rushing to attribute blame. If anyone is arguing for change, it is change consistent with what the members want. It is all rather healing.
The problem is that this is not enough. When a party loses as heavily as did the Conservatives, it does not need to be unified. It needs to be led. More specifically, it needs to be led to places where quite a lot of the members and MPs do not want to go.
None of the candidates show signs of wanting to do that. I do not particularly blame them. Blair, Cameron and even Starmer inherited parties that were willing to be led to where the voters were. Few think that the Conservative Party membership has yet reached that point.
It has resulted in a leadership race that has been characterised by caution. Policies that were once privately doubted by Cabinet ministers and which were unpopular with the public but popular with members – such as the Rwanda deportation scheme – are defended rather identified as contributing to the Tories’ malaise. Demands for tax cuts are made although evidently unaffordable, at the same time that handouts to pensioners (in the form of the universal winter fuel allowance) are defended.
Even when Nigel Farage appears to endorse information that subsequently emerges to be both false and incites a riot, it takes a week before any candidate (Mel Stride, to his credit) dares criticise him by name. And heaven forbid that any of them suggest that there might just be scope for a more constructive relationship with the EU, even though such a position has very large public support.
No one is seeking to be a Blair or a Cameron, and win the leadership with a mandate for change. That may well be the right call politically because the party would probably not choose such a candidate.
But for those who hope that centre right politics can revive in the UK and believe that a modernisation strategy is necessary, the hope must be that there is someone who will eventually do a Starmer.
In other words, a candidate who will win as a unifier but subsequently conclude that they need to be more radical in challenging the prejudices and pre-conceptions of the wider party. Caution has its place in politics, but it will not be enough to revive the Conservative Party.
