Liam Bruce is a young Conservative and has been working in Conservative politics for over five years.
Between now and 2 November, any MP wishing to be leader of the Conservative Party needs to tell a story – a story of how they can take the Party back to power.
Any MP courting colleagues must consider that once upon a time, if you were young, upwardly mobile, getting on the property ladder, and cared about social justice and the environment, you were probably a Conservative voter.
What a time to be alive. This was a time when the Conservative Party was targeting the ambitious young people who had come of age under ‘Cool Britannia’ and ‘New Labour’ but had tired of the endless statism of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
This demographic, in part, brought the party to power in 2010 and again in 2015. Sure, we were in coalition with the Liberal Democrats in 2010. But what brought that unexpected majority in 2015? The ruthless electoral destruction of the Lib Dems by Tory candidates across the country.
I don’t need to tell you, times have changed. But as we, as a party, are on the precipice of choosing a new leader, we need to seriously consider what went wrong and how we can fix it.
Too much has been made of the Reform UK vote and whether or not the Conservative Party should work hard to bring these voters into its electoral coalition.
Consider the maths. In the South of England and London alone, the Conservatives lost 118 seats. The Lib Dems won 49; Labour gained 65; Reform won two.
As a young Conservative member, aspiring to own my own home, the answer is clear. We lost seats across the country because, for too long, our MPs were talking to themselves rather than their constituents.
We did not lose votes because we were not right-wing enough. We did not lose votes because we didn’t fight hard enough in some culture war. We did not lose because of the actions of a ‘deep state’. We lost seats because we failed to deliver, and other parties stepped into the fray.
The Lib Dems claimed to have ruthlessly targeted constituencies that had a Gail’s branch. They cornered the demographic they needed and identified a metric that fit the demographic. In this case, it’s the aspirational, often overpriced but decent quality, coffee and bakery chain.
Fourteen years ago, if you grabbed a coffee from somewhere like Gail’s in South West London before your morning commute into the City, you would probably have voted Conservative. It is people like this (and many more besides) we need to win back.
The Conservative Party cannot let Reform drag it further and further to the right. There is simply not the electoral space.
Some Tories will exasperatedly claim that combined, the 24 per cent Conservative vote and the 14 per cent Reform vote from the general election is greater than Labour’s 34 per cent. It follows, they claim, the country is crying out for a united right.
But this post hoc ergo propter hoc argument does not hold water. It ignores the votes of the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, the SNP, and all the independents who ran Labour candidates so close.
Our Party overlooks those at its peril. The British public does not want a populist right that can tell you all the problems we face but has none of the answers.
If the Party moves too far to the right, it runs the risk of alienating the few remaining voters we have left. We are already too far off the centre. Labour and Lib Dem lines are firmly drawn; chasing Reform will only surrender even more electoral territory.
The Conservative Party runs the risk of focusing so much on Reform that they ignore the entrenchment of dozens and dozens of Lib Dem MPs who will bed into formerly Tory communities. For example Josh Babarinde, the new Lib Dem MP for Eastbourne, has launched, less than two weeks after being elected, a ‘Changemaker Academy’ that will give school kids an insight into Parliament and politics.
This is just one example of how the Lib Dems will ingratiate themselves in their communities. We need to be alive to this strategy. If they become too ingrained, they will be very difficult to remove. The work must start now.
We cannot keep chasing headlines and competing to be the most extreme and the most right-wing. Almost no one wants to hear one right-wing party compete with another more right-wing party.
What the party needs to do is focus on areas where it can win back votes we have lost. We need to focus on childcare and the early years. The votes of aspirational parents will be up for grabs – particularly when Labour’s class warfare policy of VAT on school fees comes to bite. Let’s see how we can boost the pupil premium while improving and expanding childcare provision, giving parents more freedom to expand their own careers.
We must resist the call to become the NIMBY party, and embrace planning reform and housebuilding. We need to be seen, once again, to be the natural vote of homeowners.
And we need to rebuild Britain’s reputation as a compassionate power.
We need to build a robust and effective deterrent to illegal migration, but we must also work in the developing world to stem the pull factors there and build influence in these regions. That means reinstating the development budget to 0.7 per cent of GDP while remaining in the ECHR.
The Conservative Party has never been a populist party and it should never be. I hope that candidates, MPs, campaign teams, and party members remember this in the weeks and months ahead. Now is the time for sober and considered opposition and a strategy to regain the votes that can bring us to power, instead of the votes that will keep us out of Government for a generation.
Chasing Farage and Reform is a challenge that some relish. Chasing votes lost to Labour and the Lib Dems is a challenge most dread. One could be easy. One could be hard. Only one puts us on a path back to government.
So, I ask the Party, our MPs, anyone in power across the UK and the candidate elected on 2 November, please don’t focus on the easy challenge, focus on the hard one. It’s the only way back.
