Tom Hunt is the MP for Ipswich.Â
A general election is on, and we need to win it. Sadly, the prevailing narrative, whether that be amongst the politicos of Westminster or in the newspapers, is that this is not a likelihood.
In 2019 we won a historic victory. Yes, it was the largest Tory majority won at a general election since 1987. But the nature of that victory and the demographic shift in the Conservative vote is what made it so fundamentally monumental. The political ‘realignment’, as it’s come to be known, represented the biggest shift in the demographic of those who were willing to lend their vote to the Conservative Party since the days of Stanley Baldwin.
Fuelled by frustration from voters over Brexit, a distaste for the Marxism of Jeremy Corbyn (a far cry from any genuine working-class sensibilities or sentiments), and an electorate that felt as if their views had not been represented for far too many years, Boris Johnson empowered and galvanised the Conservative Party, and authored an authentic Toryism. In winning that election and subsequently delivering Brexit, it seemed as though we had embarked upon a new path ideologically, and put the previous 30 years of triangulation behind us.
Sadly, this is something that in the last five years we have failed to embrace or capitalise on. A political and a philosophical opportunity of great importance has been squandered.
That is why I am sick and tired of the facile reaction to the result of the London Mayoral election from some Conservatives. It is both dumbfounding and unacceptable to me that people on the left of the party can, with a straight face, pontificate from on high that the loss in London this month was a result of not standing a more centrist candidate.
Susan Hall was a good candidate. The platform she stood on was one of sound conservatism, with a genuine attempt to appeal to the ordinary blue-collar voters of the outer London boroughs – representative of the same realignment of politics seen in 2019.
Going into the election, some polls were putting our candidate at 25 per cent, the fact she came out of the election achieving just under a third of the vote is not to be snubbed. That’s especially when the national picture is taken into account, with the Tories 20 points behind in the polls. This is even more significant when you consider that at the time of the last mayoral election, in 2021, we were 10 points ahead in the polls, yet only achieved 2.6 per cent more in the mayoral race. As it is an election where less than 50 per cent of the electorate turned out, it a perfectly respectable effort from Hall, who is coming under unfair fire.
Some of Hall’s critics have suggested that the policies she chose to pursue as part of her campaign were the wrong ones. Throughout the election campaign she was sneered at by Labour for attacking ULEZ and Khan’s record on crime, with it being branded as doing down London – this is a fallacy. To attack the disastrous consequences of Sadiq Khan is not doing down London, it is doing down Labour.
The Conservative Party in London must be very careful not to fall for this going forward – we cannot through carelessness drift into a position where we fight battles on Labour’s terms based on what they assume to be taken as read. London is our nation’s capital, not Labour’s. We want what’s best for it and it is ULEZ and high crime rates that are fundamental in causing its recent decline.
What is perhaps more sinister is that it is arguable that these attacks on Hall and her ideological positions from within our party are also out of distaste for the fact she is a candidate that is fundamentally representative of said post-realignment values. Hall is a non-graduate from outer London who has worked hard to get to where she is and shares in the strong conservative principles of many of those who voted for her – perhaps not the kind of candidate that the bourgeois liberal element of the party would deem as ‘ideal’. If that is the case, it is not just a criticism of Hall but one of those she is of.
We can’t allow this arrogant liberal narrative to fester – ‘centrism’ will not win the day come the general election and it isn’t acceptable for those within our ranks to use the failure of Susan Hall to secure the London Mayoral race as an opportunity to attack the policies on which she campaigned. They are the policies of the realignment and the only chance we have of winning the next election.
