After 14 years in power, the Tories find themselves not just in opposition, but in the unenviable position of being an opposition party that secured the backing of fewer than one in four voters.
The objective reality is bleak. And yet, that stark reality didn’t appear to have dampened the mood or led to much truth-telling in Birmingham this week. In stark contrast with the Labour Conference in Liverpool, the mood was buoyant.
This was partly down to the drama of the leadership campaign, where (predominantly) young Tory members sought to outdo their rival camps by shifting the most themed merch from their stands and hustling their candidates between venues as if they were protecting the President of the USA.
Other attendees appeared to have mistaken Labour’s shaky start to government as being an indicator that there is an easy route back for the Conservatives to power.
Shifting to the right?
There is a strong possibility that the next Tory leader will take the party further “right”. Perhaps it is the need to appeal to the deeply unrepresentative selectorate of Tory party members. These are people who could not be less like the overall British public if they tried.
Analysis published this week by Professor Paula Surridge from the University of Bristol focused on the voters the Tories lost in 2024.
The most interesting finding is who the voters are that the Tories lost to Reform and where their politics sits.
Defectors to Reform – like the defectors to all the other parties – were much more leftwing on their economic values than those who stayed Tory. They prefer a bigger state, more state intervention and more state spending. And yet, the answer on where the Tories should centre their appeal for the next election, especially from Badenoch over the weekend, seems to be a huge economic lurch to the right.
Reform switchers were also more socially-conservative than Tory-stayers. But when the chips are down, an appeal to maintain state spending on things like the public services which these voters heavily depend on is likely to be more decisive than culture wars.
Meanwhile anyone watching increasingly ‘small-L’ liberal former Tory heartlands like the Surrey suburbs would have been puzzled to be presented with candidates who appeared to be so out of step with their values. These are people who are often signed up to action on climate change and who think diversity is okay (and are maybe even “diverse” themselves). They might be persuadable to sign up to lower taxes and could be persuaded more easily by James Cleverly or Tom Tugendhat, but probably not by a leader more interested in taking the party in a Farage-lite direction.
All things to all members?
Boris Johnson understood all this – hence his view that the way for the Conservative Party to prosper was to offer the high spending of Brexit-y social democracy, alongside attending Pride marches and championing environmental causes.
But too many Tories have not clocked the political gamble that underpinned the 2019 approach – an all-things-to-all-voters offer only works if you deliver. Fail to live up to the promises, and it can end up with voters feeling like victims of a political Ponzi scheme.
Business was also left feeling, by the end of the Conservatives’ tenure, that the case for investment in the UK was incoherent and eagerness for meaningful engagement lacking.
Listening to each of the four leadership candidates in Birmingham, the mistake they are making is to have failed to learn the lessons from Johnson on how to narrowly and effectively run a leadership campaign. Several appear to think they can also offer Thatcherism on steroids, plus Red Wall-friendly social conservatism, and build a winning coalition on these planks. But the Venn diagram for that offer has a small intersection. All of them lack Johnson’s unique abilities as a frontman too.
Meanwhile, when a number of members were asked who they would most likely vote for, they answered James Cleverly. For Cleverly is viewed by this group as being the candidate who has most successfully positioned himself to have the broadest appeal. Perhaps his chances have been under-estimated, especially after such a difficult few days for both the Badenoch and Jenrick campaigns.
Learning the right lessons?
That’s what makes the launch this week of Conservatives Together particularly interesting. The new organisation is headed up by Grant Shapps – perhaps the Tories’ most formidable campaigner, and a man with a keen ability to focus on polling data. Unlike the current party leadership campaigns, this appears to be an effort to get to grips with how the party delivers on voters’ concerns, rather than those of party members.
It echoes the creation of Labour Together in 2015 as the key organising effort aimed at keeping mainstream Labour alive as the party entered its long, dark night under Jeremy Corbyn. Labour Together has since transformed itself into something that is not quite a thinktank and not quite an organising faction.
Importantly, it also collected a lot of money from donors who had previously given to the party itself. Given Shapps’ undoubted ability, ambition and his mainstream political instincts, the role that “CTog” takes in coming months and years will be worth watching closely.
For the small number of businesses who ventured to Birmingham this week, no candidate sparked a great deal of enthusiasm or any sort of clarity about what the Conservatives will offer up to business whilst in opposition. Time will tell whether an organisation like “CTog” will be able to take the place of addressing the deep business community scepticism towards the Conservatives, at the same time as winning over the public.
Ultimately, it remains to be seen whether whoever wins the leadership election actually makes it to the next general election. Either way, for the Conservatives to have a fighting chance of winning over any of those 3 in 4 who cast their vote elsewhere at the general election, the leadership candidates and the Conservative Party need to make a choice. Free market zealotry and full-throated social conservatism are both politically damaging choices for the very voters they need to win back. In combination, they are fatal. The problem is that there didn’t seem many takers for these hard truths in Birmingham this week.
