With the leadership battle already hotting up, there is at least one thing everyone can agree on.
We do not want another five years of coups, infighting and civil war. For the party to flourish we need to be strong and united in opposition and in government.
Unfortunately, this has led to two flawed theories. The first is that we need a candidate from the centre. A sort of half-way house that pleases no-one, flip-flops here and U-turns there. It did not work for Theresa May and it certainly will not work now. Flush with money and publicity, Reform will carry on eating our lunch till it’s all gone.
The second idea, proposed by George Osborne, is someone who talks right and acts left. Think Jeremy Corbyn with the mouth of Enoch Powell. This was Rishi Sunak’s approach, and it was the worst of all worlds. Crucially it destroyed trust between the party and our voters. Trust is the currency of government. We cannot govern without it. Repairing the trust we have already squandered may take a generation. The spin and the lying must stop.
So, if neither a lefty liar nor a flipper-flopper can unite the party, then who can?
The only route to party stability is a candidate from the right running on a ticket of popular right-wing policies.
The answer is counter-intuitive. The only route to party stability is a candidate from the right running on a ticket of popular right-wing policies. From the field so far, that means Suella, Robert Jenrick or Dame Priti Patel. A right-wing candidate is a unity candidate. No one else is.
To understand why, look at the history of the Conservative party. When the leader is popular with party members and with potential conservative voters, the Party is stable and united. Think of Thatcher in the mid-80s, or Boris Johnson in his first six months.
By contrast, when the party ignores or defies its core voters, it becomes unpopular (e.g. Sunak, Truss, Major). When that happens, the whole machine backfires, and the party instantly descends into civil war and an orgy of self-harm.
This is because the conservative party is designed to win elections. Historically we have been in power 77% of the time. Hence, we call ourselves the natural party of government. This is different from the other parties. With their unworkable socialist ideals and unserious thinking, Labour, the Lib Dems or the Greens make natural opposition parties but cannot survive contact with reality. They would rather oppose power from the sidelines than use it responsibly.
We must accept, because it is in our party’s DNA to win and to govern, unity is popularity and popularity is unity. And if we don’t want to find ourselves back here again in 12 months’ time, fighting over the same ground, we simply need a leader who can get us to 40% in the polls quickly.
If we can do that, then everything else follows.
If we don’t want to find ourselves back here again in 12 months’ time, fighting over the same ground, we simply need a leader who can get us to 40% in the polls quickly.
For starters, the donors and the members will flood back. The conservative party is built on governing in reality rather than abstract ideals. People will only support the party of it is solidly in government or headed for government.
Crucially, the ideological splits among MPs will just melt away. Look at how all those hard left union types just disappeared after Blair won his landslide, or the ardent remainers evaporated after Boris Johnson won his. Get a decent majority and the Gawkes and Corbyns become an irrelevant sideshow.
Again and again, MPs fall into line once they have a winner to lead them. What is not to like about heading for government with happy constituents and local party committees? It’s human nature. We all like winning. Look at how sports fans flock to Man City, Real Madrid or lionise a Messi or Federer.
Moreover, there is an added bonus. It’s a law of British politics that when one side is heading for a landslide, the other side goes into a full-on meltdown. Once you’re on the winning track, it just gets easier.
The only question in this leadership contest should be: who can get us to 40% quickly?
The only question in this leadership contest should be: who can get us to 40% quickly?
We know we cannot do it dishonestly again. We have to be willing to deliver the promises we make.
We know that mathematically we cannot do it by going left or centre. There is no room. Labour and the Lib Dems lost 4million votes between them, and only won because we lost even more. And anyway, we cannot compete with them. We have the wrong brand and the wrong history. Since COP26, every move to the left has lost us right-wing voters but won us zero voters from the left.
Since COP26, every move to the left has lost us right-wing voters but won us zero voters from the left.
So, can a right-wing candidate with right-wing policies work?
The answer is an emphatic YES!
What every single credible poll and the election result shows is we lost conservative voters predominantly to Reform UK, or they just stayed at home. Further, around 20% of Labour and Lib-Dem voters were ‘lost-Tories’ protest-voting at the betrayal, particularly around mass migration and its consequences (e.g. housing).
This was exactly the result that the McAlpine polls predicted before the election, and the Ashcroft polls confirmed subsequently. Their findings are crystal clear:
- No Conservative Leader can turn things around by personality alone. Everyone is tainted by the last fourteen years. We can only win again on policy and execution.
- Every single cohort of potential conservative voters (red wall, blue wall, etc), can only be won back if the party returns to traditional conservative policies.
- Immigration (legal and illegal) is the top issue among those lost voters. We need a hard and credible plan with numbers, such as net Zero immigration.
- A Candidate who will genuinely slash immigration, cut tax, take on wokery and roll back the most onerous climate policies can win from every cohort of voters, including a significant number of Labour voters.
The prize is enormous: if we swing to the right, we can win big.
We can win back over 2/3rds of the Lost Tories – that includes those who did not vote as well as most Reform voters. Together, that’s 15%. Then there’s the protest voters and 2019 Red Wall voters who went to the Lib Dems and Labour, making up about 20% of their voter base. That’s another 9%. After five years of disastrous far-left labour government, we can surely win over a few percent of the youth vote (aided by digital engagement plan), just as the European right has. That’s another 5%.
Tot it all up and that gets you to 53%. Stick that into Electoral Calculus, and that’s 520 seats.
Meanwhile the left will remain split every which way. There is no scenario under which a centrist Conservative Party gets over 170 seats. Ever. Let that sink in.
Winning is stability. Winning is unity. If the conservative party wants unity and stability a leader from the right is the only answer.
Eyes Right! Eyes on the Prize!
By Andrew Hunt.
Author Andrew Hunt graduated from Cambridge with a Law degree in 2003. He worked in TV production before moving into finance. It was here that he became fascinated by how personal investors and small companies could turn negligible resources into enormous fortunes. Applying the same mindset and principles, Hunt was able to retire in his thirties. He now invests in interesting projects which aim to make the world a better place and runs a radical centre-right environmental think tank. He is also the author of Better Value Investing and a Senior Advisor at the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO).
The product of a very vivid imagination, residing in a forgetful and unobservant mind.
“With their unworkable socialist ideals and unserious thinking, Labour, the Lib Dems or the Greens make natural opposition parties”
But that’s what the modern CP is and has been since Thatcher – the difference is that now, voters see it after 14 years of fialing to implement manifestos and pledges.
To claim that everything will be fine by electing a right-wing leader espousing right-leaning policies is for the birds. Johnson was used to win an election, then simply defenestrated by lefties masquerading as conservatives – because (a) the new rules created CCHQ, who eelcted lefties as candidates when associations used to select their canddiate unhindered and (b) because the 1922 rules allow it to happen. NOTE: root casue of both issues is the modern party rules.
After the 2019 majority, the wets didn’t go away, in fact the likes of Nokes lied to avoid having the whip removed prior to the election and reneged on her promises as soon as she was re-elected, the size of any majority made no difference. Morton lied to her constituency association about her views, then voted Remain on every issue. The assoc could do nothing – because of the rules.
Rules at the root of al these issues – all adding up to one thing: you can state whatever policies you lke, but the public no longer velieves that you will do what you say. When you lose that trust, you don’t get it back by making more promises, especially promises made while in Opposition, for example…
After 1997, the CP promised to repeal IR35 which Blair’s lot brought in. After a whil, as they sensed they were closer to power, that changed to a promise to “review” IR35. When they won power, they talked about it, decied to do nothing… until 2017 and 2021, they made IR35 even worse.
Erosion of trust on that scale cannot be regained. The best the CP can do now is to merge with Reform under a new name (i.e. not using the current name of either party), because neither party will join the other – Reform would be crazy to join the CP and operate under CP rules, for the reasons given above, nor will they go away which means the CP would never be in govt again. The CP needs to stop thinking there is a leader and a set of new promises that will regain trust – there isn’t. Get with the new reality, as a former CP voter, I AM NOT COMING BACK.
Meant to add – with the parliamentary party now consisting of almost all One Nation wets, there’s no hope that they will unite behind a right-leaning leader.
Not in any genuine way – they may give the appearance of doing so for the mandatory pre-electoral show of unity while in Opposition of course, as they did with Johnson, keeping their knives behind their backs until in power again.
Nobody is fooled any more. Just as Project Fear (“they’re even worse than us”) stopped working at the GE 2024, the cunning plan of “the new leader will change everything” won’t work either – you’ve done it so many times while in power, voters have no idea which leader they will have by the next parliament (or how many leaders they’d get each term if you were back in office).
Sorry Conservative Party, it’s game over.
Pretty well nonsense really. Historically where are all those fierce post-war right wing leaders who won election for the Conservatives? Essentially it comes down to Thatcher (who certainly was dry but not very radically right) and Johnson (where the circumstances were freaky to say the least while he is often dismissed as liberal and was certainly no Reformer ). ALL the rest . yes all, who won elections and kept up the Conservative record of success, were centre .from MacMiIlan right up to Cameron . The thesis just does not work , nor should it. Britain prefers competent moderation and always has. The Revolutionary Conservative is a contradiction in terms.