A sunny disposhish: the only way the right will win sustainably

The Conservative Party will not recover just be echoing and articulating voters' unhappiness, but by creating a positive vision of a future Britain

When I say I have always been a conservative, I don’t mean the surgeon pulled me from the womb and heard me already intoning “Sound money and small government” (though there were times when my late mother would have told me that with a straight face). My views on specific policies may have changed or evolved over time—my teenage self was in favour of capital punishment, I wouldn’t support its reintroduction now—but my fundamental intellectual landscape, the basis for how I approach public life, has always been on the right. I never had an adolescent period of rebellion or revelation, of which you can make what you will, and I have not so far suffered the Tony Benn experience of a leftward lurch as I get older (although he was in his late 40s when he ditched the style of “Anthony Wedgwood Benn” and began that journey, so I suppose I have time).

You have to be very narrow-minded or innocent to think that, in politics, you will always like people who are on “your side” ideologically. There will be theoretical allies whose style, demeanour and priorities, sometimes even ideas, you find unpalatable, but that’s simply a matter of human nature. Equally, I have emphatically no time for those who believe they must hate their ideological opponents, diminish them, regard them as worthless and under no circumstances break bread with them. To me that indicates a profound solipsism and weirdness, as well as an underlying fragility: why are you so chary of people who have different beliefs? Are you worried your own might be undermined?

It is self-evident that in the United Kingdom this is a lean time to be on the right. The Labour Party’s victory at July’s general election, for all that it was built on relatively modest statistical foundations (33.7 per cent of the vote, 9,708,716 votes, a swing of only 1.7 per cent and a smaller popular basis than Jeremy Corbyn achieved in 2019 with 10,269,051 votes), was crushingly dominant in parliamentary terms, giving Sir Keir Starmer a majority of 174. Moreover, it saw the Conservative Party suffer its worst defeat in the 190-year history of its modern incarnation, reduced to 121 seats in the House of Commons. After 14 years in power, many of which were not the most glorious, the Tories are having to fight hard to make a case simply to be listened to.

That said, the right is not intellectually bereft. Here I do not include the light-thinking populists of Reform UK, who are largely following yet another vehicle for the ongoing career of Nigel Farage, just as the Brexit Party was and as the UK Independence Party became for a time. For all that British conservatism has sometimes prided itself on a lack of ideology, there are still thoughtful, informed, considered, intelligent and diverse commentators and writers like Adrian Wooldridge, Simon Heffer, Bruce Anderson, Rory Stewart, Mary Wakefield, Iain Martin, Christopher Snowdon, Ed West, John Oxley, Kate Andrews, Henry Hill and Ben Sixsmith whom I’m always interested to read and listen to, even if I don’t always agree on every point.

(Incidentally, I really am not interested in hearing how any of these people are “not real conservatives” or “Conservatives in name only”. That kind of sectarianism has no good destination, and, to be honest, as someone who first voted Conservative 27 years ago, I don’t really want to be told what I should think about other writers and commentators.)

The British right has a long way to go and a lot of work to do. There will need to be a huge amount of intellectual and ideological exploration, debate and analysis, which is connected to be not the same as the contest for the leadership of the Conservative Party, which will for the moment at least be concluded when the new leader is announced on Saturday 2 November. As conservatives we should take that on board but not be overawed by it; it is a task which has been undertaken before, after 1945, after 1974 and, slowly, after 1997, and it has always been invigorating and eventually successful. Sometimes it has taken surprisingly little time, though the scale of last month’s defeat suggests this iteration will be a longer process. But it can be done.

There is one aspect of current conservatism that causes me profound anxiety, though. As a broad intellectual and political movement and identity, it seems almost unremittingly angry and negative. The past fortnight has seen this in stark terms: responses to the violence on the streets of Britain has been greeted by long disquisitions of the failure of multiculturalism, the lack of integration, the deleterious effects of large-scale immigration and the disintegration of society. These arguments have varying degrees of legitimacy, and some of them are strikingly lacking in a strong evidential basis, but that is not my point here. The overwhelming impression is that the right is just pissed off about things.

On the specific issue of the recent public disorder, it has been disappointing to see how lightly some conservatives have passed over condemnation of the rioters, almost going through a ritualistic formula, before launching into an extensive explanation of why they have been inspired to law-breaking and violent disorder. I have said quite clearly that this is not enough: a political movement which should have support for law and order deep in its DNA should be unequivocal that those who choose the path of violence sacrifice their right to be heard in public discourse because they disregard the fundamental rules of society which allow us to disagree peacably. Stepping outside those rules not only privileges your own views—these are so important I cannot be constrained by the law!—but also means you are undebateable, having demonstrated that you will resort to violence whenever you feel frustrated. We cannot, as individual citizens, be allowed to make that judgement independently.

More generally, though, the right seems to be fixated on telling a tale of generations-old decline, starting no later than the arrival of Sir Tony Blair in Downing Street in May 1997. Some, like the irrepressible and egregious Liz Truss, see only failure and decay since then, with a left-wing seizure of institutions and an inability, or unwillingness, by the Conservative governments after 2010 to undo the damage of the Blairite revolution. But then Truss, with staggering lack of insight, thinks Blair, not she, is Britain’s worst prime minister of modern times. Suella Braverman has also talked about failing to tackle “the long tail of Blairism”.

I will be quite honest: this argument is a lot easier to sustain given the relative paucity of achievements from 14 years of Conservative government from 2010 to 2024. We must leave in a special category Brexit: long-term Leavers on a matter of principle like me will regard it as a massively significant milestone after which everything can still be remade and reshaped, while some ardent Remainers will never be reconciled and would not have been had it led to an immediate increase in prosperity or productivity. So we are left to fight over a complex and evolving legacy and it is pointless trying to adduce it as a positive achievement of the Conservative years in a way that will be accepted.

There are good news stories. By many metrics, educational performance has improved, and the decision of nearly half of schools—80 per cent of secondary schools, 40 per cent of primary schools and 44 per cent of special schools—to adopt academy status has given them enormous freedom from local education authorities. Four million more people are in employment than was the case in 2010. While there are a dizzying number of qualifications and exceptions, crime has fallen since 2010. The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 extended substantial rights to gay and lesbian people. And we have been consistent and staunch in our support of Ukraine against Russia’s aggression.

Nevertheless, much was not done, and much was done which was harmful and damaging. Those failures of commission and omission allow intellectual space for the declinist narrative to spread its wings. It is not, by any means, wrong in every respect. There are fundamental aspects of public policy and of the state as a whole which we need to examine and reform. And the internal warfare of the latter years of Conservative government, and the rapid turnover of prime ministers, consumed too much energy and caused too many changes of direction to allow significant reforms to be undertaken. As a party, and as a political movement, we must take that on the chin.

Grievances and causes for unhappiness and discontent should not be ignored. Addressing them is a central part of the democratic process. However, I am absolutely certain that the Conservative Party cannot properly recover or aspire to a return to government if it sees its purpose simply as putting an arm around the electorate and agreeing that, yes, the world is in a terrible state o’chassis. It must articulate a positive, optimistic vision that portrays the sort of country and society it hopes to create, and shows the electorate why it is better than the status quo and how it will benefit them. Addressing grievances is part of the process, but there must be a destination, a clear goal.

I have talked about this before. In June, I wrote in CapX that Margaret Thatcher, for all we remember her as a stern, minatory figure, knew instinctively as soon as she became leader of the Conservative Party in 1975 that she had to offer a positive case as well as showing the failures of the Labour government. This was clear from her very first press conference:

You don’t win by just being against things, you only win by being for things and making your message perfectly clear.

An even more striking example of this is the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Even before he was a candidate, he spoke in terms of hope and greatness. At the first Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in January 1974, when he was coming to the end of of tenure as governor of California, he made a confident and upbeat speech entitled “We Will Be a City Upon a Hill”, which took as its motif the imagery of John Winthrop, a Puritan lawyer and early governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony:

We will be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.

Reagan would return to this idea of the city on the hill: in his election eve address in November 1980, entitled “A Vision for America”, he declared that:

Americans in 1980 are every bit as committed to that vision of a shining city on a hill, as were those long ago settlers.

It was an image he used again and again throughout his presidency, right up to his farewell address in January 1989. Reagan was, above all, a president with a sunny disposition, a “happy warrior”, a phrase coined by Wordsworth to describe Lord Nelson and applied, over the years, to long-time governor of New York Al Smith and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey but strikingly appropriate for Reagan. Peggy Noonan, one of Reagan’s speechwriters for many years, concluded:

At the core of Reagan’s character was courage, a courage that was, simply, natural to him, a courage that was ultimately contagious. When people say President Reagan brought back our spirit and our sense of optimism, I think what they are saying in part is, the whole country caught his courage.

The encapsulation of this optimism, and its formidable electoral power, was one of the television advertisements in Reagan’s campaign for re-election in 1984. Entitled “It’s Morning Again In America”, it is only a minute long, and hardly groaning with detailed policy pledged; in a sense it is slick and superficial. But it is devastatingly effective because it speaks to the fundamental emotions of voters, reminding them that today is better than yesterday, and that tomorrow will be better than today. It is no coincidence that Reagan won re-election over former vice-president Walter Mondale by a landslide, carrying 49 states and dominating the Electoral College 525 to 13.

British politics are not American politics, and attempts at direct emulation often fail and ring false. But lessons can be learned. Tony Blair, after he became leader of the Labour Party in 1994, was eager to understand the elements of Democrat Bill Clinton’s unexpectedly clear win in the presidential election of 1992, especially his melding of the acceptance of market economics and an embrace of social justice and an active state. New Labour was the result.

Today, in fact, there is no model to follow in the United States. For all that Donald Trump and the Republican Party march under the banner of “Make America Great Again”, the 45th president’s platform is angry, bitter and divisive. At CPAC in 2023, he told his audience, “I am your retribution. I am your retribution.” Although he is a former president and a billionaire property developer, he rails against an establishment he sees as conspiring to damage America:

We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.

On immigration, a signature issue, his rhetoric is unremittingly harsh and aggressive. He wants to reinstate his first-term executive orders of January and March 2017 banning entry from several Muslim-majority countries, use the defence budget to build detention camps and end birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented parents. He has described illegal and undocumented immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country”. Trump has promised:

Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.

That initiative, begun in June 1954 by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, was dubbed “Operation Wetback”.

This approach, this relentless, aggressive negativity which seeks scapegoats and encourages division, cannot be the Conservatives’ road to recovery. Some commentators have concluded that the solution to the party’s current situation is to pursue voters who switched to Reform UK and to do so by becoming more vehemently anti-immigration, tougher on the status of ethnic minorities and generally less tolerant.

It is a false prospectus, assuming firstly that all Reform UK voters had previously voted Conservative, and that all would be won back by such harsh rhetoric and policies, but the truth is much simpler. To return to government on a sustainable share of the vote, the Conservative Party need to win back voters who chose to vote Labour, Liberal Democrat and Reform UK, and those who simply did not vote (turnout was only 59.9 per cent, which with the exception of 2001 is the lowest figure since 1918). But successful political parties do not decide on their targeted section of the electorate and design policies to appeal to them: they look to their core ideological beliefs, apply them to the political, economic, strategic and societal conditions of the time, and try to argue a persuasive case for their benefits.

A cursory examination of electoral history tells us this. Labour’s 1997 manifesto, entitled “New Labour because Britain deserves better”, explicitly promised improvement: “Our case is simple: that Britain can and must be better.” There was a reason that the party selected D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better as a campaign anthem.

In 1979, Thatcher’s Conservatives had been perhaps more straitlaced, with the soberly titled “The Conservative Manifesto 1979”, but its foreword similarly pointed better times ahead:

There has been a feeling of helplessness, that we are a once great nation that has somehow fallen behind and that it is too late now to turn things round. I don’t accept that. I believe we not only can, we must. This manifesto points the way. It sets out a broad framework for the recovery of our country.

Meanwhile, perhaps the most feel-good election of the post-war era, Harold Macmillan’s 100-seat majority of 1959, set out a plan for “The next five years”.

This constructive programme—indeed its very title—will show you that we do not intend to rest in the next five years upon the achievements of the past. We must both defend and develop the great gains that we have made.

I recognise that, in the wake of the catastrophic defeat of July 2024, we cannot afford to overlook or leave unexamined the failures of the Conservative Party in government between 2010 and 2024. On the day after the election, I wrote in City AM in essentially positive, forward-looking terms, but when, a week later, I explored in more depth the necessary foundations of a Conservative revival, I also stressed that the party needed to address two fundamental flaws it had extensively and fatally exhibited, disunity and a toxic combination of incompetence and ethical indifference.

This is about creating a narrative. The Conservative Party has to say what it did right, show achievements of which it is proud, but admit without hesitation and with clear eyes what it got wrong and what it simply failed to do. From both of those, and relying on its core ideological precepts, it must then move to creating a set of policies to undo what is bad, to address new and evolving challenges, and to things differently, more in tune with conservatism, which will benefit the country. All of this is then drawn together into a vision of a future Britain, ideally in 2029 but later if necessary, one which attracts and enthuses voters, and one which they can be persuaded that a renewed and reformed Conservative Party can deliver.

I don’t believe you can frighten people into backing you to form the next government. More than that, you shouldn’t want to. Enoch Powell’s notorious so-called “Rivers of Blood” speech of April 1968 (he never used the phrase but that was lost in the wholly predicted and predictable row) began with the maxim “The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils”, and I’m not at all sure that is true.

I suppose I would say that the supreme function of statesmanship is to provide national security, and to create the circumstances in which citizens can live the freest and most prosperous lives possible, but achieving that requires a statesman to persuade the electorate. It requires politicians to say “Look, here is how I and my party want the country to be, this is what you can have, and this is how it will benefit you and us all”. We have to be optimistic, or we are lost.