The Conservative revival: foundations

The journey may be more than a thousand miles, but in order to take the proverbial first step, there are some fundamental principles Conservatives need to observe

When the preponderance of evidence suggests that a political party is heading inexorably towards not just an election defeat but a drubbing of generational and historic proportions, one of the few benefits is that bright and curious minds have already started thinking about the process of recovery, restoration and revivification before the votes are even counted. That has certainly been the case in Conservative and right-wing circles this year: although the party was savaged, being reduced to 23.7 per cent of the popular vote and an historic low of 121 MPs, that catastrophe wasn’t quite as bad as the worst predictions which some polling data had fuelled. A survey by Savanta in the middle of June suggested that only 53 Conservative Members of Parliament would be elected, only three seats ahead of the Liberal Democrats, with Labour winning an unprecedented one-party majority of 382. So it could always have been worse.

That cannot distract Conservatives from the scale of the defeat. It is true that Labour’s share of the vote rose by less than two per cent from the heavy defeat of 2019 under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, that many Labour MPs won their seats by wafer-thin margins and that Labour’s victory was, as the popular phrase has it, broad but shallow. These things are true but, in the short term, almost irrelevant, and they must not be used as a comfort blanket to minimise the Conservative defeat. More than that, they must not be used to construct an argument that radical change and rebuilding are anything but vital and urgent. The party which goes into the next general election in 2028 or 2029 must be all but unrecognisable if any progress is to be made.

There will be no shortage of contributions to the debate over how the Conservative and Unionist Party rebuilds. Even now, less than a fortnight after polling day, there have been lots of think pieces across the spectrum of ideology and approach. The always-interesting John Oxley has written two worthwhile essays here and here, former minister Jesse Norman composed a sound and thoughtful article even before the election, The Critic carried a contribution (with which I vehemently disagree) from former home secretary Suella Braverman and one in a supportive vein by broadcaster Connor Tomlinson, as well as practically minded advice from Fred de Fossard and Patrick O’Flynn in The Spectator surprised no-one by advising the party to head towards the right. As long ago as November 2022, Ed West had proposed some basic principles of conservatism, with some of which I disagree but are tendered sincerely and thoughtfully and are worth reading.

I have no shortage of thoughts of my own, and (fear not) will be sharing them on a variety of platforms in the coming weeks and months. I laid out some very broad principles in City A.M. the day after the election. However, I recognise that this is going to be a long process; I am old enough to remember the defeat of 1997—the first general election in which I was eligible to vote—and I recall all too vividly the shock at the scale of the reverse, as well as the grindingly slow climb back to relevance and competitiveness under the 13 years of Labour government. On that basis, there is no hurry, a view which seems to be widely shared, and I intend to take my time and think as deeply as I can, and present my thoughts in the most rational and organised way I can.

At this stage, then, I will offer just a few very general observations, perhaps more negative and minatory rather than positive, and certainly I do not intend to throw detailed potential policy positions into the maelstrom yet. Before I do that, however, it is perhaps no bad thing to put the parliamentary scale of the Conservative defeat into context.

It all started in Staffordshire…

At the most modest estimate, the Conservative Party was born in December 1834. Sir Robert Peel, the 46-year-old former home secretary and Tory MP for Tamworth, was invited by King William IV to form a government after the resignation of Earl Grey, the Whig leader, but had the support of a very small minority of the House of Commons which at the previous election had consisted of 441 Whigs, 175 Tories and 42 supporters of Daniel O’Connell’s Irish nationalist Repeal Association. Peel quickly sought a dissolution of parliament in order for a new election to be held in January and February 1835, and in advance of this he issued an address to his electors which is known to posterity as the Tamworth Manifesto. This was only the second election held under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act 1832, the “Great Reform Act”, and the manifesto was Peel’s attempt to frame a political approach, if not quite an ideology, which would resonate with the new electorate. (The Reform Act had seen the electorate grow from about 400,000 to around 650,000, with one in five adult males now eligible to vote.)

The Tamworth Manifesto’s main elements were wholly consistent with the idea of a cautious but realistic “conservative” party:

• There would be no attempt to reverse or modify the Great Reform Act, which was “a final and irrevocable settlement of a great constitutional question”.

• The Conservatives would undertake a “careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical”.

• Change would not be rejected on principle and there would be “the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances”.

• The party would consider proposals for reform of the Church of England which were consistent with the overriding priority of defending the “true interests of the Established religion”.

• Peel accepted that his supporters in some cases “would reform to survive” but change would be considered carefully and warily to avoid “a perpetual vortex of agitation”.

It is not such a terrible platform… and it certainly helped Peel and his supporters to improve their electoral situation, though not to snatch victory. The result of the 1835 general election was the return of 385 Whig MPs (including 32 Repeal Association Members) under the leadership of former premier Viscount Melbourne, while Peel’s Conservatives won 273 seats with a vastly improved 42.8 per cent of the vote. Peel continued as prime minister until his government was defeated on 7 April 1835 on a matter relating to the Church of Ireland, then he resigned the following day.

If we take 1834 as the foundation of the Conservative Party, this month’s general election represents its worst ever result in terms of parliamentary representation. Not only was it the party’s worst result, but it is emphatically at the foot of the table. Below are the numbers of Members of Parliament returned as Conservatives at the 48 general elections since Peel issued the Tamworth Manifesto. (Note that after 1895 the Liberal Unionist Party was reliably supportive of the Conservatives and the two parties formally merged in May 1912.)

1931……….470
1924……….412
1983……….397
1935……….387
1918……….379
1987……….376
1841……….367
1959……….365
2019……….365
1874……….350
1955……….345
1922……….344
1895……….340 (and 71 Liberal Unionists)
1979……….339
1992……….336
1900……….335 (and 67 Liberal Unionists)
1852……….330
1970……….330
2015……….330
1847……….325
1951……….321
2017……….317
1886……….316 (and 77 Liberal Unionists)
1837……….314
2010……….306
1964……….304
1859……….298
1950……….298
Feb 1974..297
1865……….289
Oct 1974..277
1835……….273
1868……….271
1892……….266 (and 48 Liberal Unionists)
1857……….264
1929……….260
1923……….258
1966……….253
1885……….247
1880……….237
Jan 1910..229 (and 43 Liberal Unionists)
Dec 1910..222 (and 49 Liberal Unionists)
2005……….198
1945……….197
2001……….166
1997……….165
1906……….129 (and 27 Liberal Unionists)
2024……….121

There are any number of caveats. These results were achieved in a House of Commons which changed size several times: it has comprised 650 MPs since 2010 but would peak at 707 between 1918 and 1922, after which the nascent independent Irish Free State did not return MPs to Westminster. The franchise was extended six times after 1834, gradually moving towards universal adult suffrage for those over 18 as exists today. And they were won (or lost) against a range of other parties, the most significant development being the rise of the Labour Party, which was founded and first saw MPs elected in 1900 and replaced the Liberals as one of the two main parties at the 1922 general election. Nevertheless, it places the scale of this month’s defeat in its historical setting.

With that extensive preamble, I offer three observations, admittedly very general ones, which I believe to be prerequisites for any hope of a sustainable revival of the Conservative Party. These are merely the foundations of rebuilding: to describe them as necessary but not sufficient is a vast understatement. They will do little more than clear a space on which the party can reconstruct itself, and the hard yards of revival will be infinitely more complex and challenging, but unless we take these first steps, we are going nowhere.

You can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!

It is a truism that divided parties do not win elections. Stephen Bush, associate editor of The Financial Times, has rightly questioned the exact accuracy of this statement but it has an element of truth in it. In the context of the current Conservative Party, one part of the discourse which absolutely must end is the habit of accusing those whose ideology does not wholly accord with your own of being “not real Conservatives”. This is more profound than simple internal divisions: it is patronising and insulting, it is an action which excludes and narrows, it assumes an unimpeachable claim to “true Conservatism” (which of course is defined very differently by different people), and it is historically illiterate because it assumes that there is a point in the party’s 190-year history to which one can point and which one can identify as true, authentic Conservatism.

Even a cursory knowledge of the party’s history will reveal that many of its leaders could have been accused by contemporaries (and in several cases were) of not being “real Conservatives”: Benjamin Disraeli, Andrew Bonar Law, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron at least could be tarred with this brush. Over the past two centuries, the Conservatives have advocated protectionism and free trade, European integration and withdrawal from the European Union, semi-Keynesianism and free market economics. It has been a party of reaction and social illiberalism, but it has also been responsible for introducing women’s suffrage, the restriction and effective suspension of capital punishment, the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Scotland and Northern Ireland, the regulation of embryo research, the establishment of same-sex marriage and the introduction of no-fault divorce in England and Wales.

Even individual Conservatives have radically changed their beliefs at various points. Stanley Baldwin converted to the cause of protectionism from the prevailing support for free trade in 1923; Enoch Powell abruptly abjured his passionate imperialism after India and Pakistan became independent in 1947 and reimagined his politics based on the conception of a British, largely English, nation state; Sir Keith Joseph famously embraced monetarism and free-market economics in 1974; Liz Truss campaigned for the United Kingdom to remain in the EU in 2016 but then admitted she had changed her mind and embraced the cause of Brexit. Entire volumes of scholarship have been written attempting to understand and analyse Winston Churchill’s political ideology over his long public career (and remember he was a Conservative until 1904, then a Liberal 1904-24, and briefly a “Constitutionalist” before returning to the Conservative Party in 1924, although he never fully felt at home).

So what is this “true Conservatism”? When did hold sway? What point in the party’s history are you choosing as a snapshot which becomes a shibboleth? It is a nonsense: it was long said that one of the virtues of Conservatism was that it lacked ideology, which is not true, nor would it be desirable, but for most of the party’s life it has left divisions over doctrine and purity tests to the left of politics. There will inevitably be debates over policy and the future direction of the party, which is necessary and healthy, but they must be conducted on civil terms and with a shared agreement to respect the eventual outcome. To deny the Conservatism of your opponents within the party seeks to delegitimise their views, paint them as invalid, alien and unwanted: it is not unlike a Trumpian approach to elections, abiding by the result only if you are victorious, and otherwise dismissing the validity of the process. It must end.

Broad, sunlit uplands

Inevitably, the process of analysing where the party went wrong, and how a general election victory in 2019 with a majority of 80 and a vote share of 43.6 per cent became in less than five years an unprecedented defeat with not much more than half of that proportion of the vote, can be a negative business. It is vital to understand what went wrong, what the party did wrong and where individual members of it erred. Many voters who withdrew their support did so because they do not see a prosperous, functioning, orderly state, and we have to understand their displeasure and grievances. At the same time, many Conservatives feel a sense of frustration and helplessness, as they perceive a society and a country which has changed in ways they opposed, and ways they thought the party opposed. If taken to its logical conclusion, this becomes the wild, unreal, conspiracist world view to which Liz Truss has recently retreated, encapsulated in her recent memoir-cum-manifesto, Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons from the only conservative in the room, which also touches on that “not a real Conservative” reflex. I argued against this analysis in The Daily Express in April, and think what Truss saw as “the deep state” was much more about a sheer inability to wield power within Whitehall.

Again, while I dissent strongly from that narrative, we cannot simply say that anyone who has similar fears is wrong or should not hold those views. They must be addressed. However, I am absolutely certain that there is no road to recovery which involves simply commiserating with a dejected electorate about the terrible state of the world and the supposed entrenched achievements of a progressive agenda. Here I am talking more about tone than policy, but the party must, over the next few years, not merely oppose the current government. It must also build up an optimistic vision of the world it wants to create, an alternative reality for which the electorate can vote. I touched on this idea in CapX in June; it is easy, especially for younger voters, to remember or imagine Margaret Thatcher as a stern, humourless, hectoring figure, at best an administrator of harsh but necessary medicine to the body politic, but from the very beginning of her leadership in February 1975, from the very day on which her victory was announced, she understood instinctively the power of optimism and hope. This was described in The Times by political editor David Wood, and I referred to it in my CapX article.

It is important to me this prize has been won in open electoral contest with four other potential leaders. I know they will be disappointed, but I hope we shall soon be back working together as colleagues for the nation in which we all believe. There is much to do, and I hope you will allow me time to do it thoughtfully and well.

After striking that conciliatory note, and saying flatteringly of potential appointments to her shadow cabinet that “my problem is that there is so much talent”, Thatcher explained that the party needed momentum and determination.

I think we need a new look and a new sense of purpose and direction from time to time. We all do, whatever our jobs.

She went on to set out how she intended to approach her leadership, in good spirits and with a clear vision.

You don’t win by just being against things, you only win by being for things and making your message perfectly clear… a free society with power well distributed amongst the citizens and not concentrated in the hands of the state.

One ought to give Rishi Sunak some small degree of credit before he leaves the stage. In May, he gave a speech on security at the think tank Policy Exchange, and towards the end of his address he gave faint indications of understanding that hope is a much more powerful motivator than fear or dejection.

If we make the right choices, if we have a bold enough vision, then we should feel confidence, pride, and optimism that Britain’s future is secure. My point is this: our country stands at a crossroads. Over the next few years, from our democracy to our society to our economy—to the hardest questions of war and peace—almost every aspect of our lives is going to change… at heart, we’re a nation of optimists. We’re not blind to the challenges or threats that we face. We just have an innate belief that whatever they are, we can overcome them, as we have done so many times in our history. And create a secure future for you and your family.

This was good, uplifting stuff, but it was, by then, far too late, and Sunak has never really convinced as a leader driven by passion and fervour. But it was, at least, a nod in the direction the party must follow.

Optimism is vital because we know the kind of campaign which Reform UK, assuming it coheres and survives the next four or five years, will seek to run, and it will be the sort of campaign it ran this summer. It will be a shopping list of grievances and complaints, a litany of fault: our immigration system is failing, the government is negligent in pursuing policies only favoured by liberal elites, public services do not work, our streets are dangerous, our communities are atomised and hostile, we are fracturing as a nation, the differences between us are sharper and more damaging than anything we share. Whether these charges are valid by the end of the decade, we cannot know, and, in a sense, it does not matter. The Conservative Party is too important, and has too much potential, to be merely a manifestation of anger, loss and confusion. We will have no shortage of issues on which to criticise the government by the time of the next election, but that must be the starting point, from which we explain to the electorate what we would do instead, and how, and the effect those policies would have, the kind of nation we want to build.

An honest day’s work, honestly done

One of the most damaging charges levelled at the Conservative Party in recent years, which was resonant and in many cases true, is that it failed on two basic obligations of public life: to be competent and to be honest. The Ipsos Political Pulse survey last summer showed the extent of the corrosion: 57 per cent did not believe the party was capable of running country competently, while only 23 per cent thought it was. The Labour Party did not score well either, but that was beside the point: Conservatives had been in power for 13 years, and voters simply didn’t think we were up to it. At the beginning of this year, a YouGov poll revealed that Sir Keir Starmer was preferred by a wide margin as prime minister over Rishi Sunak—though the Labour leader’s support was tepid at best—and Sunak’s ratings for competence and decisiveness in particular had plummeted.

This is an elemental failure. For many years there was a widespread supposition that while the centre-right could not always match the left’s appeal to hearts, principles and aspirations, it had a kind of secret weapon in the form of a hard-nosed image of efficiency and ability. Over the last few years, that reputation has clearly evaporated, and its loss has proved fatal. A party can have the most popular, broad-based, carefully devised and inspired policies ever seen, but the electorate will skim them at best if it has no faith that they will be competently implemented. It is a box an aspiring party of government simply has to tick. Yet recovering that reputation will be enormously difficult, a quicksilver process with a strong hint of Tacitus’s capax imperii: politicians cannot demonstrate their sound grip on the levers of power until they hold them, but will not earn the right to hold them until they prove the ability. It must be constructed in more performative ways, and those will include tone, approach, language and experience.

The Conservative Party has also sunk low in public estimation in terms of honesty and probity. There are many events which have undermined the fair hearing which David Cameron earned ahead of the 2010 general election: the resignation and arrest, and subsequent conviction and imprisonment for phone hacking, of the Downing Street director of communications, Andy Coulson; the resignations of cabinet ministers Liam Fox (2011), Andrew Mitchell (2012), Michael Fallon (2017), Priti Patel (2017), Damian Green (2017), Amber Rudd (2018) and Gavin Williamson (2019); the generalised collapse of ethical standards of behaviour under Boris Johnson between 2019 and 2022; Suella Braverman’s resignation in October 2022 ahead of the fall of Liz Truss’s premiership; the departures of Gavin Williamson (again) (2022), Nadhim Zahawi (2023) and Dominic Raab (2023); and the betting scandal which intruded into an already-disastrous general election campaign this year. As time went by, these and other individual failings and misdeeds accumulated to suggest an atmosphere of moral laxity and, worse, impunity and entitlement.

Conservative ministers and MPs more and more gave the impression to the public that they had lost any serious notion of public service and duty, and were instead fixated on political manoeuvring, internal conflict and personal enrichment and gain. There were unforced errors at the centre too. In 2020, Sir Alex Allan, the prime minister’s Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests, resigned after nine years when his criticism of the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, was overruled by Johnson. The post was left vacant for almost six months until Lord Geidt, formerly Private Secretary to the Queen, was chosen, but he too resigned in June 2022 after sustained public and parliamentary criticism. Again the role went unfilled for six months, allegedly as several potential candidates turned it down until Sunak appointed veteran financier and quangocrat Sir Laurie Magnus in December 2022. Despite calls for him to do so, the Prime Minister did not give Magnus any additional powers, and he remained dependent on Downing Street’s permission to begin any investigations. In retrospect, that was an enormous missed opportunity.

Rishi Sunak seemed to grasp the scale of the problem when he entered Downing Street in October 2022. In his first official remarks, he went to the heart of the corrosion which was occurring.

I will unite our country, not with words, but with action. I will work day in and day out to deliver for you. This government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level. Trust is earned. And I will earn yours… I stand here before you ready to lead our country into the future. To put your needs above politics. To reach out and build a government that represents the very best traditions of my party.

Re-reading his words, they are strikingly similar to the kinds of things which Sir Keir Starmer has been saying over the past two weeks. They represented a change of direction which was desperately needed, and, if fulfilled, might have at least ameliorated the party’s electoral defeat. But they were rapidly followed by: the participation of Matt Hancock in reality television series I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!; the forced resignations of Williamson (bullying), Zahawi (financial irregularities in his personal tax liability) and Raab (bullying); the departure of former cabinet minister Nadine Dorries in outrage at not having been given a peerage; the conclusion of the House of Commons Committee of Privileges that Boris Johnson had misled the House over breaches of Covid-19 lockdown regulations and his subsequent resignation as an MP; an ongoing investigation by the National Crime Agency into Baroness Mone and her husband over accusations of fraud and bribery; the departure of David Warburton (accusations of sexual harassment and drug use); the suspension and subsequent recall of Peter Bone (bullying and sexual misconduct), the suspension and police investigation of Julian Knight (sexual assault); the arrest and suspension of Crispin Blunt (alleged rape and possession of illegal drugs); the suspension of Lee Anderson, who would soon defect to Reform UK (accusations of “Islamist control” of the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan); the emergence of racist and misogynist comments by a major party donor, Frank Hester; the resignation of William Wragg (blackmail and disclosure of colleagues’ personal data); the resignation of Mark Menzies (accusations of misuse of party funds); the resignation ahead of an inevitable recall of Scott Benton (breach of lobbying regulations); the sudden eruption of the general election betting scandal, involving Sunak’s parliamentary aide Craig Williams and others; and, alongside everything else, the steady revelations from the public inquiry into the government’s handling of Covid-19.

It gives me no pleasure to enumerate these scandals, nor were they all of Sunak’s doing or even within his control. Many had their origins in the months and years before he became Prime Minister. But their effect has been cumulative, to portray a party whose leadership and elected representatives had lost any sense of right or wrong, any moral or ethical standards of behaviour. As one followed another, disbelief turned to weary resignation. The tone which had gripped the party’s highest echelons under Boris Johnson, of recklessness, selfishness and disregard for rules had not changed, as Sunak had so earnestly promised outside Downing Street, but had been perpetuated, perhaps even intensified. By the time the betting scandal arose, the rhetorical question of “How did they think they would get away with it?” could be answered, unforgiveably, with “Because they didn’t think there would be any consequences”. The consequences arrived, of course, in the shape of the general election result.

The next leader of the party must acknowledge this toxic legacy, and be prepared to hold himself or herself and every colleague, without exception, to the most stringent of standards. For the duration of this parliament, the Conservative Party cannot afford any unpunished lapses or ambiguity. Expectations must set clearly and at a demanding level, and when some fail to meet them, as will inevitably happen, they must be dealt with fairly, swiftly and severely. The leader must be, like Caesar’s wife, personally beyond reproach, and that will involve soul-searching and frankness on the part of potential candidates before the contest takes place; once s/he is in place, s/he must be almost like Savonarola in demonstrating and enforcing probity, honesty, decency, humility and accountability. This need not be performative. It is not necessary to talk endlessly of virtue and propriety as the new government is currently doing. In this instance, the old cliché is true, that actions speak louder than words. But there can be no equivocations nor backsliding, no benefit of the doubt. The party must be its own fiercest and most pitiless critic, to prove to the electorate that it has learned a lesson and changed its whole moral and ethical culture.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

The elements I have set out above are, as I say, only the first stage of the very beginnings of arresting the Conservative Party’s decline and breathing new life into it over the next four or five years. I have said almost nothing of ideology, doctrine or policy, because those are matters for another time. The three main principles I have described are, however, imperative. I cannot put it strongly enough: despite some very dark prognostications, the party avoided an existential crisis or even an extinction event on 4 July, but it did so narrowly and Conservatives cannot breathe freely yet. Although on balance I think it is unlikely, we could still disappear or be eclipsed as a substantial force in British politics, either for the time being or permanently. The chances of that kind of catastrophe increase if we do not do these three fundamental things before anything else.

I have said little of the future of the leadership, but will return to the issue. We do not yet know when or how the next leader will be chosen, but Rishi Sunak has announced that he will remain in post until that process is complete, which is welcome, and has assembled an interim shadow cabinet to carry out the everyday duties of opposition in the short term. Already we can make educated guesses about likely runners and riders, and everyone is acutely aware that some who might have offered themselves were defeated at the election. Whether the successful candidate is merely someone who begins the work of reconstruction, as William Hague did between 1997 and 2001, or manages, as Sir Keir Starmer did, to take a defeated party all the way back to government in one move is impossible to predict. As well as all the other virtues I have said we must demand of ourselves, we will also need almost limitless reserves of patience.

The task for the Conservative Party is long and difficult. It represents a rethinking and reconstruction on a scale probably larger than those of 1945 and 1997, and it may take many years: realistically, it could take a generation. The Labour Party was out of office for 18 years between 1979 and 1997, and then 14 years from 2010 till now, while the Conservatives spent 13 years in opposition 1997-2010. A similar time frame is wholly possible, but not inevitable. But it can be done. The party has lasted 190 years so far, and arguably can trace its roots all the way back to the Exclusion Crisis of 1679, and it has reimagined itself again and again to adapt to new circumstances. As Scott Fitzgerald said in Tender Is The Night, you mustn’t confuse a single failure with a final defeat. The United Kingdom has not suddenly or irretrievably lurched towards radical socialism; we remain in many ways an undramatic, sceptical, conservative people, and there is a substantial section of the electorate on what we have traditionally regarded as the centre-right to whom we can make a successful pitch. The question now is, are you in or are you out? Because we need to get started.