January 9, 2025 - 1:15pm
Events in Westminster appear to be moving extremely quickly at the moment. The Prime Minister’s popularity is sliding more quickly than even his greatest critics would have anticipated.
In this febrile context, a wounded Conservative Party is growing increasingly impatient for its leader to start setting out concretely what it will stand for at the next election, so as to make sure it will benefit from the mishaps of this calamitous Labour government — not the buoyant Reform Party. Politics, as commentator William Atkinson put it recently, is currently being played at “ten times speed”; Kemi Badenoch needs to get on with a “substantive pitch”.
Badenoch has been at pains to avoid doing precisely this. She took a risk during the Tory leadership contest in not responding to other candidates with a policy platform. She has ducked and weaved in recent interviews with the BBC and the Spectator. And she will come under even more pressure in the coming months to start stating explicitly what a Conservative government would do next time around.
But in ruling out detailed policy proposals in the next few years, the Leader of the Opposition has undoubtedly made the correct strategic decision. Just six short months ago, the party suffered its worst ever electoral defeat precisely because the public ceased to believe they would actually deliver the policies they advocated for. Voters are simply no longer listening.
And nor would coming out with comprehensive policy commitments deal with the single biggest issue the party now faces: that in a context in which the public is shifting Rightwards, conservative voters are unconvinced that the Conservative Party is the best political vehicle for promoting their interests. Coming out with a suite of new policies now will not persuade them otherwise.
Instead, Badenoch should seek to do three things in the next two years. First, her party needs to rediscover how to make arguments from first principles. Javier Milei in Argentina, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Pierre Poilievre in Canada — these conservatives are notable because, among other things, they have managed to communicate their values rather than merely offering specific policies. Conservative voters in the United Kingdom want to know that the Conservative Party proper speaks the same language as them.
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SubscribeThe author is spot on in my opinion. Without a set of agreed values, something the Conservatives have lacked for a very long time, the party will fade into insignificance. Shared values are the foundation of coherent policies. Without them you end up with the sort of firefighting mish-mash seen currently and for many years.
I see the first poll to have Reform as the largest party has just been published. They are joint top with Labour.
Reform – 25% (unch)
Labour – 25% (-1)
Tory – 20% (-3)
Green – 11% (+2)
LD – 11% (unch)
This could quite possibly trigger an exodus of Tory voters to Reform. I hope Kemi is working on a pact offer for Nigel as well as on her policies.
Hung Parliament, with SNP holding balance of power and another Scottish referendum? Which I think they lose, but you get the point.
Reform numbers less than high water mark of SDP too.
We are only 6 months or so into this parliament. Do you think Labour are going to get more popular or less? I will be very surprised if Tory/Reform don’t have 60%+ of voting intentions by the time 2029 rolls around. Whether they can get their act together to cooperate to get Labour out is still to be seen.
Too early to tell MM. It is worth going back and seeing how well Thatch was doing in 80, 81, and really up until the Falklands. Pretty dire. Mass unemployment, inner city riots etc. I suspect I’m a good bit older than yourself and thus have that memory.
‘Popular’ across a broad spectrum of electorate I suspect not where Starmer or Labour get to. But Thatch was extremely unpopular amongst large tracts of British society in 83 despite the Falklands. Yet she won easily. She was helped by SDP and by a dreadful Labour offering. You see the scenario, minus a Falklands equivalent we hope, could be similar.
Yes Maggie did come back, as did Boris, temporarily, after the vaccine roll-out. So something big like a war or an epidemic could come to Starmer’s rescue. Of course, for the other PMs in my lifetime (I’m not so young): Heath, Wilson, Callaghan, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss and Sunak – once things started going downhill, they never recovered.
And if (say) Milei did invade the Falklands, it’s quite likely that Starmer would not go to war to defend them. The current Chagos debacle (among other things) strongly suggests this.
I’m surprised he hasn’t offered them up already in return for some Argentinian beef and a signed Maradona shirt.
Blair? So with 3 elections wins you imply that only after 2005 it went downhill and not before? That’s quite an admission. Wilson of course won 4 times too. Came back from loss in 70.
I get your point, but a few more exceptions I’d suggest depending on when you take your going downhill point from. All political lives end in failure as someone once said.
Not sure how easy it will be to shift the remaining diehard tory voters/members – those still committed will become increasingly difficult to persuade l think.
Of more interest are those who chose not to vote at the last election, many have been loyal tory voters for decades but now feel betrayed and disgusted by what the party has become. Those l have spoken to either didn’t consider Reform at the last election or were uncertain – a surprising number are now leaning towards voting for them in the future. Then there are the ‘red wall’ voters who are also leaning more towards reform and are less likely to ever give the Tories another chance.
Worth checking out the poll that was released today putting reform in joint first with labour – interesting analysis of the data on Matt Goodwin’s substack.
Yes I agree, the ex-Tories that stayed away from the ballot box last time (I’m one of them) are a good target for Reform. But I also think that there are a lot of 2024 Tory voters that stuck with the party because they saw Reform as a wasted vote that are probably now reassessing.
My view is that there will need to be a joint Reform/Conservative ticket at the next election – vote Conservative down south and in the midlands and Reform up north, in Wales and Scotland and along the east coast, essentially.
The only way to prevent Tory voters going to Reform is to convince them that the MPs that stopped the Conservatives being Tories for the last 15 years will be expunged. Overcoming the most likely scenario of having the “right” policies with only limited support in the party is her biggest challenge.
I was digging in the garden yesterday and unearthed a couple of conservatives. Judging by the smell they had been there a considerable length of time.
Hey here’s a message from Gove next door. Can you do a puff piece for Kemi? She needs a boost?
Sure. Of course we can.
Hey, here’s a message from RL next door, with the exact same comment he makes on every single article, irrespective of whether it’s relevant or not
It’s a misnomer that Tories didn’t bang on about values alot in their 14yrs. The problem was the dishonesty in Policy decision making to support those values. Immigration being a classic – we want less, but we’ll not confront the implications of at least a tough transition away from it. Reform of course no different on that challenge. Home ownership and the ability to have security to start a family another. The list is long.
As regards Statism vs Free market – they need to grapple honesty with what went wrong with the privatisation model. Folks may not buy the argument the State can’t deliver when the private sector involvement and the investment in these national monopolies proven so woeful. If there is a free market narrative it’s got to confront the dreadful investment record in the UK, which is not simply because Govt spending crowded it out. It’s got to explain why we keep losing fantastic medium sized companies to the US at the point they need access to that next jump in investment.
Perhaps of course some of this reflection not something most of British public will understand, but if Tories, or the Right per se, want to be successful they have to really think about this much more. Keith Joseph and Thatcher et al at least did -albeit I wouldn’t be too rose tinted about what actually happened. Elements of British industry never recovered and look where privatisation has ended up.
Tories can still win despite a lack of policy coherency because the international trend is against incumbents. But at some point you want to be successful in Govt too and that takes a bit more than a critique of the other side.
‘The problem was the dishonesty in Policy decision making to support those values.’
There I somewhat disagree. There was plenty of honesty. You mention immigration and KB herself has several rose-tinted (to be kind) quotes on immigration. Nothing was hidden.
Put more simply what the Conservatives did was actually pretty clear, it just didn’t get talked about very much. We saw a fiscal consolidation with protections for the NHS, pensioners and foreign aid (later that protection was removed). The net effect of course was that everywhere else took a battering. It was there – just no one talked about the massive change in the shape of the state.
So pensioners got a triple lock irrespective of that generation being one where well over a quarter are living in a millionaire led house whilst we ended up with the most indebted students in the world. We borrowed billions to spend on no questions asked ‘winter fuel’ cheques. We hit Theresa May for daring to suggest that the half trillion of property windfall wealth might in some modest way be used to fund social care. We cut defence to the point we are now fretting about making an ammunition shell and we have an army that is about 25% the size it was in 1998. We became so reliant on the JIT world that we couldn’t even make our own basic PPE. These choices were there in front of us all. We just didn’t talk about them, or didn’t care enough about the structural weaknesses that were being built in. The triple lock in particular is a timebomb.
Indeed Mr/Ms Watson I notice you (reasonably) continually on here make this point about the Roderik Trilemma being glossed over but you are very coy about what you actually think should be done. I’d go for far lower migration, ending the triple lock and some level of health insurance. I’m absolutely cognisant that the move I’m talking about would be wrenching and long. How about you? Easy to say on a talkboard of course – just less of a cop out than your approach of talking about the trilemma only in the context of the right’s undoubted cowardice towards it. Do you think we can carry on at taking 700k immigrants annually? I don’t think you do, but you say so little about your own take on the trilemma it’s hard to say.
My criticism of KB is more that she has acknowledged that too often in the past 14 years the Conservatives talked conservative and governed liberal, but hasn’t told me what she’s going to do about it – or at least where she’d start. In her defence I think her assessment is about right. But then I said that about a lot of other politicians too. She reminds me a bit of William Hague. Not a bad man, but one who became leader 10-15 years too early.
You mention immigration. The politest I can be is that the Conservatives, like Labour and Coalition before them recognised the tensions and did nothing about it. Everyone could see the numbers, there was nothing secret. Keir Starmer has made his big speech on immigration, but months later we’re all still waiting for what it will mean in practice. It’s not a right wing problem alone. Indeed the more interesting thing at this point is how little kickback Starmer got from the left after his speech.
The only way we will really rebalance this country is to chase money out of property and into the real economy and to accept that we can not keep buying expensive things we can’t afford. I don’t see anyone at the moment, left or right in that sort of space.
I think under the surface you are largely agreeing with my point about being dishonest on the trade offs. I also agree with your last point which is about the nature of UK capitalism and what it has favoured.
Your criticism back is more about my not offering insight into the choices I’d support. Can’t do full justice here in a couple of lines, but I’ve wanted much lower immigration and more focus on ‘naturalisation’ (the values one needs to understand and support for full citizenship). Neither though is quick without crushing important industries, or a national training plan linked to welfare dependency. It’d cost and we’d all have to pay more. Being honest about this is where I’d start.
Thus the Tories I fear remain fundamentally dishonest, as of course does Farage. Labour too are lacking the confidence to be more honest.
One detail – health insurance – I don’t favour a system without a clear safety net and any private insurance model would have millions without cover. But something akin to to the German or Dutch model would be ok with me. Again though it costs a bit.
The problem with all your “we’re good, they’re bad” narratives – aside from the awful smugness – is that they prevent you from asking the real question: why doesn’t the system work?
Why, for instance, is a Labour government taxing working people, small businesses and farmers whilst you and I and everyone we know are still collecting £tens or £hundreds of thousands in unearned and untaxed property wealth every single year?
I think the problem with your last point is for those who only own the property they live in (like myself, wife and her elderly Mum) whilst it may be accumulating value (unfairly) they aren’t collecting something. They are paying Council Tax and Inheritance Tax when time arises. They may also find it’s value all used in social care payments down to £24k when it’s graduated more slowly down to £14k – if they live long enough. Even then I’d personally increase the rate of Inheritance Tax. I’m strongly against perpetuating inequality of opportunity via unearned inheritance and my kids know that too.
But I’m v sympathetic to further taxation on second homes and broader property portfolios. It is unearned and I’d tax rentiers harder to encourage a different investment focus in UK. Hurrah common ground…I think.
they aren’t collecting something
Of course they are. The fact that you can borrow more – and much more cheaply – than those who pay rent is just one example of the way that the property market damages the productive economy. The country is being destroyed by bad incentives.
I reserved judgement on Starmer until the first budget – but he’s confirmed all my suspicions. He’ll just go on stuffing suburban mouths with gold until there’s nothing left.
Few people who only have the one home use it as collateral to borrow more. It may make a difference to the Loaner’s terms, but if that much of an issue one could change a tax incentive for this too. I think it’s sledgehammer and nut for the vast majority of ‘asset rich cash poor’ home owners. I think your focus should be more on the multiple property owners.
Right, so you’ve just set out a whole laundry list of things Badenoch needs to do/build/communicate – these things don’t get done in 5 minutes! Of course she needs time; useless short-termism and blind actionism were two of the reasons the Tories got into this mess.
I watched Kemi’s interview with Bari Weiss and it struck me that she is a systems thinker. As a leader, I think she must want to thoroughly analyse the existing problems and their causes and build a new system that will move away from the past, stop the party falling into the same traps and be geared towards the new political landscape.
That’s a huge task. A bit of patience is in order.
Agreed.
There is indeed no point in offering detailed policies at this stage in the electoral cycle. I don’t recall any other defeated opposition doing so in similar circumstances in recent decades.
But Kemi must offer the people something. I would like to see a detailed analysis from the Tories of the problems facing Britain now and in the coming years, together with pointers as to how Conservative principles offer routes to resolving these problems.
If the people can see that the Tories share their frustrations and concerns and have thought deeply about the diagnosis, the ground will have been prepared for the people to at least be prepared to hear the policy remedies when they emerge closer to the next election.
Credibility is the key. At the moment, no one has it.
What was so unusual about the last general election was that the voters did not believe anything anyone said. Sunak and Starmer wasted their time debating policy on TV. No one believed a word either of them said. Hence the abstentions and the huge protest vote.
There is a train of thought that presupposes that the Tories can regain power by an alliance with Reform.
This in my view is mistaken. Reform oppose both Labour and Tories. Their USP is they are neither. And they will not overlook what happened to the Lib Dems when they propped the Tories up.
The only party that is going to get elected in the next election is the party that the voters believe will stop all net immigration.
The Conservatives are a spent force. They’ve betrayed their supporters too many times (culminating in the Boris Johnson debacle). The logical thing would have been for Nigel Farage to take over the Tory party, but that’s not possible due to the political structure in the UK and the class-system hangover. Hence, rather than take over the Tories like Trump did the Republican Party in America, Nigel has founded a new nationalist-populist party that will supplant the conservatives (just like the MAGA army in the U.S. is displacing the old traditional Republicans).
All of which is a good thing.