The Tories must learn the right lessons in defeat

The Conservative Party must now turn to the long task of rebuilding itself from its shattering defeat and reinventing itself as a relevant political force. If it is to do so successfully, it will need to be honest about why it lost.

A narrative is already beginning to take form on the Left of the party blaming a “lurch to the Right” for the scale of Thursday’s cataclysmic losses. The Conservatives, we are told, alienated the British people by talking tough on foreign courts, welfare and immigration. Only by moving Left to match the Labour Party on these things can they win back the centrist votes lost to Labour and the Liberal Democrats. If this is the story the party chooses to believe, it has already lost the next election.

The Conservatives did not lose because they “lurched to the Right”. Rather, a central reason for the loss was that they abandoned it, overseeing falling living standards, a soaring tax burden, a decline in the ownership society, unreformed and dysfunctional public services, and levels of immigration once unimaginable.

The emergence of Reform UK, which received 14.3 per cent of the vote and may have cost the Conservatives up to 80 seats, was an almost inevitable consequence of this.

It was a stark illustration of a simple point: the Conservatives cannot win elections unless they shore up their Right before competing for Left-wing votes. The process of restoring the party will need to begin here, reuniting the Right of British politics with a credible stance on immigration, tax and economic growth. But while this is a necessary condition for the party to compete in future elections, it is not a sufficient one in and of itself.

While Reform UK did huge damage to the Conservative vote, many of the party’s erstwhile voters simply decided to stay at home, while yet others switched to Labour or the Liberal Democrats. Winning these voters back will take more than restoring the party’s credibility as a Right-wing force. The Conservatives will once again need to appeal to aspirational voters of all ages with policies that emphasise prosperity and functioning services.

This should not be seen as moving to the Left or centre, but instead about leveraging Conservative principles to convince the public that the party is best placed to deliver on the issues that matter to voters, from healthcare to housing, crime to defence, combatting the spread of gender ideology to delivering economic growth. In other words, seizing the common ground rather than the so-called “centre ground” beloved of the Left of the party.

There is historical precedent for such a transformation. Over 18 long years, Conservative governments wrested the country from the torpor and failure of the 1970s, restored Britain to economic competitiveness and won the trust and backing of millions of new voters.

But as Margaret Thatcher noted in her speech to the Conservative Party conference in 1983, this work was not easy. It involved tackling “the real problems which others had shirked”, offering genuinely radical changes based on free-market and Conservative principles. These policies were controversial, but highly successful, and the party was rewarded at the ballot box.

This election campaign was marked by a level of risk-aversion almost parodic in its extent. A statement policy on national service aside, very few risks were taken in offering an alternative vision to boost standards in healthcare, reform the welfare system, grow the economy or ensure that young people can own homes. The result was the party’s worst defeat in modern times.

It is a mistake that Sir Keir Starmer appears eager to avoid repeating. His team appear well prepared to begin implementing policy changes almost from the off, with an expansion in house building high among his priorities.

In similar vein, the news that the Labour Party is in talks with Alan Milburn to oversee reform of the NHS could be a good sign. Mr Milburn has long advocated the use of private-sector resources in the health service, greater patient choice and a less monolithic structure across the organisation. If he is able to achieve even a small shift in the national model in this direction, it will be most welcome.

Just as the Conservatives have historically found it easier to win the trust of the public on defence and taxation, Labour has generally been more trusted when it comes to welfare and the NHS. It is to be hoped the party uses this trust to make the reforms these creaking systems desperately need.

This possibility, however, should also serve as a warning to the Conservative Party of the scale of the challenge it faces. It has been tempting to use as a sort of coping mechanism the fact that Sir Keir is historically unpopular for an incoming PM, or that the Labour Party won an unimpressive share of the vote in an election with an unimpressive turnout. But these things will not matter if the Labour Party actually manages to make even some limited headway in addressing the issues of most concern to the electorate.

The Conservatives cannot simply wait and hope that the Labour Party falls apart. They will need to come up with a vision and an offer that can unite the Right, and enthuse the country. And they will need to do so quickly.