Lord Barwell was MP for Croydon Central between 2010 and 2017, before serving as Chief of Staff to Theresa May. He now runs his own business.
You don’t need me to tell you that yesterday’s result was catastrophic for our party. Some of us have been warning about the likely consequences of the strategic mistakes the party has been making for several years, but the last thing we need now is personal recriminations. We need to agree on what went wrong, but we should focus on what we need to do to put it right, not a blame game.
As someone who worked for the party through the whole of our last period in opposition (in the Press Office, the Research Department, the Campaigning Department, and ultimately for Michael Ashcroft overseeing the target seats campaign that got us back into government), there are three clear lessons we should learn from that period – none of them very palatable.
- Concede and move on
The instinct of ex-ministers when Labour ministers inevitably attack our record will be to defend it. That would be a mistake. The British people have made up their minds about the last four and a half years – every minute we spend telling them that they’re being a bit harsh won’t just be a minute wasted, it will confirm in their minds that we still don’t get it. We should focus on holding Labour to account for the promises they have made to the British people and developing a credible alternative vision for the future of our country – one that will appeal not just to our shrunken base, but to a broad mass of people across the country.
- Recognise that the electorate isn’t going to be very interested in hearing from us for a while
For the last 14 years, we have dominated British politics. Our most senior MPs have been able to set government policy, and in the chaos of the last eight years, the Chairman of the 1922 Committee and leading figures in the ERG, the New Conservatives, and various other factions have become household names. Those days are over. We are now a long way from power, and the British people aren’t going to be very interested in hearing from us for a while.
In time – as the shine comes off Labour and if we show we’ve learned our lesson – things will be different, but for now, we should use the time to…
- Understand why we lost and what we need to do to win again
This is by far the hardest part, both because there isn’t a single reason for our defeat. Different voters have been put off by different thing. Because we all approach this debate with our ideological preconceptions: the right says we weren’t right-wing enough, and the left says we were too far from the centre-ground and point out that the last three leaders of the party have all, to a greater or lesser degree, come from the right of the party. We need to put aside those ideological preconceptions and be led by the evidence.
The first thing the evidence tells us is that we were simultaneously too right-wing for many voters and not conservative enough for others (which is surely the most powerful illustration of our bad strategy over the last few years). We talked right, and that put some voters off; and then we failed to deliver, which put a different set of voters off.
Readers may differ on the reason for our failure to deliver (the pandemic made it impossible/too many ministers aren’t proper Conservatives/we made populist promises that we couldn’t deliver without doing real damage), but regaining our credibility is a pre-requisite for getting back into government and that means not making promises unless we have a credible plan to deliver them. We should not be saying we will cut taxes but we won’t have to cut spending because the tax cuts will magically pay for themselves.
The second thing the evidence tells us is that two events in the last 45 months led to sharp falls in Conservative support: first, partygate and second Liz Truss’s Mini-Budget. The first damaged perceptions of our standards of behaviour (to pre-empt the inevitable response: yes, I met voters during the campaign who were angry that we got rid of Boris Johnson, but I met more who cited Partygate as one of the reasons they couldn’t vote for us); the second damaged perceptions of our competence, the fundamental pillar on which support for the Conservative Party has always been built. When I was an MP in Croydon, voters would often tell me “I don’t like your party very much, but I vote for you because you are more competent than the other lot.
The third and fourth things the evidence tells us is that the decision to call an early election was a mistake, and the campaign was incredibly badly executed. We didn’t gain any advantage from the element of surprise, we would have been better off waiting until the autumn when Nigel Farage would have been carrying Donald Trump’s bag around the US and we went backward during the campaign.
There’s four things to start with, but I don’t pretend to have all the answers the day after our defeat. We need to take our time and look at the rest of the evidence. What do the electorate – and particularly those who might consider voting Conservative – think about tax cuts versus more money for public services, immigration, net zero, Brexit? What does the coalition of voters we are trying to assemble look like? Can we go back to our 2019 coalition, or with hindsight was that more about people not wanting Jeremy Corbyn to win than support for us?
Three strategic challenges are staring us in the face.
First, the age profile of our vote. If no one changes their mind by the time of the next election there will be a further swing against us because more Conservative voters than Labour voters will pass away and they will be replaced by younger voters who are more likely to vote Labour. The crossover age – the point at which people become more likely to vote Conservative – is now about 70. We have to do something to appeal more to working-age people or we are going to cease to exist.
Second, the division on the right. It is going to be very hard for us to win for as long as Reform continues to get more than 5 per cent of the vote, just as it was very hard for Labour to win after the SDP broke away from them in the early 1980s. But merger with Reform or trying to ape it is not the answer. Farage has just tried to destroy us, he doesn’t offer credible solutions, and on issues like Ukraine he doesn’t share our world view and if those three arguments aren’t enough to convince you, it would be a grave mistake to assume that a merged party would get the sum of the shares of the vote of each party
Some Reform voters wouldn’t vote Conservative even if Farage was leader and there are plenty of Conservatives like me who will not have anything to do with a party that has Farage as a member. There is no easy answer here. It will probably take Labour becoming unpopular for us to be able to reunite the right.
Third, record levels of tactical voting – most of it to stop us winning. There has always been a Millwall tendency in our party that delights in left-wing voters not liking us. It turns out that if a significant proportion of the electorate doesn’t like you, that has real-world consequences in terms of their willingness to vote tactically to stop you winning. We need to stop glorifying being unpopular.
Last time we were in opposition, it took us eight years before we learnt these lessons and started to recover. Please, please, please let’s not take so long this time.
I’ll end on the only three silver linings I can spot: there isn’t the enthusiasm for Starmer that there was for Blair in 1997, the electorate is more volatile now than it was then. The performance of Greens and independents suggest a division on the left may emerge over the new few years. But we will only be able to benefit from these silver linings if we put our own house in order first. Let’s get to it.
Lord Barwell was MP for Croydon Central between 2010 and 2017, before serving as Chief of Staff to Theresa May. He now runs his own business.
You don’t need me to tell you that yesterday’s result was catastrophic for our party. Some of us have been warning about the likely consequences of the strategic mistakes the party has been making for several years, but the last thing we need now is personal recriminations. We need to agree on what went wrong, but we should focus on what we need to do to put it right, not a blame game.
As someone who worked for the party through the whole of our last period in opposition (in the Press Office, the Research Department, the Campaigning Department, and ultimately for Michael Ashcroft overseeing the target seats campaign that got us back into government), there are three clear lessons we should learn from that period – none of them very palatable.
The instinct of ex-ministers when Labour ministers inevitably attack our record will be to defend it. That would be a mistake. The British people have made up their minds about the last four and a half years – every minute we spend telling them that they’re being a bit harsh won’t just be a minute wasted, it will confirm in their minds that we still don’t get it. We should focus on holding Labour to account for the promises they have made to the British people and developing a credible alternative vision for the future of our country – one that will appeal not just to our shrunken base, but to a broad mass of people across the country.
For the last 14 years, we have dominated British politics. Our most senior MPs have been able to set government policy, and in the chaos of the last eight years, the Chairman of the 1922 Committee and leading figures in the ERG, the New Conservatives, and various other factions have become household names. Those days are over. We are now a long way from power, and the British people aren’t going to be very interested in hearing from us for a while.
In time – as the shine comes off Labour and if we show we’ve learned our lesson – things will be different, but for now, we should use the time to…
This is by far the hardest part, both because there isn’t a single reason for our defeat. Different voters have been put off by different thing. Because we all approach this debate with our ideological preconceptions: the right says we weren’t right-wing enough, and the left says we were too far from the centre-ground and point out that the last three leaders of the party have all, to a greater or lesser degree, come from the right of the party. We need to put aside those ideological preconceptions and be led by the evidence.
The first thing the evidence tells us is that we were simultaneously too right-wing for many voters and not conservative enough for others (which is surely the most powerful illustration of our bad strategy over the last few years). We talked right, and that put some voters off; and then we failed to deliver, which put a different set of voters off.
Readers may differ on the reason for our failure to deliver (the pandemic made it impossible/too many ministers aren’t proper Conservatives/we made populist promises that we couldn’t deliver without doing real damage), but regaining our credibility is a pre-requisite for getting back into government and that means not making promises unless we have a credible plan to deliver them. We should not be saying we will cut taxes but we won’t have to cut spending because the tax cuts will magically pay for themselves.
The second thing the evidence tells us is that two events in the last 45 months led to sharp falls in Conservative support: first, partygate and second Liz Truss’s Mini-Budget. The first damaged perceptions of our standards of behaviour (to pre-empt the inevitable response: yes, I met voters during the campaign who were angry that we got rid of Boris Johnson, but I met more who cited Partygate as one of the reasons they couldn’t vote for us); the second damaged perceptions of our competence, the fundamental pillar on which support for the Conservative Party has always been built. When I was an MP in Croydon, voters would often tell me “I don’t like your party very much, but I vote for you because you are more competent than the other lot.
The third and fourth things the evidence tells us is that the decision to call an early election was a mistake, and the campaign was incredibly badly executed. We didn’t gain any advantage from the element of surprise, we would have been better off waiting until the autumn when Nigel Farage would have been carrying Donald Trump’s bag around the US and we went backward during the campaign.
There’s four things to start with, but I don’t pretend to have all the answers the day after our defeat. We need to take our time and look at the rest of the evidence. What do the electorate – and particularly those who might consider voting Conservative – think about tax cuts versus more money for public services, immigration, net zero, Brexit? What does the coalition of voters we are trying to assemble look like? Can we go back to our 2019 coalition, or with hindsight was that more about people not wanting Jeremy Corbyn to win than support for us?
Three strategic challenges are staring us in the face.
First, the age profile of our vote. If no one changes their mind by the time of the next election there will be a further swing against us because more Conservative voters than Labour voters will pass away and they will be replaced by younger voters who are more likely to vote Labour. The crossover age – the point at which people become more likely to vote Conservative – is now about 70. We have to do something to appeal more to working-age people or we are going to cease to exist.
Second, the division on the right. It is going to be very hard for us to win for as long as Reform continues to get more than 5 per cent of the vote, just as it was very hard for Labour to win after the SDP broke away from them in the early 1980s. But merger with Reform or trying to ape it is not the answer. Farage has just tried to destroy us, he doesn’t offer credible solutions, and on issues like Ukraine he doesn’t share our world view and if those three arguments aren’t enough to convince you, it would be a grave mistake to assume that a merged party would get the sum of the shares of the vote of each party
Some Reform voters wouldn’t vote Conservative even if Farage was leader and there are plenty of Conservatives like me who will not have anything to do with a party that has Farage as a member. There is no easy answer here. It will probably take Labour becoming unpopular for us to be able to reunite the right.
Third, record levels of tactical voting – most of it to stop us winning. There has always been a Millwall tendency in our party that delights in left-wing voters not liking us. It turns out that if a significant proportion of the electorate doesn’t like you, that has real-world consequences in terms of their willingness to vote tactically to stop you winning. We need to stop glorifying being unpopular.
Last time we were in opposition, it took us eight years before we learnt these lessons and started to recover. Please, please, please let’s not take so long this time.
I’ll end on the only three silver linings I can spot: there isn’t the enthusiasm for Starmer that there was for Blair in 1997, the electorate is more volatile now than it was then. The performance of Greens and independents suggest a division on the left may emerge over the new few years. But we will only be able to benefit from these silver linings if we put our own house in order first. Let’s get to it.