Alex Challoner is a former prospective London Mayoral Candidate and Director of London Vision Network.
This is my second period of what I expect to be prolonged Opposition. The first was in 1997 when I had just finished a short stint working for John Major as a junior press officer.
Then as now, that campaign was horrendous and everyone seemed in huge denial about everything – what went wrong with the campaign; policy differences; personality clashes. About everything you can think of. And then silence descended, perforated by a brief leadership campaign, and then quietness again.
The danger for the Conservatives is that the public stops listening to us, we need to earn back the right to be heard from the public.
How can we do that? And we can earn it back more quickly than the near decade in the wilderness we saw after the 1997 election?
A lot of things but policy formulation and intellectual credibility are going to be key to this. It was the Margaret Thatcher years when the likes of the Centre for Policy Studies came into being but in its wake came the blueprint for the Conservative revolution of the 1980s. Similarly, Policy Exchange came into being in the early noughties and became the foundation blocks of the Cameroon revival.
So, my advice to the party when the hullabaloo of the leadership is over is to go away is to rebuild its intellectual foundations, so that we have something interesting to say to the public. We need to start by thinking about the purpose of our party. What are our values? What are our ideas for change? Who are the voters that we need to win over to deliver that vision?
There is no better place to start this conversation than in London. The collapse of the party in the capital was spectacular and in many of the seats I campaigned in – despite the best endeavours of the candidate – we had nothing to say on the big issues facing London. Where was the plan for more family homes in London; where was the plan for improving our local environment? The list goes on and the overwhelming sense of the public was that we had stopped listening to their concerns.
One of the big lessons from our last period in office is to not ignore the importance of local government. A lot of the interesting ideas that emerged during the late 2000s had come from the experience of poor public services and bureaucracy gained through experiences of local government.
While the Conservatives are no longer in control of Whitehall, we still have a sizeable footprint in Town Hall. Conservatives still control 57 councils in England and the Tees Valley under Ben Houchen. Let’s discover what good delivery looks like under well-run Conservatives Councils and Mayoralties. Let’s use local government to intellectually renew our party and test the ideas that can bring us victory nationally.
Crucially, we must not write off London where recovery prefigured our national revival. We need to be competitive in London once again. We need a good candidate in place early and develop some voter-inspiring policies around the delivery of housing, jobs, and transport. If we cannot earn the right to be heard in London, we will struggle to earn it anywhere else.
This is the inspiration behind London Vision Network, a new think tank for London. The Conservative success in winning the Mayoralty in 2008 laid the groundwork to challenge the dominance of New Labour. Ahead of 2010, the Conservatives made steady gains in London Council elections providing a strong base for the national campaign. No route to national success does not go through London.
Our project has 3 main objectives at its heart:
1) Identify the electoral coalition that the Conservatives need to recapture London Mayoralty in 2028 and rebuilding across local government in London;
2) Develop the policy ideas that can improve London and get endorsement from the electoral coalition; and
3) Connect Conservatives across London committed to recapturing London for the Conservative party.
Over the next few weeks and months, we will bring together Conservatives from across London. We need to recruit MPs, Council Leaders, Councillors, GLA members, and party activists. to help understand the state of the Conservative brand in London, the values and priorities of Londoners, and what a viable electoral coalition in London could look like.
Running as a prospective Mayoral candidate for the Conservative party in 2023 gave me an important glimpse of what we could achieve as a party in the Capital. Now the challenge is to make that a reality and rebuild the Conservative party back into an electoral winning force in London and a springboard for national success.
Alex Challoner is a former prospective London Mayoral Candidate and Director of London Vision Network.
This is my second period of what I expect to be prolonged Opposition. The first was in 1997 when I had just finished a short stint working for John Major as a junior press officer.
Then as now, that campaign was horrendous and everyone seemed in huge denial about everything – what went wrong with the campaign; policy differences; personality clashes. About everything you can think of. And then silence descended, perforated by a brief leadership campaign, and then quietness again.
The danger for the Conservatives is that the public stops listening to us, we need to earn back the right to be heard from the public.
How can we do that? And we can earn it back more quickly than the near decade in the wilderness we saw after the 1997 election?
A lot of things but policy formulation and intellectual credibility are going to be key to this. It was the Margaret Thatcher years when the likes of the Centre for Policy Studies came into being but in its wake came the blueprint for the Conservative revolution of the 1980s. Similarly, Policy Exchange came into being in the early noughties and became the foundation blocks of the Cameroon revival.
So, my advice to the party when the hullabaloo of the leadership is over is to go away is to rebuild its intellectual foundations, so that we have something interesting to say to the public. We need to start by thinking about the purpose of our party. What are our values? What are our ideas for change? Who are the voters that we need to win over to deliver that vision?
There is no better place to start this conversation than in London. The collapse of the party in the capital was spectacular and in many of the seats I campaigned in – despite the best endeavours of the candidate – we had nothing to say on the big issues facing London. Where was the plan for more family homes in London; where was the plan for improving our local environment? The list goes on and the overwhelming sense of the public was that we had stopped listening to their concerns.
One of the big lessons from our last period in office is to not ignore the importance of local government. A lot of the interesting ideas that emerged during the late 2000s had come from the experience of poor public services and bureaucracy gained through experiences of local government.
While the Conservatives are no longer in control of Whitehall, we still have a sizeable footprint in Town Hall. Conservatives still control 57 councils in England and the Tees Valley under Ben Houchen. Let’s discover what good delivery looks like under well-run Conservatives Councils and Mayoralties. Let’s use local government to intellectually renew our party and test the ideas that can bring us victory nationally.
Crucially, we must not write off London where recovery prefigured our national revival. We need to be competitive in London once again. We need a good candidate in place early and develop some voter-inspiring policies around the delivery of housing, jobs, and transport. If we cannot earn the right to be heard in London, we will struggle to earn it anywhere else.
This is the inspiration behind London Vision Network, a new think tank for London. The Conservative success in winning the Mayoralty in 2008 laid the groundwork to challenge the dominance of New Labour. Ahead of 2010, the Conservatives made steady gains in London Council elections providing a strong base for the national campaign. No route to national success does not go through London.
Our project has 3 main objectives at its heart:
1) Identify the electoral coalition that the Conservatives need to recapture London Mayoralty in 2028 and rebuilding across local government in London;
2) Develop the policy ideas that can improve London and get endorsement from the electoral coalition; and
3) Connect Conservatives across London committed to recapturing London for the Conservative party.
Over the next few weeks and months, we will bring together Conservatives from across London. We need to recruit MPs, Council Leaders, Councillors, GLA members, and party activists. to help understand the state of the Conservative brand in London, the values and priorities of Londoners, and what a viable electoral coalition in London could look like.
Running as a prospective Mayoral candidate for the Conservative party in 2023 gave me an important glimpse of what we could achieve as a party in the Capital. Now the challenge is to make that a reality and rebuild the Conservative party back into an electoral winning force in London and a springboard for national success.