Giles started all six interviews with the same question to the candidates: why should it be you?
PP: Well, first of all, I’m a candidate with a great deal of experience, and I also feel we need a leader for our times, the times that we are in politically. So look at the pitiful experiences that we’re seeing now with the Labour government. We need … a strong leader with a lot of experience to effectively take apart Kier Starmer’s rotten Labour government.
And of course, you know, you have to have that experience of being in government… the confidence, the ability to be at the dispatch box…understanding our political processes…the ability to use all the levers at our disposal…while at the same time, (be) someone that understands our party, who we are, instinctively… the DNA of the Conservative and Unionist Party, a party that actually represents our nation, but also a party that is very much built on our grassroots and our members… and how we now start this rejuvenation, this great restoration, of our party, and I believe I’m the right person for that.
GD: Do you think the party as a whole has understood what just happened to it, and why?
PP: It’s fair to say, there are a range of views and opinions, and you know, I’ve been out about this summer, meeting our amazing members, and of course, they’re all expressing their own views and deep, deep, deep frustrations…and much of it is actually pinned on the conduct of MPs over the last parliament, in particular in the last two years. So I think naturally we do have to reflect upon that, no question about that… but right now, we need a line in the sand on the past… this is about the future.
This is about the Conservative and Unionist party: How we give a sense of professionalism back to our party…restore, actually, integrity in our party, to a certain extent, which seems to have been long lost behind, while also rebuilding our party, and by that I’m referring to the election machine that we once were, that we are not… let’s be honest about that. Looking at the big home truths.
I’m a great optimist though. So I believe in, you know, conservative values and beliefs, the fact that we can rebuild our country…we can have a positive and engaging future for our country. And partly with my experience, skills, experience and strength, the backgrounds that I have: obviously being from the party, for the party… bringing that sort of integrated approach together to: Yes, unpick Labour… hold them to account…absolutely unravel them where they need to be shamed for the appalling things that they’re doing, but demonstrating that we are a national party, a party that can come back and serve our nation in the way… which we have not been serving our whole nation.
I also believe that we moved away from the public.
It wasn’t the public that moved away from us. We absolutely moved away from them, through the shenanigans, the antics in Westminster, some of the, what I’ve called “sidebar issues” that we, you know, just became consumed by… rather than thinking about the mainstream issues that consumed the British public, their futures, their security, their livelihood, and just the basics around governments of our country.
GD: There seems to be this difficult balance to strike for all six of you: to get stuck in and be the opposition right now, straight away, we can do that….AND we need to have a bit of a reflection on who we are and what we actually represent, because that didn’t necessarily work for us on the doorstep in the election.
Where’s your balance on those two things? You seem to come out saying, “Let’s just get straight back on with it”. There’ll be some who go: “Hang on. That would be business as usual, not giving ourselves some time to ask ‘Where are we? What is being a Conservative all about … for the 2030s’”
PP: So I hear a bit about that, but quite frankly, I’ve been on the back-benches for two years, so it’s not business as usual for me. I wasn’t part of the front bench…and you know, all the things that happened in recent years. I don’t have to reflect on being a Conservative.
I’m a lifelong Conservative. I’ve been involved in our party for 34 years, and conservatism has not failed. So, you know, I’m happy to debate with anybody that wants to sort of question the DNA of conservatism. It has not failed. We failed the public by moving away from the public and actually not standing up for Conservative values and beliefs. So I think a recognition of that is really important.
Secondly, we were too busy… the party nationally, not myself (I was not involved in the government) …we lost our confidence, clearly… who we were, what we stood for. We were too busy, following what I describe as an appeasement strategy, trying to be all things to all people… a mushy shade of blue, even in some cases a mushy shade of red and yellow. Well, how about just being an authentic right-of-centre Conservative Party, because that, to me, is what we are about. The country is a conservative country. The British people should be our compass. And it’s quite obvious that we moved our compass away from them.
GD: What do we do about … would you do about… Reform? Is it Reform you’re after or are you after their voters?
PP: So Reform are over there as an opposition party…. (gestures away) and I hear frequently, you know, we should be aping them, or being like them. I come back to what I’ve just said. The British people are our compass. We’ve moved away from them, we need to go back to being a right-of-centre Conservative Party…standing up for our principles, and our beliefs, and actually delivering practical policies that are deliverable, not really using sound bites to describe policies or trying to appease people through slogans in the way in which we’ve seen in recent years… the public feel let down by us, the party over-promised and completely failed to deliver in some quarters, that therefore led to the rise of parties such as Reform, who you know were promising…. I don’t know what they’re promising… but they were saying things have just appealed to disaffected voters.
They weren’t promising policies that they were going to implement. They certainly were not doing that.
They were absolutely saying things that resonated with the public that we were not delivering on. So bridging that gap is crucial. But what I would say about us now, in opposition: we’re a party that’s in opposition, so even that statement alone is pretty sobering. We have very few levers at our disposal.
The one lever that we do have is obviously how we tackle the government through Parliament, and I don’t think we’ve been that robust over this summer, speaking quite candidly. I was the one that called for parliament to be recalled over the riots, and obviously the public order that we saw earlier on over the summer…I don’t think we held the government to account well, or robustly, at all, particularly on issues such as policing.
But the reality is, while we are in opposition, we have a big chance now to look at developing good policies for the future that can be delivered and implemented. And this is a crucial thing. There’s no point having policies or ideas for the sake of it…we have to demonstrate that they’re practical and can be deliverable, and importantly, will make an enormous difference to the lives of the British people.
There’s no point thinking about sidebar issues that will never pay the bills or fill the hopes and aspirations of the country. So we have to be grounded now in our direction… and focus on the deliverables.
GD: I’m not saying this. Some people say this. I want members to hear your view on this: You mentioned a mushy shade of blue. Would you describe yourself as a candidate from the right?
PP: Well, first of all, I think slogans and definitions are just irrelevant by now. You’ve already heard me speak about being a right-of-centre Conservative party….that’s who we are, in my view. I’ve always been there. I’ve always consistently been there.
I think it’s worth saying, as well, that you know, my views have been consistent… my position in the party on a plethora of issues… ranging from the economy, to employment, to enterprise, and freedom, as well as law and order… they haven’t moved at all. I’m firmly anchored there, I really am: right of centre, which is very much where the British people are. That’s common ground, which is clearly where their hopes and aspirations are.
And that’s, that’s me to a T. I haven’t, sort of, you know, “traversed the spectrum” in any way. I have always been consistent. I think it’s that consistency that gives me the strength to not just run in this contest but be a strong leader, a leader with experience, a leader who actually knows how to deliver … I have delivered very significant policies across a range of portfolios in government.
I’ve also been part of the ideas, you know, backup ideas, in our own party… prior to 2019 developing the 2019 manifesto… coming up with the core policies that actually led to a victory in 2019… a victory that some of my colleagues seem to have forgotten about and airbrushed out.
But we must, you know, always be there in that common ground, that right-of-centre position, which is where I’ve always been.
GD: You weren’t, as you say…you’re clearly saying to people, “I wasn’t there in the last two years” Did you pull up the stumps and take your bat and ball off the pitch? Or was there something… you know…you’d already seen the way things were going? And you say, “I don’t want to be part of that?”
PP: Yeah, number one, I didn’t want to be part of the defenestration of what was one of the greatest political parties of the Western world. Period. End of story.
And I think if you look at my record on the back benches, over the last two years, I’ve been pretty good in, you know, being diligent, professional, actually holding what was then the opposition to account …and challenging there, but also the government… questioning the government.
So for example, on taxation, you know, OECD rates of taxation on corporation tax for example, is a very, very strong policy where I’ve been focused on the economy, on those crucial issues about business, about enterprise, on law and order…I’ve always been there… even speaking out on immigration, to urge the government… to the then government, the last government… to put forth the plans and proposals and I left them to utilise…that’s not walking away…that’s absolutely getting on and doing the job that I’m elected to do, and bringing my skills and experience and the strength of my knowledge and experience to, hopefully, the aid of the last government to, you know, give them the confidence and the commitments, to actually bring policies forward that work…. and guess what? Deliverable.
GD: A lot of the ConservativeHome audience are people with a vote… they work in the party. How will the party change under you? Its functions, its structures: How do you want to shape the party?
PP: So fundamentally, the party is now at a crossroads. We have to change if we are about being a serious, serious opposition, but also a party ready to come back to lead the nation, our great nation, once more…. For me, it’s about fundamental change …and a change of attitude as well, speaking quite candidly.
So you know, we have the parliamentary party, but then we have the party in the country, and then we have, with the party in the country, the institutional aspects of the party, such as CCHQ, that needs massive reform. It really does. I mean, it is not the machinery that we need to get us back into becoming that election-winning, hungry machine all over again. Look at next year, at county council elections: We don’t have the resources…we should be honest about that. I will absolutely change the structures… bring the resources in.
I’ve been very vocal. I have in my own constituency four local councils. I know a lot about local government. I want us to become… I will make us… the largest party local government, all over again. We have to be a grassroots party first and foremost. We can’t be a centralised party sitting in an office in Westminster trying to tell the grassroots and the membership how they should be running things and doing things…. when actually they’re more successful than the Westminster party.
Just look at the numbers and look at the way we have over 5000 councillors and only 121 MPs. So we need to rebalance all of this. And I believe that our party has to be reformed… bottom up, not top down. I’ve spoken consistently about more democracy in our party for our members… a “Members Day” at Party Conference, you know… our dear members come to party conference, and they wander around about but have nothing for them that is bespoke for them at Party Conference. We should absolutely be changing that.
We should make it compelling, engaging, and exciting for them to come to our conference. We need to change the structures of the way in which their voices have not been heard. We need to give them their voice back, and I’m pledging to give them their party back. And this is our moment now to do so much more for our members and grow the base.
I even think we should have a democratically elected Chair of our party and look at ways in which we can reform that alongside reforms to our National Convention, which is equally remote and removed from the grassroots. So these are important pillars of our party and reform that we need, because if we don’t do that… we don’t bring more democracy to our party, and we then go to the British people, in four or five years: “Vote for us…. You know, just for our policies?”… we need to demonstrate that we are a much more integrated party that has a, you know, the feel of the nation, the pulse of the nation, but actually is much more effective in our communities as well.
That representation in the communities is pivotal if we want to get that pathway back to power.
GD: Transparency as well?
PP: Well, I think it’s transparency across the board.
So you’ve already heard me say, you know, the largest party in local government is where we have to be. We have to be there to actually get back into power, that pathway to the journey back… and the point about transparency is about integrity as well: the type of people have representing us, the way in which our candidates are selected, which, let’s be quite frank, is deeply controversial post this general election… a lot of unhappiness and alienation of constituency grassroots party members and associations… that has to go, that absolutely has to go.
And this is my point about giving our members their party back. They should be the ones in control. They should be the decision-makers. The central function of our party, CCHQ should actually be providing a much better quality list of vetted candidates: more professional candidates that reflect the country that we live in and the country we aspire to serve all over again… with professional people, different backgrounds, who are from the communities and not just transported into certain constituencies, with shortlists that are very, very restricted. That culture has to go.
I mean that, quite frankly, is all part of the culture of cronyism that we’re trying to unpick in Westminster with the Labour government right now.
GD: I’m always teasing you about “rocking the leather jacket”…. Youngsters?
PP: Well that’s right!
GD: How important will they be to you, as a leader?
PP: Well, they’re pivotal to our future success. End of story.
They absolutely are. When I joined the Conservative Party, many moons ago, our party was an exciting (place) to be. It was the place to be. If you were a young person in the Conservative Party, you wanted to get on in life, you know, if you wanted to do well, earn your money, get a great job, you know, have all the aspirations in the world, then it was our party that gave you that hope, vision, and opportunity.
I mentioned earlier that, you know, we’ve left people behind. We’ve left the country behind. We were the ones that left young people behind. I saw nothing in our party that was appealing to young people.
We’ve got a generation of young people that really just look to the future with a great deal of anxiety, I think, and fear around, you know…if you want to get on in life, they see University as a great opportunity, and it is… but with that, you leave university with a lot of debt. You know, are you economically secure after that? No, you are not. You are absolutely not economically secure if you’re carrying a burden of debt and you want to have that assurity and security of good employment prospects and jobs and economic security.
And I think this is probably one of the most exciting areas for our party in opposition…. that demonstrating how we can be that party of aspiration, opportunity…. come up with creative policies…. these… even around your you know your first job, you know the taxes that you may or may not pay, your employment prospects, a home that you want to aspire to buy, and how we can make that easier for you… I think that…. I think, really, that’s where we have to be all over again…and for me, that’s an exciting pillar of becoming leader of our party, and broadening that appeal.
GD: When you are leader, the party wants to feel like it knows you. And then there comes a level of intrusion that’s different from being just a Secretary of State or a senior party figure, it’s …the Leader. Are you ready for that level of intrusion? and what do you want the party to know about you that isn’t just your competencies or your vision but about you as a person? What do you want them to know?
PP: So I think importantly me as a person… people know me professionally, as a member of parliament, a politician, someone that serves …service is just writ large through me, it really is. But also, even my professional background… you know that has shaped and moulded me, and I think….our members our grassroots… (That’s why this summer staycation tour has been so good)… I think they’re hearing for the first time that, you know, my business background… for example, I’ve worked around the world, worked for large companies and emerging businesses and companies.
So having a real insight into what works, what makes not just our country tick, but people, institutions, businesses, all of that… and there’s much more depth than just being, I think… for people and members just seeing me as a Home Secretary, you know, always sort of … you know, calling bad people criminals, going after and dealing the county line drug gangs, etc, etc, (which is fine, because that was my responsibility, and I was absolutely driven to deliver on that.)… but there’s much more to me.
And obviously, on a personal level, people are discovering that I’m a mother. I don’t think people realised I was a mother for example… you know, I have a 16-year-old, so we’ve been doing exams GCSEs, and, you know, we like traveling, and there are lots of things that we enjoy doing in life, and I think that just sort of comes out in the wash inevitably, once people get to spend more time with you… it’s obvious that when you’re Home Secretary and when you’re touring the country, with our grassroots members raising money for our associations and doing all that great work, people don’t see that side, to you at all. They really don’t.
They never see the human side, or the fun side, or the leather jacket side, or, you know, listening to AC/DC …and things of that nature. So, yeah, I think, you know, maybe that’ll come out a bit more. I don’t know. We’ll wait and see.
GD: But are you ready for the intrusive nature of being the leader of a party?
PP: I think you’ve always had that. I’ve always experienced that, to be perfectly honest, that’s not mutual at all. I’ve had that in every walk of life and every role that I’ve had in government. I don’t get it. It’s in government, you know, it’s deeply you expect. You know, you’re out there. You are absolutely out there. And that inquiry applies to this position as well.
What I would say is that people do know me consistently in terms of my skills, experience, politically, the professional side to me. And you know, they might see me out and about, but wanting some different things, which would be quite nice.
GD: Now, you’ve laid out a pitch, and I’ve asked everybody this, in my view it is as important who the winner is as to what the losers do next. Does this still count? Does everything you’ve just said still count, if it’s not you?
Well, absolutely, of course it does. We have to come together. I mean, you’ve seen one of my messages in this election campaign… unity is absolutely crucial, and being one team.
I’m saying throughout this entire campaign under my leadership, we’ll be one party, one team, one voice, that is absolutely where we have to be going forward.
GD: Dame Priti Patel thank you very much indeed for talking to ConservativeHome
PP: Thank you.