Miriam Cates is the former MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge.
This Labour government has no intention of governing in the national interest.
From the Chancellor’s war on wealth creators to the Home Secretary’s lack of interest in border security to the Foreign Secretary’s costly international virtue signalling, Britain will certainly be poorer and more divided by the time of the next election.
For conservatives, this is a double blow.
Firstly, for those of us who hold Britain and our national inheritance in high esteem, this decline is a personal tragedy. Secondly, it is a tragedy for which the Conservative Party is at least partly culpable.
With 14 years in government – including a resounding victory in the 2019 general election – it should have been possible for a Conservative government to put our economy and society on a surer footing such that an incoming Labour administration had to try a lot harder to do so much damage.
Yet under the last Conservative government, national debt, prices, immigration and taxes soared, and national cohesion, defence of the realm, and the resilience of the family plummeted. Instead of repealing the Blairite equalities legislation that has corrupted our treasured institutions with political activism, Conservatives embraced it.
Instead of strengthening the family unit – the foundation stone of society – we introduced no-fault divorce, liberalised abortion regulations and committed billions of pounds of taxpayer money to separating infants from their mothers. The Conservatives left the nation less conservative than we found it and the voters delivered their verdict.
But what’s done is done, and there are many reasonable and rational explanations for what happened, not least the terrible toll of lockdown policies, which would certainly have been even worse under Sir Keir Starmer.
The Conservatives must now look to the future and focus on defeating the Labour government in 2029, replacing it with a Party that is – this time around – determined to govern in the best interests of our nation.
Of course, this is exactly what the current leadership contenders are seeking to do, with both Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick pitching their plans to rebuild the Party and win back lost voters. As Conservative Party members post their ballot papers over the coming days, we have cause to be optimistic.
Both Badenoch and Jenrick offer a genuine opportunity to put the Party back on a more conservative footing. One of the weaknesses of the Conservative Party this century has been an inability to distinguish between conservative and liberal philosophies, confusing these two very distinct political worldviews and assuming that the Party could somehow accommodate both.
This intellectual failure has led to deep and irreconcilable splits within the parliamentary party, an unhelpful attachment to economic liberalism and impotence when it came to defending families and the nation. Yet, encouragingly, both Badenoch and Jenrick are able to make a compelling case for a conservatism. The fact that the liberal wing of the Party seems unhappy with the choice is a promising sign.
So, does this mean that we can expect Conservative Party renewal and a path back to power in 2029?
Well, not necessarily.
I am loathe to be pessimistic, but even with an outstanding policy platform, brilliant communications, a Labour collapse and a following wind, I fear that the Conservatives will hit a psephological stumbling block.
For no matter how low Labour sinks in the polls, and no matter how sincerely the British public longs for a more conservative government, it does not follow that the Conservative Party will regain enough votes to secure a majority. The Conservative Party is no longer the principal beneficiary of Labour’s demise.
Step forward Nigel Farage, whose Reform Party continues to go from strength to strength.
With Labour and the Conservatives polling around 27 points apiece and Reform UK on 20, Britain is now a three-party state.
Most of the support lost by Starmer since the election has been picked up by Farage, and there is no guarantee that a new Conservative Party leader will change this trajectory. We must accept that there are now two parties occupying very similar political ground, with both Reform and the under-new-management Conservatives offering a centre-right approach to immigration, tax and the family.
It is easy to dismiss Farage as merely a ‘populist’ – and certainly the Reform UK manifesto this year was a feast of fantasy policies – but this challenger party is rapidly professionalising and building infrastructure, and there is no reason to believe that their advances will be reversed.
There is every possibility then that, at the next election, the vote on the right will again be evenly split, allowing a deeply unpopular Labour Party to come through the middle and win another, albeit diminished, majority.
Those Conservatives who believe that competence in opposition and a better policy platform will win back our entire cohort of voters in 2019 are naïve. Amongst a considerable proportion of those former Tory voters there is now strong – and understandable – anti-establishment sentiment.
These views were concretised by the Parliamentary party’s defenestration of Boris Johnson, the ultimate antiestablishment figure, and whose mantle has now been taken by Farage and is unlikely to be stolen by Badenoch or Jenrick (who wouldn’t want it anyway).
No matter how admirably the Conservative Party behaves in opposition, five years is not long enough to win back the trust of those voters – especially in post-industrial areas – who feel betrayed by the political establishment.
The only route back to a centre-right majority in Parliament therefore is for some form of pact between the Conservative Party and Reform, agreeing not to stand competing candidates in key constituencies, thus preventing the right-wing vote from splitting.
Both parties – and Britain – would benefit from such an agreement.
Yet such an approach would run counter to the recent policies of CCHQ, which has insisted on nominating a Conservative Party candidate in every ward or constituency in every election, no matter how hopeless the case.
So, the new Conservative leader will have to decide whether to put Party before country, or instead to prefer the national interest.
If the Conservative Party continues to act as if the Faragists are a minor irritation, pride will be maintained but the election lost.
If on the other hand, the core conservative value of pragmatism is allowed to win out, there is a chance of ousting this hard-left Labour government in 2029.
Of course, there is no guarantee that Reform UK will enter into negotiations.
But if the new Conservative Party leader really wants the best for Britain, he or she must give serious thought to any and all strategies to oust the socialists from power as quickly as possible. Perhaps it is time for our great Party to swallow its pride and put our nation first.