James Frayne is a strategist and opinion research specialist
The Conservatives were wiped out in the General Election because they promised the earth on policies but failed to deliver. Their delicate 2019 coalition was decimated by perceived policy betrayals on immigration, the NHS and the economy.
It’s important to focus on policy in the post-mortem, for a couple of falsehoods have crept into the analysis: firstly, that the Conservatives lost because they were too right-wing; secondly, that they were just seen as generally and broadly incompetent, as if because of some undefined “vibe”.
This week, my paper for the Centre for Policy Studies is published. In Common Ground Conservatism, I look in detail at why the Conservatives lost the election and what the public want from the party on policy in the coming years. It is a broad “landscape” poll and a large-scale qualitative research programme.
The research was clear: voters completely reject the suggestion the Conservatives were “too right-wing” (just as they rejected the idea they were “too left-wing”). The research was also clear that voters turned against the party because of policy failure on specific issues.
The party will only rebuild effectively if it develops credible policies on issues the public care about. Some of these policies can and should be traditional right-leaning policies; some of them shouldn’t. The point is: the party should focus on policies to make the country better and win elections – and not worry how they might look to critics.
So which policy areas should the party focus on?
We found three main groups of policies. The first group is the simple ones: policies important to the future of the country, where the public is aligned with the traditional Tory approach, and where Labour would struggle to match Tory proposals. These are on border control, crime, welfare reform and (to some extent), the family. While establishing credibility on these issues will be hard after recent catastrophic failure, the way back on these issues is straightforward.
The second group is the really hard ones, where it might be impossible to make gains in the short-term. The most obvious area is the NHS. Here, there is no interest in the Tories’ traditional “reform” message. Whichever way we asked questions, the public kept coming back to the same answer: the NHS just needs more money. While the party needs to say intelligent things about the NHS, it ought not push the reform narrative hard. There is little mileage in pushing education reform too hard either; it’s not that the public are opposed to such reform as they are in the NHS, they just don’t care.
The third group is the most interesting: policies which are important to the country, but where progress is entirely dependent on the framing of policy options. Most importantly, these are: the size and role of the state, tax levels, and cultural issues.
Here, the party ought to take the battle to Labour for the good of the country and because progress on these issues might open up doors to progress on the trickiest issues, like the NHS. Handled correctly, they could also enable the party to put Labour in a difficult place.
Of these, the size of the state and tax are the most important but also the most complex. The public appears to back Big Government enthusiastically. Fuelled by all parties telling voters they can fix every problem under the sun, and by the same politicians delivering everything from furlough payments to energy subsidies, the public has been persuaded Government can solve all their problems.
And yet, just as many share politicians’ ambitions for state action, so their belief in the incompetence of politicians has never been more intense. The Tories ought to be pushing this contradiction hard – stressing politicians have neither the skills nor the powers to make everyone’s lives better.
In this way, they can make a credible case for a smaller state – done through the negative prism British voters respond to – and also, crucially, end this permanent cycle of over-promising and under-delivering. They can also begin to make progress on tax, because a smaller state needs less revenue. (There is an additional important element to this case, which is, despite everything, most voters still instinctively accept that budgets need to be balanced.)
Handling cultural issues requires similar deftness. We have heard recently that “woke” has hit its high watermark and is in retreat. We have heard Trump’s re-election – where the culture theme played strongly in ads and elsewhere on the campaign trail – shows other politicians can make similar gains.
The reality is, for “woke” to be a viable campaigning option for the Conservatives, the public need to be fully aware of it and be intensely irritated by it too. The truth is, most of the debate on woke has passed the public by. It certainly has on female safe spaces, free speech, and practically everything that takes place on university campuses. Talking about a lot of this stuff is a waste of time at best, and counter-productive at worst.
There are two exceptions. The first is anything that touches on national identity; the second, anything that touches on, if you like, the innocence of childhood. In both these cases, the public are aware of the challenges here, they’re irritated, and they back a traditional Conservative approach.
While it’s true Labour is having a bad time in Government – and they’re dropping in the polls – the Tories shouldn’t take too much comfort from all this. Labour are merely wrestling with the appalling set of problems the Conservatives failed to deal with. And they too are dealing with inflating promises ahead of the election – in Labour’s case, the implication that the simple act of change would make everything better.
The Conservatives won’t walk back into No 10 just because voters don’t like Labour. They’ll only do so if they develop a serious policy platform which explains exactly how they’ll deal with the problems that no politician seems to have found the answers for.
James Frayne is a strategist and opinion research specialist
The Conservatives were wiped out in the General Election because they promised the earth on policies but failed to deliver. Their delicate 2019 coalition was decimated by perceived policy betrayals on immigration, the NHS and the economy.
It’s important to focus on policy in the post-mortem, for a couple of falsehoods have crept into the analysis: firstly, that the Conservatives lost because they were too right-wing; secondly, that they were just seen as generally and broadly incompetent, as if because of some undefined “vibe”.
This week, my paper for the Centre for Policy Studies is published. In Common Ground Conservatism, I look in detail at why the Conservatives lost the election and what the public want from the party on policy in the coming years. It is a broad “landscape” poll and a large-scale qualitative research programme.
The research was clear: voters completely reject the suggestion the Conservatives were “too right-wing” (just as they rejected the idea they were “too left-wing”). The research was also clear that voters turned against the party because of policy failure on specific issues.
The party will only rebuild effectively if it develops credible policies on issues the public care about. Some of these policies can and should be traditional right-leaning policies; some of them shouldn’t. The point is: the party should focus on policies to make the country better and win elections – and not worry how they might look to critics.
So which policy areas should the party focus on?
We found three main groups of policies. The first group is the simple ones: policies important to the future of the country, where the public is aligned with the traditional Tory approach, and where Labour would struggle to match Tory proposals. These are on border control, crime, welfare reform and (to some extent), the family. While establishing credibility on these issues will be hard after recent catastrophic failure, the way back on these issues is straightforward.
The second group is the really hard ones, where it might be impossible to make gains in the short-term. The most obvious area is the NHS. Here, there is no interest in the Tories’ traditional “reform” message. Whichever way we asked questions, the public kept coming back to the same answer: the NHS just needs more money. While the party needs to say intelligent things about the NHS, it ought not push the reform narrative hard. There is little mileage in pushing education reform too hard either; it’s not that the public are opposed to such reform as they are in the NHS, they just don’t care.
The third group is the most interesting: policies which are important to the country, but where progress is entirely dependent on the framing of policy options. Most importantly, these are: the size and role of the state, tax levels, and cultural issues.
Here, the party ought to take the battle to Labour for the good of the country and because progress on these issues might open up doors to progress on the trickiest issues, like the NHS. Handled correctly, they could also enable the party to put Labour in a difficult place.
Of these, the size of the state and tax are the most important but also the most complex. The public appears to back Big Government enthusiastically. Fuelled by all parties telling voters they can fix every problem under the sun, and by the same politicians delivering everything from furlough payments to energy subsidies, the public has been persuaded Government can solve all their problems.
And yet, just as many share politicians’ ambitions for state action, so their belief in the incompetence of politicians has never been more intense. The Tories ought to be pushing this contradiction hard – stressing politicians have neither the skills nor the powers to make everyone’s lives better.
In this way, they can make a credible case for a smaller state – done through the negative prism British voters respond to – and also, crucially, end this permanent cycle of over-promising and under-delivering. They can also begin to make progress on tax, because a smaller state needs less revenue. (There is an additional important element to this case, which is, despite everything, most voters still instinctively accept that budgets need to be balanced.)
Handling cultural issues requires similar deftness. We have heard recently that “woke” has hit its high watermark and is in retreat. We have heard Trump’s re-election – where the culture theme played strongly in ads and elsewhere on the campaign trail – shows other politicians can make similar gains.
The reality is, for “woke” to be a viable campaigning option for the Conservatives, the public need to be fully aware of it and be intensely irritated by it too. The truth is, most of the debate on woke has passed the public by. It certainly has on female safe spaces, free speech, and practically everything that takes place on university campuses. Talking about a lot of this stuff is a waste of time at best, and counter-productive at worst.
There are two exceptions. The first is anything that touches on national identity; the second, anything that touches on, if you like, the innocence of childhood. In both these cases, the public are aware of the challenges here, they’re irritated, and they back a traditional Conservative approach.
While it’s true Labour is having a bad time in Government – and they’re dropping in the polls – the Tories shouldn’t take too much comfort from all this. Labour are merely wrestling with the appalling set of problems the Conservatives failed to deal with. And they too are dealing with inflating promises ahead of the election – in Labour’s case, the implication that the simple act of change would make everything better.
The Conservatives won’t walk back into No 10 just because voters don’t like Labour. They’ll only do so if they develop a serious policy platform which explains exactly how they’ll deal with the problems that no politician seems to have found the answers for.