Gavin Barwell is a Vice Chair of Prosper UK, former MP and former Downing Street Chief of Staff.
I spent 11 hours on polling day knocking on the doors of potential Conservative supporters in Croydon to encourage them to come out and vote for us. In the two wards I helped in, four of our five candidates were successful. Across Croydon as a whole, however, the results were a mixed bag — we succeeded in getting Mayor Jason Perry re-elected, but lost five council seats.
It was a mixed bag nationally too. We got a higher national equivalent share of the vote than last year. We held off Reform in the likes of Bexley and Bromley. We made impressive gains in places like Enfield, Harlow and Peterborough and took back control — to coin a phrase — of Westminster City Council. A few weeks ago, Nigel Farage predicted that these elections would mark the end of us as a national party. We’re still here, and Kemi Badenoch deserves credit for that. She’s providing an effective opposition to this failing Government in the House of Commons.
But neither she nor anyone else should pretend that they were good results. Fifth in Scotland. Fourth in Wales. A net loss of 563 councillors in England. And these aren’t just valued elected representatives we’re losing; they are the cement that binds our local parties together. Yes, we survived on Thursday, but I want us to prosper not just survive. And as William Hague taught us, impressive Parliamentary performances do not necessarily mean electoral success.
To prosper in the multi-party environment that is almost certainly here to stay Kemi needs a different strategy. If these results tell us anything, it is that with Reform to our right we have no chance of reassembling our 2019 coalition. They have eclipsed us in much of the Red Wall. Yes, they didn’t do as well as last year and yes, their support may fall further as voters see what they’re like when they’re in charge of running councils, but they are not going away.
And trying to offer a ‘lite’ version of their policies won’t work. Voters who want that type of politics will stick with the real thing, and it will put off other voters we could otherwise appeal to.
But all is not lost. History teaches us we can still win even with a party to our right. In 2015, David Cameron led us to an outright majority despite UKIP getting nearly 13 per cent of the vote.
How did he do it? By assembling a coalition of centre-right and centrist voters who were united in not wanting either a left-wing government led by Ed Miliband or UKIP. Labour are likely to shift to the left again — either under Keir Starmer in an attempt to save his skin (although at the time of writing that looks increasingly unlikely) or under Angela Rayner or Andy Burnham. That gives us the chance to build a similar coalition.
Geographically, such a coalition would be built on three types of seat: those we already hold, traditional Conservative/Labour marginals and seats held by the Liberal Democrats, many of which have historically been strong Conservative seats.
So how are we doing in each of these types of seat? In the seats we currently hold, it is once again a mixed bag: we are well placed to hold some, but under threat from Reform in others. The way to see off the Reform threat is not to try to ape Reform — as David Gauke argued on this site on Monday, doing that will drive away moderate Conservative voters and kill off our chances of winning back seats held by the Liberal Democrats. The answer is to convince voters in those seats that we are best placed to beat Labour. There is a core Reform vote we are never getting back, but polling shows that many Reform voters are anti-Labour and currently think Reform is a better bet than us to beat them. We need to show that’s wrong by doing well in the other two types of seat.
We did well on Thursday in some of the traditional Conservative/Labour marginals in outer London and places like Harlow and Peterborough.
But we did terribly against the Liberal Democrats. We lost all 20 seats in Sutton. We only won two out of 45 seats on South Cambridgeshire, two out of 22 on St Albans, two out of 15 on Tunbridge Wells, none out of 15 on Winchester. It’s not like Ed Davey is pulling up trees nationally – the Liberal Democrats are flatlining in the opinion polls and their national equivalent share of the vote in these local elections went down, not up. Losing ground to them is a clear sign that we’re getting something badly wrong.
Kemi’s core economic message is the right one. These are seats where small business owners are the lifeblood of their communities, where most voters don’t want a left-wing Labour Government whose answer is to spend more, borrow more, tax more and regulate more.
But her economic message isn’t resonating for two reasons.
First, we may think we’ve done enough apologising for the economic mistakes of the Johnson and particularly the Truss Governments, but many voters haven’t heard it.
And second, some of the other things Kemi talks about — her instinctive opposition to any closer trading relationship with the EU, her initial support for the Iran War, her opposition to even economically beneficial migration, her refusal to set any target to reduce carbon emissions, her talk of withdrawing from the ECHR — either directly conflict with the economic message or put off voters who would otherwise be attached by it.
There is one other lesson from last Thursday’s elections. There was quite a lot of anti-Reform tactical voting. That is likely to be an even bigger phenomenon in a general election. In those seats where we are under pressure from Reform, we are going to need to persuade Labour, Liberal Democrats and Green voters to vote tactically for us. In order to do that, we have to a) be clear how we are different from Reform, rather than sounding like a ‘lite’ version of them and b) be very clear that under no circumstances would we do a deal with Reform after the election.
Prosper UK Co-Chair Andy Street wrote on this site last month about the pro-business, pro-growth politics that we are championing. Last week’s results show this is the right approach. We know Reform aren’t going away. We know that we can’t outflank them on the right. We know that there are millions of people with centre or centre-right views who currently feel that no party truly represents them. And we know that there are left-wing voters who will tactically vote Conservative if we can prove we are best placed to beat Reform. There is a coalition there for us if we are prepared to be honest about what we are currently getting right and what we are getting wrong. If we prefer to delude ourselves that bad results were actually good, we can expect more of the same next year.
I hope Kemi and her team choose the former path because I have had enough of us losing elections. She clearly has the stomach for the fight. What she needs is the right strategy.
Gavin Barwell is a Vice Chair of Prosper UK, former MP and former Downing Street Chief of Staff.
I spent 11 hours on polling day knocking on the doors of potential Conservative supporters in Croydon to encourage them to come out and vote for us. In the two wards I helped in, four of our five candidates were successful. Across Croydon as a whole, however, the results were a mixed bag — we succeeded in getting Mayor Jason Perry re-elected, but lost five council seats.
It was a mixed bag nationally too. We got a higher national equivalent share of the vote than last year. We held off Reform in the likes of Bexley and Bromley. We made impressive gains in places like Enfield, Harlow and Peterborough and took back control — to coin a phrase — of Westminster City Council. A few weeks ago, Nigel Farage predicted that these elections would mark the end of us as a national party. We’re still here, and Kemi Badenoch deserves credit for that. She’s providing an effective opposition to this failing Government in the House of Commons.
But neither she nor anyone else should pretend that they were good results. Fifth in Scotland. Fourth in Wales. A net loss of 563 councillors in England. And these aren’t just valued elected representatives we’re losing; they are the cement that binds our local parties together. Yes, we survived on Thursday, but I want us to prosper not just survive. And as William Hague taught us, impressive Parliamentary performances do not necessarily mean electoral success.
To prosper in the multi-party environment that is almost certainly here to stay Kemi needs a different strategy. If these results tell us anything, it is that with Reform to our right we have no chance of reassembling our 2019 coalition. They have eclipsed us in much of the Red Wall. Yes, they didn’t do as well as last year and yes, their support may fall further as voters see what they’re like when they’re in charge of running councils, but they are not going away.
And trying to offer a ‘lite’ version of their policies won’t work. Voters who want that type of politics will stick with the real thing, and it will put off other voters we could otherwise appeal to.
But all is not lost. History teaches us we can still win even with a party to our right. In 2015, David Cameron led us to an outright majority despite UKIP getting nearly 13 per cent of the vote.
How did he do it? By assembling a coalition of centre-right and centrist voters who were united in not wanting either a left-wing government led by Ed Miliband or UKIP. Labour are likely to shift to the left again — either under Keir Starmer in an attempt to save his skin (although at the time of writing that looks increasingly unlikely) or under Angela Rayner or Andy Burnham. That gives us the chance to build a similar coalition.
Geographically, such a coalition would be built on three types of seat: those we already hold, traditional Conservative/Labour marginals and seats held by the Liberal Democrats, many of which have historically been strong Conservative seats.
So how are we doing in each of these types of seat? In the seats we currently hold, it is once again a mixed bag: we are well placed to hold some, but under threat from Reform in others. The way to see off the Reform threat is not to try to ape Reform — as David Gauke argued on this site on Monday, doing that will drive away moderate Conservative voters and kill off our chances of winning back seats held by the Liberal Democrats. The answer is to convince voters in those seats that we are best placed to beat Labour. There is a core Reform vote we are never getting back, but polling shows that many Reform voters are anti-Labour and currently think Reform is a better bet than us to beat them. We need to show that’s wrong by doing well in the other two types of seat.
We did well on Thursday in some of the traditional Conservative/Labour marginals in outer London and places like Harlow and Peterborough.
But we did terribly against the Liberal Democrats. We lost all 20 seats in Sutton. We only won two out of 45 seats on South Cambridgeshire, two out of 22 on St Albans, two out of 15 on Tunbridge Wells, none out of 15 on Winchester. It’s not like Ed Davey is pulling up trees nationally – the Liberal Democrats are flatlining in the opinion polls and their national equivalent share of the vote in these local elections went down, not up. Losing ground to them is a clear sign that we’re getting something badly wrong.
Kemi’s core economic message is the right one. These are seats where small business owners are the lifeblood of their communities, where most voters don’t want a left-wing Labour Government whose answer is to spend more, borrow more, tax more and regulate more.
But her economic message isn’t resonating for two reasons.
First, we may think we’ve done enough apologising for the economic mistakes of the Johnson and particularly the Truss Governments, but many voters haven’t heard it.
And second, some of the other things Kemi talks about — her instinctive opposition to any closer trading relationship with the EU, her initial support for the Iran War, her opposition to even economically beneficial migration, her refusal to set any target to reduce carbon emissions, her talk of withdrawing from the ECHR — either directly conflict with the economic message or put off voters who would otherwise be attached by it.
There is one other lesson from last Thursday’s elections. There was quite a lot of anti-Reform tactical voting. That is likely to be an even bigger phenomenon in a general election. In those seats where we are under pressure from Reform, we are going to need to persuade Labour, Liberal Democrats and Green voters to vote tactically for us. In order to do that, we have to a) be clear how we are different from Reform, rather than sounding like a ‘lite’ version of them and b) be very clear that under no circumstances would we do a deal with Reform after the election.
Prosper UK Co-Chair Andy Street wrote on this site last month about the pro-business, pro-growth politics that we are championing. Last week’s results show this is the right approach. We know Reform aren’t going away. We know that we can’t outflank them on the right. We know that there are millions of people with centre or centre-right views who currently feel that no party truly represents them. And we know that there are left-wing voters who will tactically vote Conservative if we can prove we are best placed to beat Reform. There is a coalition there for us if we are prepared to be honest about what we are currently getting right and what we are getting wrong. If we prefer to delude ourselves that bad results were actually good, we can expect more of the same next year.
I hope Kemi and her team choose the former path because I have had enough of us losing elections. She clearly has the stomach for the fight. What she needs is the right strategy.