Sir John Redwood is a former MP for Wokingham and a former Secretary of State for Wales.
Who will win the tussle between the Conservatives and Reform? To Richard Tice, it needs to be a fight to the death where he wishes to eliminate the Tories. The next leader of the Conservatives needs to understand their first task is to translate the natural advantages they have in Parliament as the official Opposition into being a more effective opposition to the Government than the Reform approach. Only if the public comes to see the Conservatives playing an effective role in challenging, limiting, and amending government errors and ideological indulgences will the Conservatives earn a hearing and stay in the fight.
We saw in the response to the King’s speech that the Conservatives rather than Reform were in the news that day as the Leader of the Opposition made the first response in the debate and played a part in the ceremony. It was more difficult for Reform, who were unable to get over a strong message on this occasion.
Even though the Conservatives are much depleted, as the Official Opposition they will have a large front bench and the right to make first response and to be on committees that Reform will not have. Reform though will probably look to say more challenging and newsworthy things, using media and social media where they can to take over a topic.
The voting figures tell their own story. The collapse in turnout in the recent election shows many were disillusioned with all the parties. People would say there is no point because they are all the same. They expected to be lied to and saw no need to encourage candidates to vote.
The Conservatives lost an astonishing 7.1 million votes compared to 2019. Labour lost 0.5 million despite its poor performance in 2019. The Lib Dems lost 200,000 but got cleverer at where they made most effort. They concentrated votes where they might create a win. Reform came from nowhere to be the third most popular party with 4.1 million votes. The Reform intervention helped Labour to win many more seats on low votes. It took just 23,620 votes to elect a Labour MP, 56,422 a Conservative, and 831,332 a Reform MP.
Some Conservatives say the party has to move more towards the Lib Dems and Labour to get back lost votes to them. The numbers indicate that the 7.1 million lost Conservative votes mainly came from people switching to Reform or staying at home. There were only 3.5 million Lib Dem votes in total, under half the number of votes the Conservatives lost. The Labour vote was down to just 33.7 per cent of votes cast, way below the usual percentage for one of the two main parties.
These figures should tell us people want something different from the policies and approaches offered by Conservatives, Labour, and Lib Dems which is why they all lost votes. Conservatives got hit by far the hardest because they had been in office and were therefore blamed for all that had happened for whatever reason. Many former Conservative voters complained that the Conservatives had become the Uni party with Labour. The COVID lockdowns, the higher taxes, and the high legal migration policies were largely shared and supported by both Conservatives and Labour.
This makes the task of the new Conservative leader to be much more difficult. The party has to apologise for past mistakes. The obvious ones that annoyed most people were the failure to deliver the promised cut in migration, the tax rises, and the inflation and squeeze on living standards. At the same time, the Conservatives need to use their position in Opposition to set out what is wrong with this government, establish a narrative, and make some predictions.
As the predictions come true so the credibility of the Opposition rises and people become more interested in what the Opposition offers instead. The task of Nigel Farage is to try to wrench the Opposition steering wheel away from the Conservatives. He too can highlight issues and draw on his past warnings. Opposition to excessive migration is one of his best-known stances. He may broaden out and attack the government on a wider front.
Judging by the King’s speech we have a government that is long on promises, good at soundbites, but short on practical measures that can deliver those promises. It is difficult to see how they can get to carbon-free electricity generation by 2030 given the magnitude of investment in renewables and grid that would take. Have they seen that we will lose most of our nuclear capacity from closures over the next four years?
A few planning tweaks will not lift the UK growth rate to the best in the G7 on a sustainable basis. The US is set to continue to outperform most of the time. Appointing another Border Commander above the Head of Border Force is no guarantee of stopping people traffickers. Meanwhile, they offer an amnesty to all the illegals who have arrived here. All this offers plenty of material for the Opposition parties to get stuck into.
The UK needs a better government than it has enjoyed so far this century. An active and wise Opposition can help bring this about. Having some competition between two parties that would oppose from the conservative side may produce more debate and challenge, whilst posing a big problem to the leaders of both the Conservatives and Reform. If they compete too well both end up with few seats.