As with every race to become Conservative leader since the rule change introduced by William Hague, the candidates vying to become the party’s next commander-in-chief must face in three directions: their fellow MPs, the party membership, and prospective Conservative voters (the British public at large).
While these appeals must be made in that order in terms of winning ballots, and while some of the recent positions and pitches made by the candidates suggest a certain focus on one or two of the three over the other, the very public nature of the contest and the speed at which information travels in the modern age mean that, in reality, all three audiences are watching (with various degrees of attention) the process all at once.
And herein lies the problem – these audiences are very different.
The recent election defeat produced a lot of churn in terms MPs, but the Parliamentary Conservative party (PCP) remains as at odds with the membership as it ever was. As David Jeffery outlined for the UK and EU think tank, the post-election PCP remains similar in terms of its divides to pre-election, with around 2-in-5 still associated with the liberal ‘Bright Blue’ group, one quarter affiliated to the European Research Group, and 35 per cent aligned with the Blue Collar Conservatism group.
There is no such typology of Conservative party members, but evidence from polling (including below) consistently suggests the membership is much more right-wing than the balance in the PCP.
As well, plenty of polling evidence (again, including the below) has demonstrated that the Conservative party membership is significantly more right-wing, and has significantly different priorities, to even Conservative voters, let alone the wider public.
That there are differences between the Parliamentary Conservative party, the party membership, and the voters at large is not news. But recent polling data sheds light on some extremely tricky mismatches in public and membership priorities which candidates must now navigate which could store up problems for the long term.
The most major of all problems is the seeming demands from Conservative party members to shift their party to the right and to appeal to Reform UK voters being at odds with where the public is positioned regarding Reform UK and ideological positioning.
For instance, YouGov polling suggests that no fewer than 42 per cent of Tory members would welcome a merger between the Conservatives and Reform UK (with half opposed). But the same is true of just 16 per cent of the general public, and a little over a third of the Conservative 2019 voter coalition which propelled Boris Johnson to power in 2019.
Also, half of Conservative party members believe the next leader should move the party to the political right of where Rishi Sunak positioned it for the 2024 General Election.
However, 45 per cent of the British public think there is already little that distances the Conservatives from Reform UK (39 per cent think they are “fairly” or “very” different, while 16 per cent “don’t know”) – a party which just 26 per cent of Brits rated favourability pre-election, and almost two-thirds ranked as their ‘fourth most preferred party’ or lower immediately post-election.
In that same survey, the British public told us at YouGov that they preferred the Conservatives, as they currently are, to Reform UK by a margin of 65-35.
As well, the public told YouGov back in January that they already saw the Conservatives as just as right-wing as 2014-2016 UKIP, and told us in June that they already saw the party as significantly closer to ‘rich people’, ‘businesspeople and the city’, than ‘people like you’.
All of which suggests a ‘lurch to the right’ may not be particularly helpful, from the perspective of voter coalition building.
As well as being a potentially risky strategy vis-à-vis the rest of the electorate, moving to the right to win over voters from (or merge with) Reform UK is also a pretty stern case of ‘easier said than done’.
Reform UK voters are, in the words of Adam McDonnell,my YouGov colleague, nothing short of “belligerent” toward the Conservatives.
Just before the 2024 General Election, YouGov asked Reform UK (intended) voters for their views on the Conservatives. At that stage, only a third would have voted Conservative in 2024 if there was no Reform UK candidate in their constituency, while just 19 per cent said that they would see a Conservative-led government as preferable to a Labour one. Almost three-quarters said they had an unfavourable view of the Conservatives.
There is very little in the data here to indicate that a rightward drift on the part of the Conservatives would yield immediate gains with Reform voters.
Conversely, there is much to suggest that a rightward, Reform-orientated drift by the Conservatives would be a highly risky move by the party about voters at large.
Moving on from left-right orientation, how well do the issue priorities of Conservative members and the British public align? Evidence from the latest YouGov Conservative party membership survey and latest ‘most important issues’ tracker data hint at a closer match in this regard.
The top issues for the public are currently, in order: the economy, immigration and asylum, and health.
And for the Conservative party membership: immigration and asylum, the economy, and defence and security (with health a close fourth).
The fact that members share two of the same top priorities as the British public is encouraging for any candidate looking to synthesise demands from their base and the voters at large, though the mismatch in the ordering of those priorities requires attention.
To finish, buried within the Tory membership survey is also forewarning of a potentially fatal trap for the Conservatives in their quest to win the next election.
When asked which came closest to their view, 56 per cent of party members suggested it was more important that their next leader ‘represents true Conservative values’ compared to 34 per cent who said it was more important that they are ‘best positioned to beat Labour at the next election’.
Such findings, and such divergence between the membership and the public, bring back memories of the position which the Labour party found itself during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader – particularly toward the latter stages.
Now, it may be of course that Tory members do not see the two as in competition – that by aligning closer to ‘traditional Conservative values’, they will win elections. But the public opinion data presented above suggests this is probably wide of the mark.