Next year’s local election is about more than retaining and extending Conservative representation at a local level. It is about our party’s revival which must start at the grassroots.
In London, Conservatives ended up with just nine MPs out of 75. In the London Assembly election just two months earlier, the Conservatives returned a much stronger eight assembly members out of 25.
Those leaving a West End show find every pub or bar nearby closed, late-night food options are increasingly limited, and a night out beyond midnight has to be meticulously planned, with spontaneous hopping from venue to venue increasingly impossible.
We’ve seen the way that the Conservative Government committing to Net Zero by 2050 has turbocharged research, innovation, and transition away from fossil fuels and towards green technologies. Committing to phase out diesel from London by 2030 would have exactly the same impact.
We must fully include, trust, and listen, to those local leaders from the voluntary party who know exactly how to win on their doorstep.
Every major electoral reform for the past two hundred years has been heralded as the death knell of Toryism. Instead our party adapted – and thrived.
It is time to build the quality homes London needs. Give up the tower block agenda and embark on a diverse programme of affordable house-building to help Londoners thrive.
A new era beckons, the strings on the public purse are loosening, and it’s time to show what a compassionate, one-nation Conservative government can achieve.
Increasingly I see good Tories dismissed as ‘wets’ or ‘nutters’. Not in a jovial way, but in a concerted bid to distance ourselves from each other. This attitude might fulfil left wing ideals of political purity but it won’t win elections.