To lead the Conservatives to victory at the next election, the party’s new leader must defy history.
Three months ago, the government of the United Kingdom changed hands for the fourth time in half a century.
After Labour was ejected in 1979, its next prime minister, Tony Blair, did not enter parliament until 1983.
After the Tories lost power in 1997, their next prime minister, David Cameron, did not enter parliament until 2001.
After Labour lost power again in 2010, its next prime minister, Keir Starmer, did not enter parliament until 2015.
Alert readers may spot a pattern there. Given that the Tories have even fewer MPs than the losing parties held at those three elections, the chances are high that the next Conservative prime minister is not yet in parliament. What can Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick do to beat those odds?
Let’s start with some basic facts about this year’s general election.
Yes, the Conservative/Reform split helped Labour win a landslide victory with barely one-third of the national vote. Had Conservative and Reform voters lined up behind a single candidate, Labour would have won 144 fewer seats. It would have been almost 60 seats short of a majority in parliament.
However, what is sauce for the nationalist goose is also sauce for the progressive gander. Suppose Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green voters also backed a single candidate in each constituency. We would have 447 progressive MPs and 162 Conservative/Reform MPs—different from the actual 483-126 result, but not vastly so. (These figures exclude Northern Ireland, and seats won by the SNP, Plaid Cymru and independent candidates.) Even without the Tory/Reform split, there was a clear progressive majority. Overall, more than 15m people voted Labour, Lib Dem or Green, while just under 11m voted Conservative or Reform.
A major reason for that 15m-11m division is that the Tories lost almost as many votes to their left this year as to their right. A post-election survey of more than 10,000 people for Labour Together found that 23 per cent of those who voted Conservative in 2019 voted Reform this year, while 22 per cent voted Labour (12 per cent), Lib Dem (7 per cent) or Green (3 per cent).
To be sure, the Tories need to win back as many Reform voters as they can. The risk is that if they target only Reform voters, their shift to the nationalist right is likely to alienate the moderates they also need—especially in the seats they lost to the Lib Dems, where voters refuse to demonise immigrants who come to the UK to work.
Can the circle be squared? Is there a way to appeal to both the nationalist voters who switched to Reform, and the more moderate internationalists who moved in the opposite direction?
I believe there is. At the heart of the matter is the vexed issue of immigration. The party’s new leader needs not just to stop competing with Reform on numbers but abandon the whole “stop the boats” approach to building the Conservative brand.
Immigration is an emotive subject at the best of times. In recent years it has been bedevilled by misinformation on a massive scale. A decade ago, lurid tales were told of EU citizens flocking to the UK as welfare tourists, living off out-of-work benefits. A YouGov survey found that, on average, the public thought this was true of 17 per cent of EU immigrants. Ukip supporters put the figure at 25 per cent. The truth? Just 3 per cent—less than British-born citizens.
Today’s concern is asylum seekers. Asked what proportion of new immigrants have arrived in Britain for that reason, a recent Ipsos survey for British Future finds that the average answer from the general public is that they comprise 37 per cent of all immigrants. Reform voters say 51 per cent. The real number? Seven per cent.
At this point I am tempted to make the, to me overwhelming, moral case for the new Conservative leader (and, indeed, all mainstream politicians) to confront these misconceptions, and debate immigration on the basis of facts, not illusions.
However, a moral argument from someone who has never voted Tory in his life might have little impact on a candidate for the party’s leadership. Instead, let me put the case in terms of self-interest—the approach that will maximise the Conservative vote at the next general election.
Debates about immigration are usually presented in binary terms: good or bad, too many or too few, let them in or keep them out. In fact, public attitudes are more nuanced. Most of us want to admit people who come to Britain to work and keep out those who don’t.
The latest data, from the Ipsos survey, confirm past research on this—but now includes Reform voters. Ipsos asked respondents whether they would like the number of immigrants to be increased, stay the same or reduced in each of 13 roles. In not a single case do a majority of the general public want the number reduced.
The most unpopular immigrants are bankers: 37 per cent want their numbers cut. But fewer than one in five voters want immigration reduced in seven of the 13 groups: doctors, nurses, engineers, care home workers, academics, seasonal fruit and vegetable pickers, and computer and software experts.
Among Reform voters, the percentages that want immigration reduced are higher. But even here, the number that want immigration reduced tops 50 per cent—and then only narrowly—in just two cases: students and bankers.
In other words, much of the apparent hostility to immigration—particularly but not only among Reform voters—is based on false beliefs about what is actually happening today.
I invite our 650 MPs—especially Jenrick and Badenoch—to conduct this thought experiment. Put the past to one side. Design an immigration policy from scratch: one that would be good for our economy, society and public services, and which, if implemented successfully, would command broad public approval. What would that policy be?
The polling evidence suggests that the key is to separate out two things: letting in the people we do want to come to Britain (in fact the great majority, when considered job by job), and keeping out those we don’t (in fact a small minority).
This stance would help us—again, especially Jenrick and Badenoch—answer the conundrum: how can the Conservative party win back the voters it has lost both to its nationalist right and moderate left? The key thing is that Reform conflates the two groups. It encourages and exploits a fear of immigration rooted in the false belief that Britain is being overrun by asylum seekers and ne’er-do-wells. Until and unless the Conservatives fight and defeat Reform on that central point, they will be stuck with a Reform-lite policy of promising big cuts in the overall numbers, which would starve Britain of many of the workers that we badly need.
That is not all. Any Reform-lite policy would give Nigel Farage the chance to tell voters: “If you want big cuts in immigration, vote for the party that stands for the real thing, not the pale imitation that failed so badly when it was in charge.”
To avoid this trap, the Tories need to say clearly, loudly and persistently that Farage is wrong about what is happening today and what needs to be done tomorrow.
The winner of the current leadership contest will doubtless use their victory to speech to promise to unite the party. The question is, what kind of unity? Immigration provides both their greatest challenge and the greatest hope. They need to win back seats such as West Bromwich from Labour and West Dorset from the Lib Dems.
“Let in all those workers we need and keep out the minority who want to take Britain for a ride” could be the basis of winning back both constituencies, and dozens of others now held by Labour and the Lib Dems—but only if the new Tory leader first demolishes Farage’s false prospectus.
