Sabrina Carpenter worked for a decade to become an overnight success. Likewise, if the Tories want to turn their fortunes around, the hard work on policy starts now, says Emma Revell
It wasn’t quite a Taylor Swift moment. Keir Starmer wasn’t scrounging for hospitality tickets, for one thing. But it certainly felt like I was in the spotlight – sitting on the main stage at Conservative Party Conference, my picture beamed to TVs across the Birmingham ICC, discussing how the Tory party could actually, y’know, fix itself.
The discussion focused on how to make policy in opposition, and the role that think tanks like the Centre for Policy Studies, where I work, could play in developing it. But the chair opened with a very pertinent first question: was now the time to be thinking about policy at all?
If you’re thinking about what went wrong for the Tories, there are all kinds of things you can talk about. The public were almost without exception fed up of incompetence, of parties, of leaks and backstabbing, of an endless succession of Prime Ministers and sleaze and scandals. Some of the leadership candidates had even suggested that policy wasn’t their immediate priority, should they become leader of the opposition. First, they said, we must fix the party machine and restore faith in the Conservatives as a party of government. Then we’ll think about policy.
None of us on the stage disagreed that restoring competence is critical. But regaining the public’s trust is a necessary but not sufficient condition for victory in 2029. Because the Tories didn’t lose because of a general perception of failure. They lost because they made specific policy pledges – to cut legal and illegal migration, to keep taxes from rising, to build new hospitals, to get waiting lists down – and failed to deliver on pretty much every single one of them.
The Tories lost because they made specific policy pledges and failed to deliver on pretty much every single one of them
Furthermore, if the last few years have taught us anything, it is that we cannot predict where we’ll be in five years’ time. Historically, an election after four years is much more usual than waiting out a full five-year term. And good policy doesn’t fall from the sky. The charts are currently dominated by Sabrina Carpenter and Chappel Roan, who have worked for a decade to become overnight successes. The same applies to policymaking.
Laying the foundations
Take ‘Foundations’, a phenomenal recent essay by Sam Bowman, Ben Southwood and my colleague Samuel Hughes on why Britain has stagnated. A brilliant synthesis of years of work by many talented people, distilled into a format so well thought out and accessible it took Westminster by storm.
It also echoes Labour’s agenda. But Keir Starmer didn’t start talking about being on the side of builders, not blockers in May 2024. Yes, his party went through its own Nimby period, decrying Robert Jenrick’s proposed housing reforms as ‘a developer’s charter’.
But after Starmer converted to the side of the angels, he began laying the foundations – sorry – for Labour’s housebuilding and planning reforms more than 12 months prior to the election. By the time the manifesto was published, everyone knew broadly what to expect. The policy had the backing of major housebuilders, who had had time to read and understand Labour’s plans and, one would assume, feed into them. The public were also not taken by surprise – the pro-housebuilding narrative was very familiar by the time they went to the ballot box.
Contrast that with Theresa May’s performance in 2017, when she sprang adult social care reform on an unprepared electorate – and Conservative parliamentary colleagues – and paid the price, losing her majority.
Or take the education reforms implemented since 2010. Michael Gove, Nick Gibb and others had, quietly, in the background, been working on developing the new schools programme for years before Gordon Brown finally called the election. Not only was the bulk of the legislation drafted and ready to go well before the ink was dry on the coalition agreement, there had been a major effort to ensure there was support for the policy within the education sector. Yes, there was resistance from what Gove christened ‘the Blob’. But by the time the laws were in place, a committed group of headteachers and parents, as well as groups like the New Schools Network, were ready to hit the ground running setting up these schools and proving that they could deliver for children.
Laying the groundwork
Politicians who have just lost over 200 colleagues may well feel like now isn’t the time to talk about ideas. But if you wind the clock back 50 years, that’s exactly what the Tories did. The Centre for Policy Studies was founded by Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph in the wake of a Tory election loss to understand, explain and then solve the problems facing Britain. It is in large part due to the groundwork they did 50 years ago that Thatcher, and the country, became so successful in the years that followed her election.
Britain faces a number of almost impossible challenges – low growth, stagnant productivity, rising economic inactivity, record migration, a housing crisis, the highest energy prices in the developed world, and an NHS which falters every single winter. Whether in government or opposition, politicians cannot afford to see policymaking as something that can wait until tomorrow.
Emma Revell is external affairs director at the Centre for Policy Studies