The Conservatives need to win back voters who have gone “on strike” over the failure to tackle immigration and extremism, Robert Jenrick has said.
The former immigration minister argued the Tories under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak need to admit to their “mistakes” in a bid to reclaim their voting base ahead of the general election.
It came after the party suffered a drubbing in the local elections last week, losing nearly 500 council seats, the Blackpool South by-election and the West Midlands mayoralty.
Jenrick, speaking at the launch event for a paper on curbing net migration published by the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) think tank, said he had “tried to set out a series of policies that could be implemented before the general election, such as what I’m saying today on legal migration, which would convince some of those Conservative voters – who are essentially on strike – to come back and support the party at the general election”.
And he added that his proposed measures could “also to persuade some of those voters who are considering voting Reform that we do care about the issues that they do, which are principally immigration, but also on crime, on extremism and on lower taxes”.
Jenrick, who quit as immigration minister in protest at Sunak’s leadership on the issue, added: “If we can do that, I think we can persuade more of those former Conservative voters to come back and to support us.
“But that will require honesty, it requires levelling with the public about the mistakes of the past and using every last minute we have in office… to actually deliver positive change.”
At the event this morning, Jenrick insisted there was still time to save the Conservatives’ hopes of remaining in power after the general election.
Recommendations outlined in the paper for curbing migration included: abolishing the graduate route; scrapping the 600,000 annual international student target; ditching the shortage occupation list; raising care workers’ minimum wage; and capping care visas.
Jenrick also called for the Home Office to be broken up into a new Department of Border Security and Immigration Control, and a Department for Policing and National Security.
He said he wanted to see the government restore the commitment to return UK net migration to the tens of thousands, and create annual caps for each visa route as part of a ‘migration budget’ akin to the Treasury’s control of the country’s finances.
Speaking for the government, energy minister Claire Coutinho told Times Radio this morning that her party was aligned with the public’s priorities – despite the local election results.
“I do think we have a positive message that we need to communicate to people,” she said. “I think what we need to do is to go where the country is. They want us to be tough on immigration. They want us to be cognisant of the fact that they’ve had a difficult time when it comes to public finances, which is why we’re putting forward £900 of tax cuts.
“They want us to make sure that we’re protecting their security, which we are when it comes to defence, when it comes to energy as well.”