Whoever becomes the next Conservative leader must get their story on what the Tories did wrong – and right – straight, writes Henry Newman
Does it matter who the next leader of the Conservative Party is? A large slice of Britain won’t be paying much attention to the Tories, or to politics more broadly, until closer to the next general election. There are even some Conservatives who don’t see the choice as all that significant. Some don’t believe their party can win the next election, given their historic defeat last month. In my view they are mistaken.
Most Conservatives are somewhere in the five stages of grief. Those in the denial stage might say (with some justification) that ‘if you look at the results, you can see a path back to victory’. Others are in the anger phase, directing their fury at one or another recent Conservative leader for their mistakes. You can imagine the bargaining and depression steps are still to come. And, you can see that acceptance may be some way off. That’s why it’s a good thing that the competition for a new leader will stretch well beyond the summer.
The Conservative’s crisis is existential for the future of the party. A series of wrong decisions could plunge the Tories towards total irrelevance. And the Liberal Democrats and Reform are on the march. Such a change in fortunes for the world’s most long-standing and successful political party might delight those opposed to the Conservative Party. But it would impoverish our democracy which depends on healthy competition between strong political parties.
The next Conservative leader will have to put the Party back together again. They will have to remind Conservatives that their prime opponents are meant to be in the Labour Party, rather than fellow Tories. That’s easier said than done. Factionalism runs deep. Slights and snubs of long ago are still remembered.
So far there’s no commonly-recognised view about what went wrong. Agreeing which parts of the legacy of the last 14 years in office to defend will be harder than deciding what bits can be abrogated. There will need to be an agreed version of the truth. The leader will need to tell a story about what the Conservative Party got right, as well as the mistakes that were made.
After years in government where relevance is guaranteed, opposition is a shock. The leader will struggle to secure media attention. They will have to make do with a few short seconds on TV bulletins, or a couple of sentences at the end of a newspaper article, responding to the latest Labour announcement. Anyway, the public often just won’t be listening. And they might get irritated if it seems all the opposition does is oppose.
So the new leader of the Conservative Party will need to decide what they are for, as well as what they are against. One veteran of the Tony Blair years, when the Tories were last in opposition, told me that it’s key to work out on what you can support the Labour government. Rishi Sunak has already pledged backing on Ukraine policy. The opposition should also endorse Labour’s reforms to speed up infrastructure building and their plans to expand private provision in the NHS.
Another challenge will be looking the part: to project an image of a prospective government-in-waiting; to restore professionalism and discipline; and to convey all that without words. A good test is to watch politicians speak with the sound off. That way you can more easily judge how they come across.
Opposition is a difficult, lonely place. The leader will need resilience and perseverance. Everyone will be a critic – at least until things start going really well. And while a new leader may get an initial poll bounce, they won’t be able to transform the fortunes of the party quickly.
The next few months will see a slow beauty parade unfurl in front of the Party – first the MPs and then the membership. Each candidate will have the chance to show off his or her best attributes. By the time the decision is made, the Conservatives should have reached acceptance about the scale of their historic defeat. Then the long, slow march back to power can begin.
Henry Newman was a special adviser to Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, and runs the Whitehall Project substack