Conservative values matter. They are more than platitudes. They matter because of their enduring power to transform lives. The ladders they provide for those who want to make something of themselves. The hope they give as they lift people up based on hard work and personal responsibility. The shared endeavour binding communities up and down the land.
History shows us what we can achieve when we win the trust of the British people. Disraeli expanding the franchise. Churchill bringing our country together in its darkest hour. Thatcher turbocharging our ambition and drive.
As we face the reality of our defeat, it would be easy to give in to the fatigue we all feel. To just focus on being a credible opposition or lose ourselves debating individual policy positions, as if we remain in government. But there is a bigger question of what it means to be a conservative today. If there wasn’t, the Reform party would not exist. It is not enough to call for “unity to win”. We need to ask ourselves, what are we uniting around? What are we winning for?
I believe that the majority of British people share our values. We cannot let them down again by exiting the political arena for a decade or more, handing the initiative to a Labour party that has no fundamental analysis of what is going wrong in the country or in the world beyond Orwellian chants of “Labour good, Tories bad”.
So, it is time to renew.
The country will not vote for us if we don’t know who we are or what we want to be. That is why I am seeking the leadership of the Conservative party to renew our movement and, with the support of the British people, to get it to work for our country again.
However, I cannot do this alone. In recent years we’ve placed our faith in the talents of one individual. Those days are over. Presidential politics don’t work in the UK. Conservatism must become a team effort once again as we renew our party from top to bottom. A new respect for our members, who in their daily lives are the backbone of communities across our country but are sneered at and pilloried by elitist commentators. We need to do right by our local councillors, many who ran successful councils but lost their seats because of behaviours in parliament.
Some will argue our loss was down to this policy, that person or some decision. The truth is our policy offer was incoherent, and we could not articulate why conservatism should matter to our fellow man. We thought we could just be managerially better at governing than the other side – a weak foundation at the best of times. Too often, we were led by focus groups. We talked right yet governed left. The public felt manipulated. Real leadership sets a principles-based vision about where to take the country and then inspires people to join that shared mission.
If I have the privilege to serve, we will speak the truth again. We will renew by starting from first principles: we can’t control immigration until we re-confirm our belief in the nation state and the sovereign duty it has, above all else, to serve its own citizens. Our public services will never fully recover from the pandemic until we remember that government should do some things well, not everything badly.
At the foundation of our renewal, and indeed the reassembly of the conservative family, is a confident set of principles about how our economy should work, and for whom it should work. The wealth of our nation is built upon our historic ability to capture the ingenuity and industry of our people, and the willingness of many to trade risk for reward. It’s become a dirty word, but our renewal must also mean a renewal for capitalism.
The task in front of us is bigger than any one person, policy or campaign, but with the right leader it could be the most exciting opportunity we’ve had for decades. I will start my campaign, not with pledges but with listening to our MPs and members on how we can create a movement that restores the conservative party and, in time, our country.
It is a time for renewal.
We can’t control immigration until we re-confirm our belief in the nation state and the sovereign duty it has, above all else, to serve its own citizens, says Conservative leadership contender Kemi Badenoch
