3 hours Ago By The Telegraph
Leading Tories are assembling to plot a route back to power with a return to traditional Conservative values. MPs, Lords, former MPs and leading conservative thinkers from every wing of the party will come together to diagnose the reasons for the disastrous election defeat and prescribe a solution. Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove, Claire Coutinho, Sir Brandon Lewis and Nick Timothy, the Telegraph columnist and MP, are among those who will have formal roles in the new organisation, called Conservative Networks.
It is understood to have the backing of all four Tory leadership candidates. In some respects, it will mirror Labour Together, the think tank credited with propelling Sir Keir Starmer to the party leadership and then Downing Street under Morgan McSweeney, who is now Sir Keir’s head of political strategy. With only 121 MPs, who will have to shadow 125 government ministers, there are fears that the parliamentary party will be overstretched and will have little breathing space to come up with new ideas and work up fully-formed policies.
The new organisation will aim to fill that gap. It will be run by David Johnston, the ex-children’s minister and former MP for Wantage, who grew up on a council estate in east London and ran a charity helping disadvantaged children before he went into politics. He told The Telegraph that as well as forming policies that return the party to one of low taxes, small state and public service reform, there was a need to “find the shy Tories” and bring them back to the Conservatives.
He said: “Over the course of our period in government, we lost the visible support of almost all the groups we used to count on, bar the pensioners, and even then we lost some of them to Reform UK. “If we want to be in government again, we have got to rebuild the networks of support that we have lost over time, the ‘small-c’ conservatives who do not want to be members or donors but who want the party to do well. “So we want to sit round the table with doctors, farmers, small business owners and so on, understand what is going on in their fields and how we can help them, then act as a broker between them and members of the shadow cabinet.
“There are a lot of Conservatives out there and we are going to go and find them and by doing so make us a better party.” Conservative Networks will launch in late October or early November so that it can be up and running in time to help whoever becomes the next Tory leader. It will have a parliamentary board whose members will include MPs and Lords, including Sir Iain, the former party leader, and Ms Coutinho, the shadow energy security secretary.
There will also be an advisory group that will include former MPs Mr Gove, soon to take over as editor of The Spectator, and Sir Brandon, as well as the heads of Right-wing think tanks. Mr Johnston is adamant that factionalism will play no part in the new organisation, which will not be a vehicle for any future leadership candidate and is not endorsing any of the current contenders. It will be funded by donors whose names have not yet been made public.
‘I’ve voted Conservative all my life, but...
.’ was probably the most common opening to doorstep conversations any of us heard during the general election. The rest of the sentence would often be related to immigration.
But it was just as often related to a range of other complaints. Infighting. Incompetence.
Policies which small business owners felt had hindered rather than helped them. And they all added up to what the polls had been suggesting: that, over time, we had lost the support of most groups other than pensioners – and we lost a not insignificant proportion of those, too. That’s why I’m bringing people from across the parliamentary party and broader Conservative family together to launch Conservative Networks, an organisation to build networks of people and organisations that want to see Conservative governments elected – Conservative governments that do the things they expect them to.
Things that, whichever wing of the party you’re on, you should be able to agree with. Keeping taxes low. Looking to families, businesses and charities to tackle problems before looking to government.
Promoting aspiration and social mobility; reforming public services, not just spending more money on them; being on the side of the consumer rather than the producer. Conservative Networks will do three things. It will create networks of people who are supporters of the Conservative Party but might not, for whatever reason, want to become a party member or activist.
This is a conservative country and the number of people who privately want the Conservative Party to succeed dramatically outnumbers those that want to join the party. There will be networks of businesses and public sector professionals, of farmers and young people – and plenty more. Networks that can help the new leader and shadow cabinet in understanding why we lost the support of people like them and, crucially, how we can get it back.
The second thing it will do is help broaden the range of people coming forward to stand for election or to act as advisers to those who do. The backgrounds of MPs and their advisers has narrowed considerably in recent decades towards people who have spent most – or all – of their lives in politics. However brilliant those people can be, to make effective decisions we need a broad range of people who, whatever they’ve done before – whether worked on a hospital ward, started a business or, like me, been a charity chief executive – have done things other than just politics.
Through the networks that we build, we will find people who may never have considered standing for election or being an adviser, who can help the party to have a better understanding of the areas it needs to make policy and legislation for. The third thing it will do is help restore policy so that we’re recognisably Conservative – clear, proud and convincing. We already have lots of great think tanks on the centre-Right and there’s no need to create another one.
But the people in the networks created will give the shadow cabinet focused, practical policy suggestions based on what is happening in their fields of expertise. However, right now, the most important thing we need is not the policies to write a new manifesto, but to spend time listening to people about why they lost faith in us and how we can restore it. With only 121 MPs at present, a lot of the parliamentary party’s capacity is going to be taken up by activity in parliament, so Conservative Networks will help ensure it can stay properly connected to the world beyond Westminster.
Importantly, we will not be associated with any particular wing of the party or any leadership candidate past or present as factionalism is one of the factors that has meant we’ve lost support. All of the candidates to be next leader of the Conservative Party have been briefed privately and expressed support for what we’ll be doing and on our parliamentary board and advisory group we will have people from all parts of the party – recognising that we all need to take the fight to Labour, not each other. In doing so, I hope we can support the new leader and their team, whoever they are, as they seek to restore the public’s trust in us.
The mess that Labour are already making shows there is no time to waste..
