‘It’s just mid-term blues’. ‘It’s just a protest vote – they’ll come back’. These are statements I don’t want Conservative spokespeople to dwell on today in response to its local election performance. If they merely put their performance down to this, it will show that they fundamentally misunderstand the public mood at the moment and precisely why the party hasn’t done well.
That’s not to say that the UKIP vote is solid. They can be won back. But if the established political parties don’t change, then people could easily think at the 2015 election ‘they said they would change, they haven’t, so I’m still sticking with UKIP’. The people have seen so much to cause disillusionment with establishment politics – whether it’s ’90s Tory sleaze, 2000s Labour spin, the MPs expenses scandal, and the Lib Dem’s broken promise on tuition fees, that many don’t know where to turn now. In today’s anti-politics mood, it would be the height of arrogance for the established parties to merely assume that these voters will automatically come back. Let us not forget that many Tory-UKIP defectors defected on points of principle such as same-sex marriage and EU withdrawal. Some defected because they’re fed up with being insulted all the time. The damage has been done and angry people don’t forget easily. No-one should underestimate the challenge the Tories will face in getting these voters back.
The Tories need to understand that they face three hurdles. One is to fend off the very real UKIP threat and to stop losing votes. The next is to gain 7-9 percentages points in order to close the gap with Labour. And then the final challenge is to gain another 7-9 points to get a majority of 1 – something they couldn’t achieve when Labour was at the nadir of its unpopularity.
So the Tories have to do something very special to pull this off. They have to tackle historic perceptions issues – there are still too many areas where people switch off as soon as you say the word ‘Tory’. The Tory brand is nowhere near to being fully detoxified.
But there is also now a new ‘toxifying’ element hurting the Tory brand. The Conservative Party is now seen by some as an integral part of the affluent liberal establishment, sharing the outlook of the liberal elite rather than the working and aspirational classes. And this is putting off not only former Tory voters, but working class voters too. By focusing on liberal elite pet issues in the past – such as climate change and overseas aid, the Tories have left space for UKIP to occupy the anti-establishment ground that the Tories should naturally be occupying. Moreover, the establishment’s campaign to undermine UKIP over the weekend dramatically backfired. By coming down so heavily on UKIP, the Tories were seen as part of a co-ordinated effort by the establishment to bully the ‘little upstart’ in the playground.
A key lesson of this election is that the Tories must not behave like the political class in future. It must become the anti-establishment establishment. It must back the workers against the sneering liberal elite. This means that the Tories shouldn’t be carrying out the political class’ same old practices. The public is disillusioned with politicians who make promises for the sake of it and then never deliver them. So when the Tories want to raise the prospect of temporarily withdrawing from the ECHR or bringing forward legislation on a EU referendum, they better make sure they deliver them, otherwise they’ll generate even more disillusionment.
People also want to vote for parties and politicians who they can relate to and who can understand their struggles and concerns. You cannot be a party for the people, if you’re not a party of the people. The Tories must understand that this perception of the Conservative Party as an exclusive social club for the privileged is hurting its prospects. The perception is also being exacerbated by recent policy judgements. Many of the recent u-turns have come about because policy has either not stood up to scrutiny or would not stack up in the real world. Take the u-turn over home extension planning approvals. Anybody who lives in the real world will know how much trouble and neighbourly disharmony that that policy would have caused up and down the country. Yet the policy machine initially thought it was a perfectly workable policy.
On too many occasions the Tories have been behind the curve of public opinion. Take their stance on UKIP voters. Their stance has changed since the weekend. Once it seemed to be the party line to insult them, now the line is to ‘respect’ their concerns (Justine Greening on Question Time got the tone exactly right). Why wasn’t this the Conservative line ages ago? If Number 10 was fully in tune with the public mood, it wouldn’t be making such glaring political errors.
Anybody who has worked in Westminster will know how divorced it is from the real world, and how unrepresentative it is. The Tories could be the party that opens up Westminster and give it a new lease of life (there’s no chance Labour and the Lib Dems will want to destroy the cosy liberal elitist circle that exists there now). The key question is will the Tories match their rhetoric about understanding people and spreading opportunity with action? As well as demonstrating they have the right policies and values that chime with the people, the Tories need to demonstrate that they are really serious about attracting new (and old) supporters to their fold.
I could go on all day about this, but I must end it there. Nonetheless, I am currently writing an article examine in more detail what the Tories should do next and how to tackle its perceptions issues. So keep in touch with this blog and I’ll provide some more thoughts soon.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
