Today, we have become used to vast swathes of the population switching long-held political allegiances, so it’s hard to imagine that there was a time when suggesting that working class voters could be tempted away from Labour was a novel idea. But that is exactly how it felt when Esther McVey and I set up Blue Collar Conservatism in 2012. This was when the Conservative Party was more interested in metropolitan liberals, despite the somewhat limited success of this strategy in 2010, when it failed to deliver a majority.
Yet we’re seeing the resurgence of such a strategy again with the establishment of Prosper UK – a new, centrist political organisation set up by Andy Street and Ruth Davidson. On hearing about the group, I felt myself transported back to the time when we first made the case that we should reach out to working class voters who shared our values and had been taken for granted by Labour. We argued that we could achieve realignment not by tacking Left, but with a genuinely conservative agenda. Indeed, these voters were already moving rightwards, despite our focus on more affluent liberals. In 2010, it was C2 voters swung by 4% and DE voters 6% compared to 2% for ABC1s.
Ahead of our launch, Lord Ashcroft produced a significant piece of polling which set out how C2DE (working class) voters were primed for a political shift. Based on a sample of 8,500 and multiple focus groups, it is a fascinating historical document. It pre-dates Brexit, the Red Wall’s collapse, our inability to hold it and now the rise of Reform UK, but it is all in there. The anxieties and suspicions about the system have since hardened, and with hindsight you can see how they have led to the political movements that followed.
As a road not taken, it makes me sad. A full-throated embrace of Blue Collar Conservatism could have delivered an orderly realignment and with it more pro-growth, pro-worker policies.
Nostalgia for 2006 or 2015 is unhelpful, especially when the prescription being offered is not even a route to potential victory.
Prosper’s claims of 7 million politically homeless centre and centre-right voters are overstated. By asking respondents to self-declare their centrism, many will be centre-left. The Tories would therefore be in danger of ignoring recently lost Conservative voters in favour of those who are unlikely to ever support a centre-right party. The comfort-zone politics that pretends we can forget the voters we have lost to Reform must be avoided.
Which brings me back to that old Ashcroft poll. Despite the passage of time, so much of it still feels relevant. The Suspicious Strivers and Anxious voters Ashcroft describes have continued their journey rightwards to Reform.
Polling consistently supports this. If we take YouGov’s January 2026 polling, Reform have a clear lead among social groups C2DE. Interestingly, the Conservatives are still in second place and, if you add support for the two parties together, the Right holds more than 50%. While the lead is not as great, the C1 group now tilts to Reform and once again, the Tories are in second place. This is the great body of working Britain. They might not currently be with the Conservatives, but they have stopped buying what the Left is selling.
Move into the AB category and the advantage shifts to the Left. Labour maintain a small lead, the Liberal Democrats do well and further Left, the Greens take their largest share of support. The Conservatives are still in second place and ahead of Reform. Looking back again to Ashcroft’s work, we are perhaps still better placed than Reform to unite the more economically secure traditional Conservative bloc with Blue Collar Britain. Ultimately, backing the wealth creators and the workers is one and the same.
Yes, we will need to layer other factors such as age over this, but it reinforces the case for this approach. Younger people want what their parents aspired to: a job, a home and a decent community in which to start a family. A party that helps them achieve that is one which could earn their support.
All of this means winning back those looking to Reform. Conservatives cannot write them off. We might want to close the door on the defectors, but that door must remain open to their voters. We must answer their concerns and speak to their aspirations. On immigration, lets match Reform, and once we have called that card, our hand under Kemi Badenoch is much stronger on jobs, business, welfare and much more besides.
So, thanks to Prosper for that trip down memory lane, but a play for the centre was not our best move then and it certainly is not now. Should Ashcroft ever read this, perhaps it is time to update us on where those Suspicious Strivers are now and how we can best deliver for them.
A century ago you had to be rich to get any kind of choice over your clothes. And if you weren’t in the upper echelons of society you could forget going on a foreign holiday. Today, mass production ensures there is an abundance of clothes to choose from at all budgets, and cheap flights have […]
It’s been reported that officials in the Trump administration have given their UK counterparts a dressing-down over the Online Safety Act and the social-media ban for under-16s. As someone who previously worked on digital trade for the UK government, this does not surprise me. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have seen British laws such […]
It’s not often that a Labour announcement reminds you of music. Reading Andy Burnham’s confirmation of his commitment to Net Zero in the Guardian last week, I couldn’t help but think of The Who’s 1971 epic rocker ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’. Within it are the lyrics: ‘And the world looks just the same, And history […]
