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This week, I was fortunate enough to host a hustings between the two candidates for leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, run by my campaign group Next Gen Tories. This was one of the only times the two candidates have gone directly head to head on the stage at the same time, creating a few more sparks than the more stilted split format.
As the name suggests, Next Gen Tories is a vehicle for party modernisation, geared towards focusing the party on winning back the support of young and working-age people. The urgency for this revival can’t be overstated. The age at which someone becomes likely to vote Conservative has now hit 63, and the party is significantly behind with every younger demographic. I went into the debate sceptical about whether the party can change its ways. The two major issues the Conservatives have made noise on since the election are the removal of the winter fuel payment for pensioners and opposing Labour’s homebuilding plans. Both positions aren’t without merit, but there’s a genuine risk the Conservatives forget how to speak to people who aren’t yet old enough to value the generous triple-lock pension.
The debate focused on this topic, and the two candidates clashed on the three broad policy areas Next Gen Tories argues most heavily need a new approach – work, home, and family. We believe that working-age people need a better deal on the balance of tax, to be able to afford a home and raise a family if they want to. One of the starkest differences in approach is each candidate’s attitude to policy. While Jenrick has set out wide-ranging policy prescriptions, Badenoch argues around values and observations on how our system of politics is broken and what it might take to fix it.
Jenrick’s pitch has echoes of Canada’s Pierre Poilievre, who has taken his party to a whopping 23-point lead with 18-35s. His prescription for work and growth includes a commitment to lower taxes on working-age people first to give them a fairer deal, and an end to low-quality degrees that saddle students with debt. He has a clear commitment to building significant urban density as a way to solve the housing crisis in a way that is both practical and deliverable with the Conservatives’ existing voter base. It’s clear he firmly believes in this agenda and will try to marry it with his pitch to the Right on immigration and the ECHR.
Badenoch argues that the party needs to focus on showing these voters that we share their values. She frames aspiration as the key principle that she would articulate as leader, pointing out that we are currently seen as the party for those who already have things rather than those who aspire to do so. On housing, she argues that until we change the incentives for politicians to oppose infrastructure, we will never get building rates up. In our debate, she also slammed the other parties for their record, pointing out that the Liberal Democrats have actively kiboshed all attempts to build new reservoirs, leading to water shortages. Badenoch clearly has a firm grasp on where the party has gone wrong, but plans to build party consensus on a route forward, rather than set out her detailed policy agenda now.
On family, the two were in agreement. Both argued it has become too expensive to have children, but that the state shouldn’t expand to try and compensate for a broken system. Each agreed on the need for major supply-side reforms to childcare and a rethink of family taxation. As the UK birthrate plummets, we can expect this area to become more salient regardless of who wins.
It’s reassuring that both candidates clearly understand the scale of the Conservative Party’s demographic challenge. The party has come a long way in just a few short months from an electoral strategy dedicated to maximising the pensioner vote, which left non-pensioners out in the cold. But I am not envious of the task ahead. It’s clear the party needs a total rewiring to reach a new generation of voters – a larger, younger membership, more councillors of working age and a wholesale review of our policy approach. None of this will be easy, but it is vital if the party is to take an intelligent approach to opposition, and provide a credible, compelling alternative to Labour’s plans.
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