Securing the future of the Tory Party

A few weeks ago, we wrote about how the Tory party has undergone a policy shift towards targeting “wokeism” and a race to the bottom on tax cuts as the final two fight for the votes of 0.2% of the country to cement themselves as the next Prime Minister.

But while this fight for the predominantly white middle aged affluent male vote is underway, it represents yet another cycle of neglecting the future of the party: the under 30’s vote.

The Conservatives have been ceding the youth vote for some time now, election after election we see Labour dominate the vote share of the 18-30 age bracket. This is hardly surprising when the Conservative Party has raised the tax burden to the highest in 40 years – with the controversial National Insurance tax rise predominantly hitting younger, lower-paid workers. At the same time, Liz Truss is pledging to restore the triple lock on pensions at a cost of £21bn to the taxpayer. The Conservative government appears happy to burden the younger generation with a huge tax bill, and with real wages in 2025 predicted to be lower than in 2008, you can’t blame the youth for thinking there are better options out there.

So, what can the party do to fix this?

Start with housing. The idea for young people to own their own place is disappearing quickly, already the wage to price ratio has spiralled out of control. You now need 9 times your salary to afford your home on average, and you can forget about buying in major cities like London. Even renting is unaffordable with landlords hiking up prices, gouging any chances of saving. There needs to be a drive to build a sustainable supply of housing and provide the infrastructure to support it. Planning permission needs to change, for too long have homeowners eager to protect their own valuations been able to resist new developments unnecessarily.

Secondly, firm inviolable commitments to the environment need to be made. It’s no secret that the environment ranks as the single most important issue amongst Gen Z. With record breaking temperatures becoming more frequent, the evidence of climate change is clear as day. So, it is difficult to see Liz Truss encouraging people to recycle, whilst simultaneously backing fracking and proposing to suspend the green levy. Renewables, which have been more economically viable than non-renewables for years, should be invested in with large scale energy storage being the final step in being able to solve the problem of unreliable supply.

The Conservative party needs to think beyond this election, its future voters demands aren’t complicated, a place to live and a planet to live on. Let’s hope that they can deliver.

A cloud of royal hypocrisy casts a shadow on the UN’s Nelson Mandela Day

The United Nations should have been celebrating the memory of Nelson Mandela and honouring the late leader’s contributions to freedom and equality. Unfortunately, the focus of this year’s Nelson Mandela International Day shifted away from the great man’s legacy and onto something far less substantial: Harry and Meghan.

Despite Prince Harry’s self-professed preference for the quiet life, he placed himself centre-stage by delivering the keynote address on Mandela to the UN General Assembly. Given Harry is neither an elected official, nor a working royal, how did he obtain this honour? Harry and Meghan continue to find themself in a peculiar position whereby they court the very same fame that they say they don’t want, dabling in politics to ‘stay relevant’, while insisting they are merely private citizens.

A second aspect that turned commentators’ heads was the contrast between Prince Harry and Mandela. By nature of his birth, Harry is and always will be a symbol of the British monarchy, an institution with a pronounced colonial history. Mandela, on the other hand, dedicated his life to fighting imperial forces and pioneering democracy in South Africa. Was Harry really the best the UN could find to honour Mandela’s legacy?

In addition to questions about Harry’s suitability, the Prince’s comments on climate change during the address sparked yet another distracting debate. Whilst the UK experienced record breaking temperatures, Harry remarked that: “Our world is on fire, again…the right thing to do is not up for debate, and neither is the science. The only question is whether we’ll be brave enough and wise enough to do what is necessary.”

Harry is correct: the right thing to do is not up for debate. But the advice seems to have left a sour taste in the mouth of the British public given the Prince’s propensity for jet setting around the globe in high-emission private planes. Is it fair to have an unelected (former) royal lecturing the public about doing more to save the environment when he probably has a higher carbon footprint than significant swathes of the population combined?

This is the issue Harry & Meghan continuously struggle to overcome – an air of hypocrisy. They want to be private citizens left alone by the press, yet they continue to lead public lives with splashy media appearances. They lecture about climate change whilst clocking up thousands of miles on a private jet. Until they understand that it’s the hypocrisy the public take issue with, they will never find their place in whatever semi-public/private world they want to live in.

Policy narrative shift in the Tory leadership contest

We are a mere week into the official Tory leadership campaign, and we are already seeing a dramatic shift (or full 180 in some cases) when it comes to a policy narrative.

Of the eight candidates left after the preliminary elimination round, six served in Boris Johnson’s government, and most in senior roles. All of them pledged their support to key Johnson administration goals – most notably levelling up, net zero and the need for tax rises in the aftermath of covid. But this leadership contest is seeing candidates pushing a significantly different narrative when it comes to these policy areas.

Whilst it may feel like some time ago that the government put forward policies, and weren’t just constantly firefighting the latest scandal, it was really not all that long ago that ‘levelling up’ was at the centre of government ambitions. All departments were instructed to come up with ways to fit levelling up into their agenda, and government ministers seemingly found it impossible to answer any questions without pointing to their party’s ultimate higher goal to level up the country. Despite government ministers all pronouncing their undying commitment to the cause at the time, Tom Tugenhat (who sat firmly on the sidelines of Johnson’s government) and Liz Truss have been the sole leadership hopefuls to pledge to save the levelling up agenda. The cause has scarcely been mentioned, let alone championed, in this leadership contest.

The Tory green consensus is also coming under threat, with several leadership contenders saying they would either delay or revise the net zero target, and Kemi Badenoch going further to brand net zero ambitions as “unilateral economic disarmament”. The green agenda was one of the flagship policies of the Johnson administration – with cabinet ministers and backbench MPs alike professing its profound importance to the nation; and yet, it has barely received so much of a positive mention this time round.

The narrative of this leadership contest could possibly best be described as a race to the bottom when it comes to cutting taxes and cracking down on ‘wokeism’. Between vows to reverse the National Insurance rise, cut income tax, slash corporation tax, and half fuel duty, Tory leadership hopefuls are spurring each other on, and in doing so, promising tax cuts in the tens of billions of pounds. And it’s not just in fiscal matters that we are seeing candidates try to out-do each other, the race is quickly becoming a contest of anti-woke credentials – with matters of gender identity and bathroom usage dominating the debate.

So what is behind this almost overnight shift in policy narrative? Conservative leadership hopefuls are pandering to the right. In a bid to pick up support from MPs and party members (who are typically more ideological than your average voter) those in the race are seeking to brand themselves as the heirs to true conservatism – Thatcher reincarnated. With the centre ground in politics looking more and more scarce, it is a common sense strategy. The question remains, will the anti-woke, tax-cutting agenda still be the policy narrative when it comes to a general election?

With only a fraction of the country expressing their view on who the next Prime Minister will be, there is still no clear answer as to whether a new leader with a radically different policy programme would require a fresh mandate to push an anti-woke agenda and tear up net-zero targets? A continuation candidate can easily claim they hold a mandate from the public; whereas the public have had very limited say on the latest policy promises made by candidates in a bid to win over the right of the Tory party. Any new leader will want to make the most of an 80 seat majority, and with how the polls look now, will likely want to avoid the fate of Theresa May of gambling with a majority only to regret losing it, so we could find ourselves in a bit of a limbo when it comes to a policy mandate.