Only a high-stakes offer on housing can reopen the door for the Tories

We also need a new campaign for capitalism and fresh rhetoric on Brexit to neutralise Corbyn

It wasn’t the students or the 20-something social media warriors who did it for the Tories: a greater proportion of youngsters turned out to vote, but the increase wasn’t sufficiently large to make a real difference. The catastrophic, seismic change for the Conservative Party came from 30- and 40-somethings: it was my generation of middle-aged child-rearers who destroyed Theresa May and brought a revolutionary communist to the brink of power. For a party that has long seen itself as the natural home for families, this is a devastating indictment.

The last time it messed up so badly – and lost such a core component of its electoral coalition – was when it bankrupted hundreds of thousands of mortgage holders during the European Exchange Rate Mechanism crisis of 1991-1992. Interest rates shot up and the party’s credibility shattered; it has never won a big majority since. The stakes are now higher – if its disastrous performance last week destroys Brexit, the party will split, a new populist movement tapping into betrayed Brexiteer outrage will emerge and a hard-left Labour will romp to power.

There are lots of other ways to cut the data. May failed to grab anything like enough ex-ukip voters to make the breakthrough she was expecting. Jeremy Corbyn became the populist choice, and the election shifted on to austerity. Graduates are continuing to move to the Left, and non-graduates to the Right, but the Corbyn surge was largely Brexit-neutral.

But the two, closely connected findings that jump out are that the new crossover age for voting Tory is now 47, according to Yougov, and that home owners split 53-31 per cent for the Tories, and renters 51-32 per cent for Labour. One corollary of this age profile is that most people in work voted Labour. If the Tories continue like this, they are finished.

So what should be done? Here are three immediate ideas to start turning the situation around. First, the Government must make a dramatic, high-stakes offer on housing. The cost of the average home is now 7.6 times average annual incomes: 20 years ago, it was just 3.6 times. Some areas remain affordable, and ultra-determined young people on unexceptional incomes can still find a way to buy even in and around London, but that’s not the point. A system that only works for a lucky, super-performing or unusually motivated minority is politically and practically bankrupt. The collapse in home-ownership is the single biggest threat to conservatism and classical liberalism that this country faces: people must own a stake in society, or else they will turn to socialism.

The shackles should be taken off Sajid Javid, the secretary of state, who should be allowed to properly liberalise the market, increase the supply of land, boost home building, and thus stabilise or lower prices. But all of this will take too long, as has the current and most welcome increase in brownfield construction. An emergency plan must therefore be put into place almost immediately.

The Government should start purchasing agricultural land where it believes that towns can be expanded, or where new settlements could be located. The main cost of housebuilding is the land; but fields with no planning permission are cheap (even if the Government pays farmers a generous premium).

It should legislate to allow housebuilding on these plots, and commission hundreds of thousands of ultra-cheap but high quality, modular terraces and semis, to be sold to young families for a fraction of the usual market rates. The homes would be reserved for first-time buyers with families; capital gains would be clawed back on a sliding scale if families sell up too soon. HS2 should be scrapped, and some of the money spent connecting these new settlements with road and rail infrastructure and building new schools and hospitals.

My idea isn’t perfect: it’s far too interventionist and would further distort the current mess. But doing nothing guarantees a mass councilhouse-building exercise paid for by printing money under a Corbyn government. Tories who still campaign against any greenfield building are signing their own political death warrant.

Second, we need a well-funded campaign for capitalism. This will require a budget of many millions of pounds a year, the employment of economists and experienced political operatives and a major push on social media and traditional advertising channels. It will need to recruit grassroot members as well as run a world-class war room; its aim would be to shift the common ground on privatisation, competition, low tax, individual responsibility and the morality of free markets. Such a campaign is the only hope against the likes of Momentum; it will require business leaders and entrepreneurs to put their hands in their pockets to an unprecedented degree to fund the venture.

Third, Brexit: in parallel to the new movement for capitalism, a mainstream pro-brexit campaign equivalent to Vote Leave needs to be reactivated, focused on remaking the positive case for quitting the EU, attacking the arguments of born-again Remainers and putting pressure on MPS to stay the course. The Government, for its part, needs to stick to its core principles – pulling out of the single market and customs union – while drastically shifting its rhetoric and compromising on non-critical issues.

The emphasis should be on a “phased”, “open” but still “clean” Brexit. It should stop saying that no deal is better than a bad deal (even if the statement is actually true), and the 100,000 net migration limit should be dropped. Students should be excluded from all such figures. Payments to the EU should be tapered off more slowly if necessary, and the Government should pledge to hand out plenty of visas to migrants from the EU (and elsewhere) while regaining legal control over who can come here. The message should be clear: Britain wants the most pro-free trade Brexit possible. All of this would probably have happened anyway, but a shift in emphasis now would convey a desire for conciliation without betraying Leave voters.

The Tories will eventually need a new leader with an upbeat, optimistic and visionary take on the world, and an ability to translate sound ideas into popular, retail offers. But the change of tack on housing, capitalism and Brexit I’m suggesting would at least begin the fightback.