The future of the Tories is about to be revealed

Renewing while in office is difficult, but two new groups have started the debate on where to go next

Next Monday, in the House of Commons, we will get a glimpse of what could be the future of the Conservative Party after Brexit. At the launch of Onward, a campaigning think tank, Ruth Davidson and Michael Gove will give speeches, while rising-star MPS such as Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch will attend. However, the significance of the moment will not be about personalities, but the policy debate it begins.

Parties always struggle to renew in government. Several years into power, they face obvious difficulties. Identify new problems, or acknowledge past mistakes, and they are accused of trashing their own record. Change policies to suit the needs of the day, and they are accused of U-turning. Try to do these things quickly, without a longer conversation about the government’s direction, and they face resistance within their own ranks.

This was my experience when Theresa May became Prime Minister and I worked as her adviser. We had a clear view of the challenges facing the country: to deliver Brexit but also – at a time of destabilising change – do more to make the country better for ordinary, working families. And we knew the policy framework we favoured: to support the individual citizen, families and society, as Tories do, but also to embrace government’s role in reforming dysfunctional markets and delivering prosperity across the country.

It was difficult to get things done, not just because of Brexit but because the party had not had time to debate its future course. Should we stick to George Osborne’s fiscal policy or move beyond austerity? How should we reform broken markets that allow companies to exploit consumers? How could we increase prosperity outside the South East of England? How should we get more houses built? How could we relieve hard-pressed families on tight budgets? On these and other questions, Cabinet ministers had profoundly different views. The result was often timid change, or, worse, complete inactivity.

The Tories need to learn from this experience and prepare for the future now. Fortunately, there are promising signs that this is starting to happen.

In addition to Onward, there is Freer, a campaign group set up by the Cabinet minister Liz Truss, which makes the case for free markets and individual liberty. The Centre for Policy Studies, Margaret Thatcher’s favourite think tank, is showing new life under its director, Rob Colvile. Young MPS, including Bim Afolami, Chris Philp and Rishi Sunak, have generated new policy ideas on housing, corporate governance and trade. Some young talent has already been sucked into the Government, making it harder for the likes of Oliver Dowden, Lucy Frazer and Mr Sunak to contribute to the debate, but many others are doing so.

The Prime Minister recognises the party’s need to renew, and has appointed Chris Skidmore, a former Cabinet Office minister, to oversee future policy development in Conservative Central Office. And she has given her blessing to Freer and Onward, the two organisations that encapsulate the choices the Tories face about their future.

Freer stands for uncompromising libertarianism that would mean the Tories offer, in Truss’s words, “more market, not less”. She argues that, far from being an unusually Left-wing generation, today’s young people are “snapchatting, pop-up shopping, online-trading freedom fighters”.

Onward stands for a less doctrinaire approach, rooted in the mainstream of public opinion, and its early priorities will be policies that help families with living costs, job security and buying a home. Its director, Will Tanner, calls it “a modernising, one nation organisation” and says: “We believe in markets but also the good that government can do.”

As the local elections showed earlier this month, as did the general election, the fertile ground for the Tories is in the working-class and lower-middleclass communities of the Midlands and North of England. The key will be to make further gains among these constituencies while holding on to seats dominated by liberal, more prosperous voters. This is where last year’s election campaign failed.

Onward is therefore trying to form a coalition of the Conservative modernising agendas. It seeks to marry the insights of Mrs May’s original agenda with the best of David Cameron’s approach, while learning from the mistakes of both. And this approach is reflected in Onward’s key personnel: its founder, Neil O’brien, once worked for Mr Osborne, while Mr Tanner worked for Mrs May in the Home Office and Downing Street.

Mr Tanner says he wants Onward to tackle the big issues of our time – embracing technology, addressing growing disparities in wealth, and providing opportunity for the young – while still producing meaningful retail policies for the party. Time will tell if he succeeds, but it is vital that Onward – and Freer and others like them – give the party the debate it needs about its future. Without it, the Tories will be unable to agree on a constructive domestic policy programme – and that is what they will need to win the next election.