Nick Timothy:
Keeping both Remainer MPS and Brexit-backing voters onside will be a difficult path to tread
There is only one catch in the coming Tory leadership election, and that is a Catch-22. Whoever succeeds Theresa May will need to work out how to build a new coalition of voters and supporters to win in future, but before that they cannot afford to lose their existing coalition of MPS. Yet divisions among Tories in the House of Commons risk making it impossible to build any future, winning coalition.
The facts are as follows. The Conservatives, even with DUP support, no longer have a working majority. Their MPS are split between those who want no deal, those who want to leave with a deal, and those who want to stop Brexit altogether; between those who want an independent trade policy and those who want a customs union; and between those who want control of our laws, and those who want to follow European laws, as Norway does.
But where the Tories in Parliament are divided, their support base is not: 72 per cent of Conservative members, and 68 per cent of Conservative voters, opted to leave the European Union.
Academic research shows that while both Tory members and voters think the Government has messed up the negotiations with Brussels, their views have hardened since the talks began. They believe, in even greater numbers, that the decision to leave the EU was the right one. A majority of Conservative members thinks no deal is better than Theresa May’s deal.
While some Tory politicians and strategists wish otherwise, the party cannot swap its support base for one they find more agreeable.
After decades of Euroscepticism, the referendum, the promise to respect the result, voting to trigger Article 50, and fighting an election on the promise to get Britain out of the EU, the Tories cannot now suddenly become the party of liberal, anti-brexit voters who congregate in London and university towns.
They do, however, have the chance to win new voters in Leave-supporting communities such as Dudley, Walsall, Derby and Teesside. And this is crucial.
Matt Hancock is right when he says that the Tories are “finished” if they become “only a Brexit party”, but they will be finished, regardless, if they do not recognise that their viability depends on the party accepting and embracing Brexit.
If they deliver Brexit – in a meaningful way, with Britain free to seize the opportunities of leaving the EU, not chained to its laws and courts – and they make a success of it, they can win over voters in working-class, Leave-supporting constituencies abandoned by Labour.
The pitch to these voters is what we need to hear from the leadership candidates in the coming weeks and months. Traditionally, these voters have been suspicious of the Tories’ values. They have heard about tax cuts and worried about public services. They have heard about deregulation and worried about their rights at work. They have heard about freedom and worried that freedom for the powerful often comes at the expense of ordinary people like them.
They want to hear about solidarity: about how their politicians and fellow citizens will help their towns and cities to recover and prosper. They want to hear about community: about how we have obligations to respect and help one another and not just rights. They want to hear about patriotism: about how our leaders will stand up for Britain. They want to hear about fairness: about how businesses will stop exploiting rigged markets, and how young people will be given a chance to build their lives.
This does not require us to abandon free markets – which remain the best and fairest way to run the economy – but what these voters seek rules out market fundamentalism, ambitious deregulation and aggressive tax cuts.
It requires the use of government power to reform broken markets, rebalance the economy, control immigration and give younger people the education and training they need. It demands respect for our important national institutions, especially the NHS, and a passion for protecting people from illness, injury and unemployment.
Such support for active government might be too much to swallow for many Tory MPS already in Parliament, representing affluent, liberal constituencies. But as research from Onward this week has shown, voters of all ages want a government that, simply put, leans more to the Right on cultural matters, and a little more to the Left on the economy and spending. This includes younger voters who, far from being Uber-riding freedom junkies, worry about similar issues to the rest of us: housing, crime, immigration and public services.
However, the Conservatives cannot pitch to these voters without first delivering Brexit. As each leadership candidate makes their case, their character, communication skills and ability to connect with people will all be tested. But the question they must answer is how they will overcome the Catch-22 before us. How do they keep the parliamentary party intact while building a different coalition of support to win the next election?
Boris, Jeremy, Dominic, David, Penny, Michael, Matt, Mark, Amber, Andrea, Liz, Sajid, Johnny, Priti, Esther, we need to hear your answer.