Conservatives cannot rely on Labour’s failures
Labour is messing up fast, so we need to get our act together now.
Next week will mark the hundredth day since Labour took office, and it has been disaster after disaster.
The first decision it made was to cut winter fuel payments, despite no mention of it in its manifesto. It then used the money that it had taken from pensioners to help fund above inflation pay rises to the unions, who promptly continued to strike.
It worked quickly to reverse my work at the Home Office to deter the people smugglers, and its own plans range between counterproductive, ineffectual and non-existent. More than 11,000 people have crossed the channel in small boats since it came to power.
It has granted unprecedented access to donors and shown its hypocrisy in taking free gifts and hospitality. And it has harmed our economy by lying about the inheritance we left them, all so it can find an excuse to raise your taxes in the budget.
In Opposition, it is tempting to revel in the Government’s failure. But that would be a mistake. Our party now has just two jobs. The first, to hold the Government to account. We must shine a light on each and every one of its mistakes, underline when it is wrong and illustrate how and why we would do things differently. The second is to prepare to get back into government ourselves.
It is this second goal that it is easy to lose sight of when the Government is failing. We must not allow complacency to set in. There were some who explained the disastrous general election result this year as an inevitability. It was just the political pendulum swinging against us, they said. The argument then goes that, as all pendulums do, the political fortunes will swing back in our direction if we just wait. And Labour’s failure is on fast-forward, so we may not have to wait as long as we thought.
But we cannot just expect the voters to come back to us. We cannot rely on buyers’ remorse. The voters left us in such numbers that no amount of Starmer’s speedy failures alone could bring them back. And if Labour continues to fail at the rate it is, it is entirely possible that voters will move anywhere but back to the Conservatives. They are yet to forgive or forget why they left us, so we must do something about it.
We need to get moving, get into gear and on the front foot again. We must set out what it means to be a Conservative, and why our plan for our country is the right one. We must show that we understand the problems people in this country are facing, and that we have the solutions to address them.
All Conservatives believe that low taxes, less regulation and a freer market are the keys to economic growth. We know we need to control our borders; that people should be able to own their own home; and that defence of the realm precedes everything else. But we need to sell these values again, and explain to the British people why they should share these values – and vote for them. It is because these are the values with which we deliver security and prosperity and make life better for individuals, families and communities.
Conservatives set the conditions for a successful society and then get the state out of the way. With Conservative values we can ensure that Britain’s future is even greater than its past, but we must persuade the voters of that first.
And we must demonstrate to people why they can trust us. That means less headline-grabbing promises, and more honesty.
We need to be the best possible version of ourselves, to give people a reason to get out and vote for us instead of giving Labour one more chance or moving over to Reform. We cannot just wait for the pendulum to swing back to us.
And we need to do it quickly. We have local elections in May next year. Our councillors, our councils, and the British people need us to get our house in order in time to contest these elections, and all subsequent ballots, properly.