As a lifelong Tory, this election was devastating – we must learn from our failure

To quote Austin Powers: “Ouch baby, very ouch.”

After a dismal campaign and dire predictions, the election results are no surprise, but still no less painful for Conservatives.

The landslide Labour victory masks an even more devastating blow. Labour’s share of the popular vote has barely changed since 2019 – just 2 percentage points higher across the country, and unchanged in England – and, almost unbelievably,  5 percentage points lower than Jeremy Corbyn achieved in 2017.

The headlines scream “Starmageddon”, but this is a story of a collapse in Conservative support, down over 20 percentage points since the last general election.

And that makes the party’s “what next?” challenge acute – they have lost votes and seats to Labour, to the Lib Dems and to Reform.

After a litany of mistakes, the next one would be to try to win them all back. By trying to appeal to everyone, the party appeals to very few. With the western world becoming increasingly polarised politically, the centre ground has become no man’s land. Populations can’t agree on much, but people have views.

So how can the Conservatives rise from the ashes? Despite understandable calls for unity, a tussle for the heart and soul of the party feels both inevitable and necessary. Papering over the cracks will solve nothing – and has only got us to where we are today.

The Conservatives must decide what they believe in, set out a clear vision and elect a credible and appealing leader, who can make a break from the long series of past errors.

I have written before that the Conservative Party needs to be more conservative. Obvious, really. But the mix of re-elected Conservative MPs, representing both the right- and left-wing factions of the party suggests there may be some reluctance to do that.

This would truly be an existential threat. Reform is not to blame for the Conservative meltdown – the new party stepped into a gap that emerged as successive Conservative governments implemented policies that moved further away from conservatism.

Thanks to our first-past-the-post electoral system, Reform has a far smaller share of seats (less than 1pc) than votes (14pc), but has already shaken up the two-party stranglehold, coming second in 98 seats and helping the Lib Dems to their 71.

In my talks to business leaders and those who aspire to lead, I speak about the important lessons to be learned from failures. The setbacks I have experienced in my own career – painful though they were at the time – have often taught me far more than the successes, and eventually became springboards for the next move higher.

I describe careers as more of a labyrinth than a ladder, with twists and turns, and rarely a straightforward path to the top.

Winston Churchill did not utter the famous line so often attributed to him; “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts” – but it is still spot-on. I would add that having the humility to admit our mistakes and to learn from them, to acknowledge our part in our failures, counts for a lot too.

Up until this point, many Conservatives have tended to blame extraneous factors – Covid, the Ukraine war, the Human Rights Act, Reform – anybody really, rather than themselves. Solving a problem starts with an accurate diagnosis, and that demands self-awareness.

As the leadership contest gets underway, contenders must acknowledge the true reasons for the party’s fall from power. And whoever is elected should take their time – if there’s a decade in the wilderness, those years can be used to rebuild coherent policies and a strategy to regain voter confidence.

Reform may have had the advantage of a blank sheet of paper, but its formula of clear, bold policies, a common-sense approach and a charismatic leader is a good starting point.

And even with their supermajority, life will not be plain sailing for Labour. The Conservatives are still Britain’s official opposition party.

They have a choice – stand for something, be authentic, listen, learn and recover, or stand for nothing, carry on as before and fall further.