Michael Gove and Ruth Davidson team up to back new Tory thinktank

Michael Gove and Ruth Davidson have come together to back a new Tory thinktank with a warning that, without fresh ideas and a broader appeal, the party will be “be finished for at least a generation”.

Gove, the environment secretary, who has long been one of the party’s most influential thinkers, said: “The Conservative party is at its best when it appeals beyond its core vote and puts forward a reforming, forward-looking agenda that responds to the concerns of the entire nation.”

Last week, a YouGov poll for another Tory thinktank, the Centre for Policy Studies, found that nearly half of 18- to24-year-olds said they would never vote Conservative. At the 2017 election, the tipping point when people were more likely to have voted Tory than Labour rose from 34 to 47.

In a comment in the Guardian, Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader who has been tipped as a possible future leader of the UK party, said the party should be braver about defending its values.

“The younger generation, and society at large, is not yearning for a five-year plan of centrally delivered tractor quotas. Instead, we are a society that prizes individual autonomy and freedom of expression, and expects government to help us to achieve our goals, not set them.

“Conservatives should seek to embrace this open, liberal outlook as a positive – and not a threat. But talk is one thing: we must also focus on finding practical solutions that meet the needs of people – because it is only through deeds that trust can be restored.”

The group is the brainchild of the Conservative MP Neil O’Brien, who was previously head of another thinktank, Policy Exchange. He has recruited Will Tanner, May’s former deputy policy chief, as its director.

Start-up funds came from the entrepreneur Martyn Rose, a former ally of David Cameron, and the initiative is chaired by Daniel Finkelstein, a Tory peer and a columnist in the Times. It is backed by Tom Tugendhat, who chairs the Commons foreign affairs committee. Within the party, he is one of the most admired of the new generation of Tory MPs.

O’Brien denies that the name, Onward, is meant in any way to be an echo of the successful movement En Marche! that propelled Emmanuel Macron to power in France.

Next month, another attempt to broaden Tory appeal and open up thinking in the party will take place, with the two-day Big Tent festival organised by George Freeman MP.