The Conservative Party is currently languishing at around 30 per cent in the polls and Labour’s double-digit lead is proving a stubborn one. Laying the blame at the current Prime Minister’s door isn’t fair or accurate, but after 13 years in Government, four Prime Ministers, several crises and an election looming, the harsh reality is that it is now up to Rishi Sunak to turn the ship around.
With all the baggage that inevitably comes with such a long time in office, the task may seem akin to manoeuvring a supertanker, but time is running out and something needs to change.
Navel-gazing about the ECHR and declaring war on the civil service are just displacement activity for real action. Harping on about pronouns and raising the spectre of Jeremy Corbyn every time a confronting point is made is not going to get us anywhere near to a fighting chance at the next election.
The Prime Minister’s five-point plan rightly focuses on the pressures working people are facing, but we need to go much further than just responding to events if we are to solve the underlying problems facing the country and indeed our party. We must admit that certain policy choices have prevented us from cutting through to key demographics – most obviously young people.
Worrying polling shows that this generation of young people is the first not to grow more conservative with age. This is not just an uncomfortable truth for my party but an existential threat. Urgent action is needed to win millennials and younger people over with the sort of aspiration politics that convinces them a prosperous and fulfilling life is possible under a Conservative government.
We will not do that by finger-wagging and instructing them to live an ascetic lifestyle, devoid of Netflix, avocados and Heinz baked beans. That some in the party of Margaret Thatcher – the woman who bridled at the very thought of decline and turned home ownership from a dream to a reality for millions – is prescribing abstention from basic luxuries as an answer to squeezed incomes is a source of shame for us all.
The facts are stark: houses, relative to income, are more expensive than they’ve been in 150 years. The situation is just as bad for renters. Anyone who thinks unlocking the housing conundrum is not a key part of a Tory future for Britain is deluded.
While ISAs and other schemes for first time buyers are all well and good, the remedy for a housing shortage is the construction of more houses. That is axiomatic and it is astonishing the suggestion that we create new and beautiful homes for people to live in is the cause of so much discomfort and pearl-clutching.
Innovative ideas such as street votes, modular building and the densification of existing inner-city housing stock offer promise for dealing with the lack of affordable housing for aspirational young professionals in our major cities and economic hubs.
Not for the first time, Swindon can be looked to as an act to follow. We are a town unafraid of building houses that people actually want to inhabit in numbers that recognise the demand there is. It follows, therefore, that house prices in our town are noticeably lower than the national average and that we are the fourth most productive place in the country.
Whilst we are on the issue of housing and investment, the relative lack of opportunities for people to invest in financial services products and to start and grow businesses has to be addressed too. We need more houses to be bought as homes, rather than just as investments to lie empty.
Childcare reform is another piece of ‘low-hanging fruit’ that wouldn’t necessarily require an enormous amount of time or effort to yield rewards. With the average family with a child under the age of two losing roughly 65 per cent of its take-home pay to childcare costs, and over half of women being prevented from seeking career advancement due to childcare responsibilities, it is no surprise the Truss Government was gearing up to tackle this issue with serious supply-side reforms. I can see no reason for those plans not being current Government policy.
We also need to stop seeing graduates – intelligent and determined young people who apply themselves early for the long-term betterment of their careers – as cash cows who forever owe the state for their education. The current level of tax on graduates earning even modest salaries is eye-watering and inexcusable, with marginal tax rates of around 55 per cent now threatening something of an economic brain drain – especially as we strike immigration deals with countries like New Zealand who do not see youth and education as a stick with which to beat people.
If the Conservative Party is not alive to the demographic time bomb that is about to blow up in our face we will be out of Government for a generation. In opposition, we will be powerless to deal with issues that rightly matter to our traditional voters like the small boats crossings, freedom of speech and Britain’s place in the world. If colleagues do want to ensure their personal political priorities are met, they will need to put themselves in the shoes of the young and set about meeting their aspirations quickly.
