COMING AFTER two landslide Labour victories, last Thursday’s result is seen by some as hopeful news for the Conservative Party; the beginning of a journey, the inevitable destination of which is government. Such a view is dangerously wrong.

While the result has some encouraging signs — not least the entry into Parliament of a new generation of Conservatives — the party has a long way to go before being trusted again in government. Unless we transform ourselves over the next few years, our future will be merely as a party that is read about in history books.

Already since the election a number of Conservatives have called for fundamental change to show that we are in touch and comfortable with the modern, diverse Britain that voted last week. They are right. We do have to change the way that we speak and act if we are to win over the millions who did not even contemplate voting for us. We do have to offer a positive vision if we are to connect to young people, among whom we are now neck and neck with the Liberal Democrats.

We do have to tackle the widespread disillusionment with politics by being honest and sincere in our actions if we are to gain the trust of voters, including the many women who clearly preferred a Blair government to the one we were offering. If we are to be relevant to younger families who simply want the best for their children we have to focus on the issues that matter to them as they dash from work to childminder to supermarket to home.

We have to see ourselves as others see us. There should be no more braying at our opponents in the House of Commons like pinstriped pubescents from a bygone age. We must eschew cynicism and when we agree with our opponents we should say so. We must not allow the thrill of joining Labour leftwingers in an attempt to defeat the Government to get in the way of what we believe. But it is not just our behaviour that must change. We must also address fundamental intellectual inconsistencies in our policymaking: for example, where catch-all theories on devolved decision-making or the internal market actually prevent us from taking a view as to how police are deployed or children taught to read.

To begin with, the party has to come to terms with, and be comfortable with, the fact that health and education, just like the police and the Army, are in the state sector to stay. This is a political fact. Since 1997, terrified of our opponents’ accusations that we would privatise everything, our approach has been to develop a few headline-grabbing polices — bringing back matron or giving head teachers the power to exclude disruptive pupils — in order to “neutralise ” health and education as issues so that we could talk about more “natural” Tory issues such as law and order and immigration.

But being comfortable talking about public services is only the start. The Conservative Party needs a new agenda for the State. In the 1990s — after the huge transforming success of privatisation of state-owned industries — the Conservative Party sought to apply market disciplines to the public services by adopting an internal market philosophy. The theory was that by opening up public services to choice and internal competition they would be forced to adopt best practice and provide high-quality services. The trouble with the theory is that schools and hospitals within the state sector cannot go bankrupt and there are no shareholders to force out poor-quality leaders. In the internal market, a comprehensive school head teacher who peddles 1960s education ideology hated by local parents will face falling rolls but will simply trim his staff numbers and soldier on.

The choice and competition approach has allowed us to develop policies that enable the middle class to escape public sector provision altogether. But it has also meant that the Tories have not been able to speak convincingly to the millions who have no choice but to wait impatiently on hospital waiting lists or see their children failing to reach their true potential in the local comprehensive.

Rather than continuing down the cul-de-sac of the internal market in the health service, we must find ways to transform the appalling management that is the cause of the NHS’s problems. There is an estimated £10 billion of waste each year — not counting the huge cost of the MRSA superbug. To tackle this, the NHS needs a streamlined, modern management structure with directors and managers directly accountable to an experienced and highly paid chief executive.

Our education system is characterised by unaccountable schools using untested and failing teaching methods which were foisted on a generation of teachers by teacher-training colleges and education academics. There is overwhelming evidence that these methods — “look and say” reading, mixed-ability classes that account for 60 per cent of lessons in comprehensive schools, the narrowing of the curriculum — have failed. And yet Conservatives have been too timid to engage in a debate about them with the teaching profession.

We were right to promise more police but we have not been prepared seriously to address policing methods and join debate with the chief constables who obdurately refuse to deploy police to patrol our neighbourhoods and who ignore the huge success of zero-tolerance policing in the United States.

Renewing our policies will take time. But we now have the opportunity for an open, honest and friendly debate. The old ways of politics no longer work. We have to give people reasons to trust and believe in us again.

Nick Gibb is MP for Bognor Regis & Littlehampton and Gary Streeter is MP for Devon South West

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