Eighteen months ago a majority of Conservative MPs decided to remove me as their leader. This article is not an attempt to revisit that decision. I make only one heartfelt request: my hope is that the next Tory leader will take another look at the path I had begun to tread and on which I was joined by Oliver Letwin, David Willetts and Theresa May.
We had attempted to put social justice at the heart of the Conservative party’s mission. Recent events have only confirmed my conviction that this path remains the right one. It is electorally right for a flatlining Conservative party. It is morally right for the hundreds of hard-pressed communities that Labour has failed.
Michael Howard fought a strong campaign and many high-calibre MPs were added to our ranks. Overall, however, the Conservative party’s share of the popular vote remained stuck in the low thirties. In England’s three northern regions we went backwards.
The vast bulk of voters that deserted Labour preferred other parties to the official opposition. YouGov has just completed a survey for my Centre for Social Justice: it reveals that only 42% of voters are even open to the possibility of voting Conservative at the next general election: 50% would consider supporting the Liberal Democrats and 56% would consider voting Labour.
Conservatives look at Tony Blair’s poor record of delivery and cannot understand this continued goodwill. They fail to comprehend Labour’s greatest strength — its moral clarity. It is a strength that also explains the popularity of institutions such as the National Health Service and the United Nations. Their good intentions are so enshrined in their identity that they command more loyalty than their performance merits.
The Conservative party has traditionally been uncomfortable with proclamations of moral purpose. Throughout recent history it has relied on a reputation for competence and effectiveness. That worked until we lost that reputation during the recession of the early 1990s. At our nadir we combined incompetence with heartlessness. At its electorally most potent new Labour rid itself of socialist baggage and added competence to traditional moral purpose.
Alongside the need to rebuild a reputation for competence, Conservatives also need to address the dislike factor. Why won’t 58% of voters even consider voting Conservative? Why do so many people still vote tactically to keep Tories out?
Modernisers that emerged from Michael Portillo’s circle were first to discuss this problem. Unfortunately most have never understood how to solve it. Many emphasise cosmetic changes. Many seek to junk core Tory beliefs. They have become embarrassed about our Euroscepticism, our support for lower taxation, our tough approach to crime. But these beliefs remain enduringly popular with the public. The problem is that those beliefs are much more popular than we are.
Britain’s conservative majority may see our core beliefs — patriotism, low taxes, crime-fighting — as good for them and their families, but too many feel guilty about voting Tory. Too many have come to believe that the Conservative party does not care about society’s most vulnerable people. Many voters who prospered during the Tory years stopped voting for us in 1997. They had done well for themselves but they didn’t like our apparent indifference to those people being left behind.
Seventy per cent of voters who are inclined to support the Conservative party at the next election say that an emphasis on social justice is attractive to them. By social justice they don’t mean massive financial transfers from rich and poor. Two-thirds believe that fairness cuts both ways — involving fairness to those who provide help, as well as to those who need it. They want more money channelled through community-based poverty-fighting organisations. They want the welfare state reformed so that it focuses on children, pensioners and the seriously disabled. Most support the rebuilding of family and community life.
And this is the second area where there is a gap between what has been called the Soho and Easterhouse modernisers. The Soho modernisers want a more permissive and liberal Conservatism. The Easterhouse modernisers, in contrast, understand that it is the poor who suffer most when crime and drugs are tolerated or when the state does nothing to support the family. What people dislike about the Conservative party is not “traditional” values, for they share those values themselves.
Most Britons, for example, aspire to marriage, home ownership and for their children to follow the same pattern in their own lives. But in too many cases this aspiration is not met. Children, in particular, often don’t follow the plan laid down for them by loving parents. They don’t get married. They don’t settle into a regular job. They may even start using drugs.
In those circumstances most people do not condemn — they extend love and support. They aspire to fulfil their ideals but they cope with messy realities. Conservatives must be like the British people. We must respect their aspirations and help them to achieve them. But we should never walk away from those who end up in broken homes or on the conveyor belt to crime.
The most persistent political objection from Tory MPs to a social justice strategy comes from those who think that we have tried it and it didn’t work. They forget that ours is the social reforming party of Shaftesbury and Disraeli. On my first visit to Easterhouse a resident called out to me: “What are you doing here? This has always been a Labour area.” And that is exactly the problem. It is outrageous that we have allowed Labour to monopolise compassion for so long.
Social mobility — the life chances of the worst-off — has declined over the lifetime of the welfare state. Socialism and its “new” variants are not the way to assist the marginalised and vulnerable. The poorest people have got poorer under new Labour. It is time we Conservatives began to present an alternative.
For the next Conservative leader to demonstrate that social justice is hardwired into the party our policies, speeches, visits, parliamentary behaviour and candidate selection processes must all point people to our new priorities. Only then will people see that Conservatives are the kind of people that they are happy to vote for.
