Badenoch will give the Tories time to think

Her insistence on principles not policies as the route to renewal is correct — but she must avoid chasing Reform voters

William Hague

Monday October 21 2024, 5.00pm BST,

In one respect, whoever is elected leader of the opposition at the end of next week will have an easier task than I had in that role a quarter of a century ago. Instead of competing with Tony Blair, who voters thought could do no wrong, they will be opposing Sir Keir Starmer, whose poll ratings have already plummeted.

Yet in every other way, their job will be harder than mine. The Conservative Party is much smaller than it was then. It has Reform looming over it on the right as well as Labour and the Lib Dems to its left, presenting it with the dilemma of choosing on which front it should fight first. And the world will change so rapidly in the next few years that fundamental questions will arise as to what conservatism is going to be — whether it presents solutions to accelerating changes or becomes a set of frustrated reactions to them.

This will be a massive personal, political and intellectual task. It could be that either of the candidates will ultimately find it beyond them — most politicians would. As I cast my vote at the weekend, I was trying to work out which of the two, Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch, would have the best chance of carrying out such a task, something you would certainly not wish on your best friend.

I cannot pretend that my own choice of candidate any longer augurs well for them: I voted for Jeremy Hunt against Boris Johnson in 2019 and Rishi Sunak against Liz Truss in 2022. But having voted, either as an MP or a party member, in every Tory leadership election since 1989, when Margaret Thatcher was challenged by Sir Anthony Meyer — I was on the winning side in those days — I felt I should definitely vote. After hesitating for a while, I voted for Kemi Badenoch.

One reason this was not straightforward is that I have always liked and respected Robert Jenrick. He is convivial and intelligent company. When he was a minister and I took an issue to him, I found him helpful, efficient and decisive. Although he fell sharply in my estimation when he quit the Sunak government at a difficult time, he has shown remarkable political skill to transform himself in one year from walking out as a middle-ranking minister to the brink of walking into the party leadership. This is not a man to be underestimated.

Jenrick ought to have a big future in the Conservative Party, along with all the other leadership contenders — a party with only 121 MPs does not have surplus talent. Yet it is Badenoch who has set out the strategy most suited to a political battle on multiple fronts and a pace of change that will make many policies of today obsolete in five years’ time. While Jenrick has set out a series of very specific commitments, most notably on immigration and leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, Badenoch has rightly resisted the pressure to do so. She seems to know instinctively what I wish I had worked out before I became opposition leader in 1997: that before voters will pay any attention to the policies you announce, they need to understand your values.

Badenoch’s insistence that principles rather than policies are the starting point for political revival is correct. It is borne out by the experience of the more successful opposition leaders in recent history, from Churchill to Thatcher. Her chosen values of truth, personal responsibility, active citizenship, equality under the law and family — in the broadest, modern sense of family — are strong foundations on which to rethink policies over several years. And her emphatic view that the processes of government need to be re-engineered to achieve anything significant is also spot on. Add in her pugnacious personality and it is possible to discern the combination of values and energy that could yet lift the Conservative Party up from the electoral floor.

There are two dangers in the alternative approach of rolling out policy commitments now. The first is that the initial instinct of much of the party, exemplified by the heavy focus on immigration policy by Jenrick, is to chase the Reform vote before anything else. This would prove to be a mistake. No Tory leader will out-Farage Nigel Farage, and an effort to do so will only take them further in the wrong direction. Post-election research by the pollsters More in Common showed that Tory voters who switched to Reform were less likely than those who went Liberal Democrat or Labour to countenance returning to the fold, while 17 per cent of those who stayed Conservative said they could contemplate voting Lib Dem in future. A Tory leader who concentrates on Reform voters as the top priority could find they don’t easily come back, while others keep moving away.

Badenoch could yet make this mistake but she has given herself the latitude to avoid it. All the evidence suggests that the Tories will have to demonstrate sustained competence to overcome the disasters of recent years, and then to base a revival on values that appeal to voters of all persuasions, not just on the right. Both her character and her political strategy give her at least a chance of achieving that.

The second danger from premature policy formation is the more obvious one: it will all be obsolete by the time of an election in 2029. By then, Trump may have had four chaotic years in power, Putin will have won or lost his war, Europe will be reviving or in terminal decline, Xi Jinping will be eyeing his legacy, AI will be changing the nature of work, and science will have delivered extraordinary advances. Conservative parties around the world will have to make a fundamental choice of whether they are voices of angry reaction to disruptive change or leaders who find new solutions to it.

Those solutions will be needed on migration, as the flows of people grow ever larger, and they will be through international agreements not unliteral actions if they are to be effective. New ideas for incentivising and rewarding young people in the workforce will be required, not just defending the position of older people. Leaders who rightly want a smaller state and lower taxes will need new thinking on creating a healthier and more self-reliant population. Strong defences will need national leadership in new technologies, with the state and private sector learning to innovate together.

On all these issues and many more, an opposition that hopes to be in government again in the next decade needs the space to think. Renewal will entail a reimagining of conservatism for a different age. It remains to be seen whether Badenoch, or anyone else, can accomplish that. But for knowing that the starting point is values she deserves serious credit, and she won my vote.

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