It’s impossible not to congratulate the Labour party on its historic victory. Keir Starmer has taken his party on a journey back into government. He has brought Labour back from the fringes of British politics and made it a mainstream party that has gained a huge electoral majority from all parts of our country. When I was appointed education secretary in 2016, I was the first person in the job to have been educated at a comprehensive school. It is welcome to see a cabinet where state-educated ministers are finally the norm, not the exception. When the nation’s decision-makers have shared the lived experience of the vast majority of the population, this surely makes for a stronger, better and fairer government. Everyone in the country should wish Labour well with their mission to break down barriers to opportunity.
As for the Conservative party? It would be naive for anyone to think that things can only get better. The last few days have been marked by the depressingly predictable appearances of Suella Braverman and David Frost, in a political equivalent of Return of the Living Dead. Frost, a man who may well have never won a raffle let alone an election, and Braverman, a politician so inept she thought it was a good idea to write an article attacking her own party in the final 48 hours before voters went to the polls, are among those vying to determine the future of the Conservatives.
The party has now vacated the position of natural party of government. In today’s refashioned political landscape, they are perhaps no longer even the natural party of opposition. They have barely more than half of Michael Howard’s 2005 election-losing 198 MPs, while the Lib Dems are counting their largest number of MPs in modern times. Crucially, the post-election opposition benches contain significantly more MPs from other parties, including Reform and the Greens.
This gets to the nub of the problem the Conservative party now faces and indicates why, potentially, things can only get worse. Because unlike those other parties, the Conservative party no longer has any defining purpose. “Survivor” Conservative MPs say they need to diagnose the problem and debate what Conservative principles and values are. Ideally, the party would take some time to select its next leader, but the longer the debate goes on, the more it underlines how the party has no sense of what its point is any more. To the electorate, this will seem like a continuation of the argument the party had with itself while in power.
By contrast, other opposition political parties have no such questions over their purpose. Reform will hold Labour to account on immigration. The Lib Dems have a clear agenda on social care. The Green party will put pressure on Labour over its climate goals. What is the Conservative party’s purpose? It’s not credible on immigration, which has soared over the past few years. It’s not credible on net zero, after it backed off its targets. It’s not credible on the economy – Liz Truss’s “minibudget” saw to that. The list goes on. And while it might suit the Conservative party to have a drawn-out leadership contest, the price could well be losing more ground, every day, to opposition parties who have clearer goals and manifestos.
Unless a future Conservative party has some authentic purpose, there will be no future for it. In turn, that is a question of leadership. Labour has changed because of Starmer’s leadership, setting a clear purpose for his government of public service and five clear missions that will drive his policy agenda. Any would-be next leader of the Conservative party will need to set out what they personally stand for, and how they intend to change our country. I’ve worked and campaigned for years on social mobility and social justice, and I will continue to do so. But it’s because I have a purpose. I know what I’m trying to achieve.
Unless the Conservative party can discover this, it will become even more of an irrelevance in future British politics than it already is now, after its shattering election defeat. Irrelevant to people in cities, young people, ethnic minority voters, university graduates – pretty much everyone, apparently, other than those living in rural areas in England. In the 2015 general election, the party won 53.8% of the vote in Putney, a diverse London constituency with one of the youngest demographic electorates in the country. I was privileged to be its MP, having won the seat from Labour. Last Thursday, the Conservatives won just 23.4% of Putney’s vote. The party will only become relevant again when it combines competence with a purpose that reflects the aspirational, hard-working, diverse community that I had the privilege to represent until I chose to stand down in 2019.
For now, the Conservatives are off the political pitch, leaderless, rudderless and most importantly, purposeless. Whether that absence becomes a more permanent one depends on following the playbook for the route back to success, demonstrated so powerfully last Thursday by Labour. Success comes from being in the mainstream of British politics, being competent and having a clear purpose. The Conservatives have been none of the above for some time. Its choice is simple now: do or die.
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Justine Greening was the Conservative MP for Putney from 2005 to 2019
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