The Conservative Party needs to rebuild itself as “the party of workers” if it is to be successful in future, according to former education minister Robert Halfon.
He also said that a royal commission may be needed to map out how to modernise and improve the UK’s higher education system.
Robert Halfon told GB News: “We need to be the party of workers. I've always felt that we [should] be called the Conservative Workers Party, and that would be supporting lower tax for lower earners.
“It would be focusing relentlessly on cutting the cost of living for millions of people around the country. It would focus on things like dealing with the waiting lists at GP surgeries.
“This is not rocket science. These are day-to-day issues that affect ordinary folk up and down the land and we have to speak to those people. We also have to regain the public's trust.
“Trust is the most important political commodity in politics, and at the moment the public don't trust the Conservatives.
“We have to, before setting out a series of policies, is show them that we can rebuild trust, that we're credible, that we're a party free of scandal, free of squabbling, and then we can take the next steps in terms of working out what policies we should present at the next election.”
He added: “What I want for our party is our symbol to be a ladder because if anything Conservatism stands for, it's the ladder of opportunity.
“My ladder would have hands around it, because we bring people to the ladder. We help people climb….a party of aspiration, achievement, opportunity and community.
“Our party symbol should be the ladder of opportunity and I think symbolism is incredibly important, as is language and communication, and we need to get those things right before we start having detailed policy discussions about what should be on our platform or in the manifesto.”
He said he is backing Mel Stride to be the new Tory leader: “I realise that he is the underdog. But there's the old Mark Twain saying, ‘it's not the size of the dog, it's the size of the fight in the dog’.
“The reason why I mentioned to you trust. There's two big problems. One, we've lost the trust of the public, and that is a huge problem, because if the public just don't trust us, they're going to either vote Reform or Liberal or Labour…
“The second problem with trust is that our party activists on the ground, they've lost trust with the centre…they felt that we were a party of cronyism, putting favoured people into plum constituency seats to stand at the election. For example, they don't believe that the party is democratic.
“On those two trust issues, with the public and the members with the party, I think that Mel stride does come over as a conviction politician…he’s affable, is likeable and is trusted.”
Asked if he thought student tuition fees may be increased under the current government, he said: “I hope not. I don't think there's any justification for raising tuition fees. It will mean that less disadvantaged people apply to university.
“There needs to be more specialisation amongst universities. If universities have to merge, I think it might happen. It wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but as I say, I think what we need to do is to work out what are the challenges, what should the university system look like, and then decide how to pay for it.
“At the moment, university is not that much different from when I was at university about 30 years ago, and in some ways, the universities are still operating in a black cub world when the rest of the world has moved to Uber.
“What I think we need to do, as I say, is have that inquiry, whether it's a royal commission or whatever it may be, and then work out how to pay for it. But increasing tuition fees, in my view, is not the answer to this.”
