Royston Smith says the Conservatives will have to recapture what made them so successful over the last 200 years to win back votes
I predict The Reform Party will soon run out of road. Everyone knows what is wrong with the country, they don’t need a constant reminder of it.
Four million people voted Reform at the last election, most of them probably did so because they wanted anyone but the Conservatives. But vote they did and with that vote they expected something in return.
What they have is a handful of MPs who are largely ineffective and offer none of the solutions voters expected.
A former editor of the Daily Mail was quoted as saying: "My job is not to inform people, it’s to make them angry." Reform have adopted this strategy and made it their own.
But it won’t last and at the next election, the four million Reform votes will be up for grabs.
This gives the Conservative Party and its new leader an opportunity. The next leader will need to speak honestly to the electorate. They will need to offer solutions not more analysis of the problems.
It doesn’t make you far right to want people to be treated equally and fairly under the law. We can’t have courts sitting over weekends to lock up looters if we don’t do the same to the vandals from Just Stop Oil.
It’s not equitable to incarcerate children who steal a television but do nothing when statues are pulled down and dumped into Bristol’s harbour. It’s not just wrong to treat one group of people differently from another, it’s dangerous.
I am not saying the looters have been treated harshly, I am merely saying they should be sharing their cells with those who defaced Winston Churchill’s statue or London’s cenotaph.
British voters are not stupid. They are the most tolerant people on the planet but they know what illegal means in the term, ‘illegal immigrant.’
They know that if they break the law, they will find themselves in front of a magistrate.
They believe that is unfair and that’s because it is. If people come to this country illegally, but for a small minority, they should be sent back. It’s not enough to say that, as Reform do, there must be a mechanism to do so.
Rwanda was part of the solution but has now been abandoned by Labour. Without a deterrent people will continue to risk their lives in the English Channel to come to the UK. The Conservatives must hold the line on offshoring and if Reform were serious about cutting the rates of illegal immigration they would have supported and endorsed the policy. But their irrational hatred of the Conservatives trumped any of their stated political principles.
The Conservatives need to push back on the constant accusations of being far right. Previously only the British National Party (BNP) and English Defence League (EDL) were considered far right, now it is anyone who dares to disagree with the Guardian reading, left-wing establishment. If they keep throwing that term around it will become as overused and pointless as calling everyone a legend and every challenge a crisis. You’re not far right if you’re worried about levels of immigration.
MORE FROM GBN MEMBERSHIP:
The Conservatives will have to recapture what made them so successful over the last 200 years. Position themselves on the common ground. Speak up for our British values.
Stop trying to please everyone, it never works.
Stop trying to do too much - do less and do it well.
People voted Reform because the Conservatives had stopped speaking to and for the normal British voter in this country.
They can reimagine themselves as a truly conservative alternative now, and if they do I think they will consign the Reform Party to a footnote in a turbulent time in British history.
