Nick Boles: A liberal Tory party of many voices will strike chord with the electorate

THREE years ago, shortly after the formation of the coalition, I called for an electoral pact between the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats at the next election. I now see that this was misguided.
David Cameron and Nick CleggDavid Cameron and Nick Clegg
David Cameron and Nick Clegg

By 2010, I had spent more than 10 years campaigning for the Conservative Party to become socially and economically more liberal. I had hoped that we would win a majority as a modern, compassionate Conservative Party. But when we didn’t, I saw the coalition and an electoral pact in 2015 as our best chance of achieving the broad, open and generous party of my dreams.

In my book Which Way’s Up? I described the coalition’s five foundation stones as a belief in personal freedom, a determination to offer greater opportunity to those born in disadvantage, a sense of responsibility for the health of the natural world, an understanding that Britain must constantly rethink how it is going to earn its way in the world, and a commitment to strong and independent local communities.

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I believed that if we could get the Liberal Democrats to yoke themselves to us for a full two terms in government, we would in time be able to persuade most of them to merge their party into a truly liberal Conservative Party.

This was misguided for two reasons.

I had misjudged the Liberal Democrats. Although there are some true believers in freedom in the party – and they appeared to make the running in the first year of the coalition – the heart of the Liberal Democrats beats on the left and the party’s instincts are statist.

In recent months we have seen their leader twist and turn in a desperate attempt to position himself for coalition with a deeply illiberal Labour Party after the next election – and render himself a principle-free zone in the process.

I had also miscalculated how our party would react to coalition and how we would be perceived. I thought that our willingness to compromise with the Liberal Democrats in the national interest would help persuade the British public that we had moderated our ideological fixations, would show that we really had changed.

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I did not realise that our coalition partners would do everything in their power to paint us as heartless extremists. And I underestimated the readiness of some in the Conservative Party, and the Press, to play up to the caricature and thereby fall squarely into their trap.

Three years on, I now have a very different view about the right approach for our party. To put it simply, we must be our own liberals; we cannot rely on anyone else to do it for us.

Trying to outsource liberalism from another party not only does not work; it risks reversing the fragile gains of modernisation. Instead we must assert our credentials and we must make liberalism a more explicit and distinct part of our political brand. For the truth about our party is this: we have never been more successful or more true to ourselves than when led by lions in the cause of advancing freedom.

Whether by Winston Churchill in freeing the world from fascism. Or by Margaret Thatcher in liberating Britain from union militancy and Eastern Europe from communism.

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My own liberalism is tempered by an understanding that freedom is only worth anything if it is underpinned by security. I believe that we must sometimes compromise individuals’ civil liberties in order to defend our free society, that we must protect children from the evils of violent and exploitative pornography, that we cannot maintain a decent system of social security or free healthcare if we allow unlimited numbers of migrants to move here from around the world.

Others in our big Conservative family would give greater priority to other strands of conservative thinking:

The traditional values of family, faith and flag.

The interests of business and Britain’s wealth creators.

The preservation of our heritage and glorious countryside.

The restoration of respect to our classrooms and civility to our streets.

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I believe these are all essential parts in the song a modern Conservative Party should be singing.

But I wonder if we allow sufficient space for these different voices in the Conservative harmony to sound distinctly and be clearly heard?

Modern Britain is a place in which people prize their individuality and define themselves by their interests and pastimes, likes and dislikes. Yet when they look at the Conservative Party they see an old-fashioned monolith.

Big retailers and consumer brands have found that they cannot rely on a single brand with one undifferentiated message. They have turned themselves into loose but co-ordinated collections of brands and product ranges, all operating from a common platform but free to express themselves individually and craft a more targeted appeal to particular consumer niches.

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There is no group in society to which a monolithic approach is less likely to appeal than the generation of men and women under 25. Recent polling has revealed this age group to be markedly more liberal – on both social and economic issues – than their older brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents.

This new group of voters represents a fantastic opportunity for our party. But we have no hope of securing their support if we approach them with the same proposition that we use to woo our stalwart supporters.

The Conservative Party will only rebuild itself as a national party which can win majorities on its own if it understands that it cannot do so by making a single undifferentiated pitch to every age group and in every part of the country.

If we are to avoid being pushed back into a rural and suburban redoubt in the south of England, we need to redefine ourselves as an alliance of distinctive political forces which work together to produce a common election platform and programme of government.

*Nick Boles is a Tory MP and planning minister. This is an edited version of a speech that he delivered to the Conservative Party’s Bright Blue campaign group.