Andrew Hunt looks at the options facing the party in the upcoming leadership race

With the leadership battle already hotting up, there is at least one thing everyone can agree on.

We do not want another five years of coups, infighting and civil war. For the party to flourish we need to be strong and united in opposition and in government.

Unfortunately, this has led to two flawed theories.

The first is that we need a candidate from the centre. A sort of half-way house that pleases no-one, flip-flops here and U-turns there. It did not work for Theresa May and it certainly will not work now. Flush with money and publicity, Reform will carry on eating our lunch till it’s all gone.

The second idea, proposed by George Osborne, is someone who talks right and acts left. Think Jeremy Corbyn with the mouth of Enoch Powell. This was Rishi Sunak’s approach, and it was the worst of all worlds. Crucially it destroyed trust between the party and our voters. Trust is the currency of government. We cannot govern without it. Repairing the trust we have already squandered may take a generation. The spin and the lying must stop.

So, if neither a lefty liar nor a flipper-flopper can unite the party, then who can?

The answer is counter-intuitive. The only route to party stability is a candidate from the right running on a ticket of popular right-wing policies. From the field so far, that means Suella, Robert Jenrick or Dame Priti Patel. A right-wing candidate is a unity candidate. No one else is.

To understand why, look at the history of the Conservative party. When the leader is popular with party members and with potential conservative voters, the Party is stable and united. Think of Thatcher in the mid-80’s, or Johnson in his first six months.

By contrast, when the party ignores or defies its core voters, it becomes unpopular (e.g. Sunak, Truss, Major). When that happens, the whole machine backfires, and the party instantly descends into civil war and an orgy of self-harm.

This is because the Conservative Party is designed to win elections. Historically we have been in power 77% of the time. Hence, we call ourselves the natural party of government. This is different from the other parties. With their unworkable socialist ideals and unserious thinking, Labour, the Lib Dems or the Greens make natural opposition parties but cannot survive contact with reality. They would rather oppose power from the sidelines than use it responsibly.

We must accept, because it is in our party’s DNA to win and to govern, unity is popularity and popularity is unity. And if we don’t want to find ourselves back here again in 12 months’ time, fighting over the same ground, we simply need a leader who can get us to 40% in the polls quickly.

If we can do that, then everything else follows.

For starters, the donors and the members will flood back. The Conservative Party is built on governing in reality rather than abstract ideals. People will only support the party of it is solidly in government or headed for government.

Crucially, the ideological splits among MPs will just melt away. Look at how all those hard left union types just disappeared after Blair won his landslide, or the ardent remainers evaporated after Johnson won his. Get a decent majority and the Gaukes and Corbyns become an irrelevant sideshow.

Again and again, MPs fall into line once they have a winner to lead them. What is not to like about heading for government with happy constituents and local party committees?  It’s human nature. We all like winning. Look at how sports fans flock to Man City and Real Madrid or lionise a Messi or Federer.

Moreover, there is an added bonus. It’s a law of British politics that when one side is heading for a landslide, the other side goes into a full-on meltdown. Once you’re on the winning track, it just gets easier.

The only question in this leadership contest should be: who can get us to 40% quickly?

We know we cannot do it be dishonesty again. We have to be willing to deliver the promises we make.

We know that mathematically we cannot do it by going left or centre. There is no room. Labour and the Lib Dems lost 4m votes between them, and only won because we lost even more. And anyway, we cannot compete with them. We have the wrong brand and the wrong history. Since COP26, every move to the left has lost us right-wing voters but won us zero voters from the left.

So, can a right-wing candidate with right-wing policies work?

The answer is an emphatic YES!

What every single credible poll and the election result shows is we lost conservative voters predominantly to Reform UK, or they just stayed at home. Further, around 20% of Labour and Lib-Dem voters were ‘lost-Tories’ protest-voting at the betrayal, particularly around mass migration and its consequences (e.g. housing).

This was exactly the result that the McAlpine polls predicted before the election, and the Ashcroft polls confirmed subsequently. Their findings are crystal clear:

• No Conservative Leader can turn things around by personality alone. Everyone is tainted by the last fourteen years. We can only win again on policy and execution.

• Every single cohort of potential conservative voters (red wall, blue wall, etc), can only be won back if the party returns to traditional conservative policies.

• Immigration (legal and illegal) is the top issue among those lost voters. We need a hard and credible plan with numbers, such as net Zero immigration.

• A Candidate who will genuinely slash immigration, cut tax, take on wokery and roll back the most onerous climate policies can win from every cohort of voters, including a significant number of Labour voters.

The prize is enormous: if we swing to the right, we can win big.

We can win back over 2/3rds of the Lost Tories - that includes those who did not vote as well as most Reform voters. Together, that’s 15%. Then there’s the protest voters and 2019 Red Wall voters who went to the Lib Dems and Labour, making up about 20% of their voter base. That’s another 9%. After five years of disastrous far-left labour government, we can surely win over a few percent of the youth vote (aided by digital engagement plan), just as the European right has. That’s another 5%.

Tot it all up and that gets you to 53%. Stick that into Electoral Calculus, and that’s 520 seats.

Meanwhile the left will remain split every which way. There is no scenario under which a centrist Conservative Party gets over 170 seats. Ever. Let that sink in.

Winning is stability. Winning is unity. If the Conservative Party wants unity and stability a leader from the right is the only answer.

Eyes Right! Eyes on the Prize!