"There’s only room for one serious centre-Right party – the Tories need to act quickly"
Telegraph: 26th December 2024: PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood, lays out where the problems lie for the Conservative Party and how to tackle them. First published in Telegraph.
"Kemi Badenoch loves a metaphor... in a major pre-Christmas interview with the BBC. She likened her mission as the new leader of the Tory party to that of seeking to open a restaurant. She had plenty of time to finalise the menu before winning the patronage of the general public in four years’ time...
...let’s dive into this business analogy, even while accepting it was an off-the-cuff remark.
If the Tories were a restaurant then it is pretty clear what immediate difficulties they would be facing. As far as customer relations go, things could barely have gone worse in 2024. Amongst the sizeable previous clientele, many feel that the items on the menu are bland and unappealing... a large number are also reporting food poisoning with rumours that disgruntled staff have taken to urinating in the soup... it’s an uphill task for the new management.
The overall brand is a total mess – with previous head chefs being fitful over many years about whether their key offering is steak and chips or vegetarian ratatouille. Unsurprisingly, the finances are in a parlous state and the top brass are going to have to make redundancies and sort out the balance sheet, while simultaneously dealing with the rat infestation in the kitchen...
...To stretch the analogy... still further, we can find good reasons to believe that Kemi will have to pivot somewhat on strategy in the new year. Her case to date has been that there’s plenty of time to get the overall policy mix right and that she is therefore going to talk in broad brush strokes for the time being whilst calmly and methodically working on the precise ingredients which will be needed for the exact menu she will eventually put to the public.
...But the next general election is not the grand opening of your new restaurant, it’s the point in time at which your restaurant needs to be the most popular in the land. If you’re not attracting back customers now, they are likely to get into the habit of eating elsewhere. You at least need to tell them what sort of food you are selling... even if you haven’t yet worked out the precise recipe for the bolognese sauce.
This is why on some key propositions greater clarity will be needed. Kemi says she is “open” to leaving the ECHR and is a “sceptic” regarding carbon net zero. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage is building momentum with an unambiguous and unalloyed position on both these topics...
...If this wasn’t a big enough headache for the incoming head chef, Kemi Badenoch, she now faces stiff competition from a new market entrant right on her doorstep. In her Radio 4 interview, she suggested that people were currently eating at the Labour restaurant...
But Labour isn’t the immediate problem... your bigger challenge is the new fast-food restaurant directly opposite. Kemi is trying to turn around a failing branch of Wimpy just as Nigel Farage has opened a shiny new McDonald’s franchise mere yards away...
... being clear on whether you wish to stay in the ECHR or abandon the 2050 decarbonisation target aren’t tweaks to the menu, they are central to the offer you are making to your customers...
...Kemi Badenoch has only been Tory leader for a few weeks... She has a lot to sort out and she can’t do everything at once... But from a business perspective, it is not just a question of putting things right, there must be a real degree of urgency too. Innovative propositions appealing both to old and new customers need to be found quickly...
...The marketplace probably only has room for one serious party of the centre-Right. The Conservatives need to be selling stuff quickly to maintain that status. Otherwise, Nigel Farage will be eating not just their lunch, but their breakfast and dinner too.