"A Conservative party tacking to the left is playing to the politics of the past"
Conservative Home: 25th September 2025: PopCon's very own Head of Public Affairs, Sam Collins, explains why recent arguments - that the Conservative Party should change strategy by tacking to the left - have got it badly wrong.
"The great dictum of German Field Marshal Albert von Schlieffen, author of the German plan for invading France during the Great War was “Remember, keep the right flank strong!” ... The subsequent revision of his plan by his successors, weakening the right flank to shore up the centre, is considered to have been a key factor in the failure of the overall strategy and what condemned the continent to four years of trench warfare...
...this week has seen a range of commentators, including former independent candidate for South West Herefordshire David Gauke, arguing for a similar change of strategy by the Conservative Party. By moving leftwards, they argue, we can regain votes from the Liberal Democrats and Labour lost in 2017 and 2019 and (somehow) offset the need to regain votes from Reform.
This refrain is a well-worn one from those who believe that we can rebuild the Cameron electoral coalition that took us to victory in 2015. However this is a mirage of a strategy, one that completely fails to recognise the different political and electoral world we inhabit in 2025...
...The political realignment that has been a major part of our elections since 2015 means that the key dividing line has changed from economics to identity. For all the talk of their being a gap in the political marketplace for a Cameroon-style ‘centre right’ Party, there is not a sufficient large gap for a pro-migration, pro-Europe, economically sound party to compete for Government...
...Failing to shore up the right flank simply means that millions of people who either left for Reform or sat out the 2024 Election will not even give us a hearing on economic and other issues. Simply put, the Cameroon coalition is gone, and no amount of wishing will bring it back..."