"PopCon's Head of Public Affairs explains what the latest survey from Popular Conservatism tells us"
Conservative Home: 9th September 2024: Sam Collins (PopCon's Head of Public Affairs) considers the meaning of 'unity' inside the Conservative Party and what that should mean for the next party leader
"The latest survey of more than 450 active Conservative Party members conducted by Popular Conservatism confirms our respondents’ preference for Robert Jenrick, followed, fairly closely by Kemi Badenoch. With Priti Patel now out of the running, Jenrick leads Badenoch by eight per cent... with a fifth of respondents still undecided. The rest, as they say in racing, are nowhere. So far, so expected.
But what is perhaps more thought-provoking are the responses to the crucial question – what criteria do our respondents apply when judging how they would vote, not for whom.
Our panel was asked to pick the top five things on which they would be evaluating the candidates. They were offered a range of possible responses ranging from “They will do what they say”, to “They have the best chance of winning the next general election”, to a range of policy areas where they might agree with the candidate (such as migration and net zero). You can see the full results here.
The wallflower at this particular ball, was that old political favourite: ‘unity’.
Considering how many references there have been from every candidate to the sacred nature of party unity, this is distinctly odd. Only a pitiful eight per cent of respondents selected establishing unity among Conservative MPs as one of their top five criteria. Compare that to the 55 per cent who were worried about whether the candidate was: ‘A true blue conservative whose values match mine’...
...we need to unpick our respondents’ views a little: don’t they care about unity?...
But there are two types of unity. There is unity of purpose, where a group of like-minded people come together to achieve the same goal using the same methods... Then there is the unity of coalitions, which we often see in countries with proportional representation. Here, parties jettison ideas to hold ideologically-incoherent groups together...
Popular Conservatism believes the future of the Conservative Party must lie in the first type of unity: a coherent set of policies that appeal to the electorate, delivered by a party which voters can support, safe in the knowledge that they will get the sort of policies they expect. And it seems that party members agree with us..."