Reinventing Politics: Some Post-Electoral Thoughts For The Conservatives

A memo to Conservatives: How Tories Can Lead on the Environment, and why they must

Dear Conservatives;

Having just endured the heaviest defeat you have ever received, it is quite likely that you are out of power for the next decade.

So attention is needed upon the next decade. In your current leadership contest, you need to look to the 2030s, not replay battles of the 2010s nor even the 2020s…

How the electorate is changing

What does a 2033 electorate look like?

Young citizens overwhelmingly want eco-seriousness as they stand otherwise to reap the whirlwind. Moreover, if this latest general election is anything to go by, young people are dramatically more inclined to vote accordingly: the extraordinary fact about the youth vote this time is that more of the youngest voters voted Green than voted Conservative and Reform combined. Plus: Conservatives stand to - and do - lose more votes than they gain by running against the tide of history on nature and climate.

Let’s ask an even bigger question: what does the world look like in 2033 or so? Sadly, it will certainly be more climate-damaged than it already is. The salience of these literally-vital issues will certainly have grown, not declined, by then.

If Conservatives want to put themselves in poll position to win in a decade’s time, what we have said so far has clear implications.

There will be no 2033 victory for the Conservative Party unless it resumes leadership on climate and nature, a leadership that has been squandered, especially by Prime Ministers Truss and Sunak.

Conservatives could actually take a lead on the environment – especially if Labour is complacent, and doesn’t reverse the backtracking on its climate pledges which has serially occurred over the last several months. Conservatives could do this most especially, as we will explain, by proposing a national adaptation plan. 

In this election just gone, you in the Conservative Party have for the first time been very seriously threatened (at a general election) from the Right, by Farage’s ‘Reform’ Party; and this makes it impossible for the Conservative Party any longer to win votes even from a climate-delaying section of the public by having the clearest anti-climate policies: because they will always be outflanked by Reform on this front. This means that for the first time in a long time there is a very real motivation for Conservatives to return for good to their historic mission: to conserve. By doing so, you can start once again to appeal to something other than a shard of hard-Right opinion, and signal their seriousness at becoming a Party of Government again. What’s more, you can step up to destiny, in the kind of way that their and this country’s greatest hero did, in 1940. You can find a one-nation spirit again, as well as the internationalist consciousness that animated not just Churchill but Thatcher, as exhibited in her pathfinding oratory on rising up to meet the climate threat in the latter part of the 80s (read 1988 speech).

So, let us explain how this could work:

A National Adaptation Plan: how Tories can lead on the environment again

Climate adaptation is, unfortunately, a pretty fresh issue, and matches Conservative voters’ priorities on realism, local and community focus, international leadership, and protecting the UK. Tragically, humanity has clearly now missed staying within the 1.5 C degrees over-heating maximum goal and the UK is slated to feel some severe consequences, according to recent science. Escalating impacts beyond 1.5 are coming. Adaptation is about doing what we can to protect our way of life with national adjustments to a changing climate — and the food shortages and economic instability that go along with it.

The UK can lead internationally by preparing domestically. There is literally nothing that Britain can do to speed worldwide emissions reductions better than to provide news-watchers worldwide the sobering site of Britons starting to batten down their home-hatches in unison, in anticipation of the chaotic coming climate future. That prudent course of action would more strongly signal to the world as a whole that it must get serious about stopping climate decline than every speech given at climate meetings in the last 20 years.

Turning to adaptation is a sign of seriousness, a way of acknowledging where we are now at, and of prudently preparing for what’s coming. Adaptation presents Conservatives with a chance to channel your greatest ever leader, Churchill, whose starkly truthful takes on affairs are at this time sorely needed. By taking up that role, a pioneering Tory may or may not be choosing for themselves the most obvious route to election in the short term, but will surely set themselves on path to the leadership of the party and more when next it comes to or towards power (i.e. probably in the 2030s).

An adaptation-focus would also provide Tories a chance to run against the elitism of those who are still ‘protecting’ the public from bad news about their children’s future. Sadly the political class that conservatives like to call“the liberal establishment” has made a decision that the public cannot handle the truth on climate and continues to spout on rubbish about everything basically being Ok, assuming or at least asserting that we are staying in the safe zone (i.e. below the 1.5 degrees guardrail), in order to protect people’s feelings. Polls show that voters would prefer their childrens’ future were protected, and adaptation-planning which faces and prepares for the future is a way to bring this priority into focus. Britons must be reminded of their ability to face adversity — polls already show that we expect it.

Tories can equally well embrace the climate concern that has recently been seen, strangely, as a preserve of the Left but approach it from their own moral and philosophical standpoint, which would include an emphasis on pragmatism and localism and a somewhat more minimalist approach to government. Conservative voters often share deep concerns about nature, about preserving what we have, about heritage and family. All of these are now under threat; all of them can be…conserved.

To be completely clear: A national adaptation plan is not, contrary to what Richard Tice has sometimes unwisely said, an alternative to greenhouse-gas-reductions. Adaptation needs to be (and can be) done in a manner that is compatible with not making the underlying crisis worse. Strategically, transformatively. And, as already noted, when adaptation is taken seriously it actually feeds the collective energy for greenhouse gas reduction.

Why Tories must lead on the environment

The modern obsession with ‘progress’ has been a key part of the overall problem, so far as the degradation of nature and our climate has been concerned. That is, it is precisely the tendency of…those who get called ‘progressives’ to assume that we can change and remake the way the world is as much as we like and not suffer the consequences that lies at the root of the terrible environmental predicament gripping our world. True conservative philosophy, taking the responsibility of stewardship both seriously and humbly, could be a key part of the way out of this dire mess. ‘Do not fix what is not broken’ is a dictum that could have been applied to our relationship to the Earth. It is literally a conservative dictum. It is not too late for it, even now.

To repeat:You cannot out-compete Reform at venal and vicious populism.Reform will always be prepared to be even bigger liars than whoever succeeds him Sunak, about climate and much more. Let Reform race to the bottom on climate and dally with conspiracy theories denying air pollution and alleging that anything eco is a plot by authoritarians. The only way forward is for the Conservatives finally to realise that only by pivoting back to where the #ClimateMajority sits do they have any chance of re-establishing their fortunes.

You can thereby detoxify more deeply than Cameron ever did; and start to win over some young voters at last; and regain respect from the electorate (and abroad); and signal seriousness about appealing to the centre-ground (for there already is a climate-and-nature majority)…if and only if you seek to regain leadership in this area. You can then win again. You can become climate-Churchills. You can go down in history. 

For the first time in a long time, there is a real chance that in that struggle the likes of the Conservative Environment Network will for the first time in a long time not be on the defensive. Rediscover your soul and the rest is history.

Imagine how this could look: imagine Britain adopting a transformative adaptation strategy. Imagine the spiral of seriousness and enthusiasm that this would bring about: imagine more and more people recognising and mucking in with their common vulnerability and their common task, with its rich echoes of World War II, the great time — still in living memory — of legend and of common national commitment in our nation’s story. Imagine now how this turn of events would ripple around the world: imagine other countries actually looking at Britain as a leader again …imagine how this will move them, too.

You are imagining the world becoming safer, even in the teeth of immense climate-driven challenges. And you are imagining something that Conservatives could lead on.