The Conservative party in parliament and 120,000 members will shortly be picking a new leader and, in doing so, a new prime minister. There will be more runners and riders than Doncaster races. The party wants a hard Brexit leader and that cannot be me. I believe the only way out of Britain’s crisis is a second referendum – and I’d campaign for Remain.
Like the rest of the country, I see the Conservative party engaging in a debate with itself about what type of electoral cyanide to take. The country is in crisis and yet this latest distraction strategy of a leadership election sees us continuing to avoid confronting two ultimate challenges the Conservative party – first, a viable route out of the mess Britain has got into on Brexit; and second, the fact that our traditional voter base is dwindling and we’re seen as out of touch with new generations of voters.
Whatever your view on Brexit referendums, I believe the Conservative party will never win another election by pursuing a hard Brexit strategy. It didn’t work in 2017. And now we are being outperformed by the Brexit party with a better salesman, a clearer message and more motivated voters. Our existing core vote is being cannibalised, and this is destroying us from the inside out. Yet it still seems that the Conservative party needs to test its hard Brexit theory to destruction under a new leader – a new leader who will continue to face a paralysed government and a gridlocked parliament, which will reject a hard Brexit deal just as it did the prime minister’s deal.
At the same time, we are also still failing to confront the basic fact that generations of voters under 40 are simply not voting Conservative. I represent the second-youngest demographic constituency in the country – Putney in south-west London. In my constituency, the average voter is aged 37 or 38. I took this seat from Labour and have held on to it four times under three Conservative leaders – Michael Howard, David Cameron and Theresa May – but only by successfully reaching out well beyond our shrinking core vote. As long as the Conservative party denies these people a say on Brexit, they will reject us. This all adds up to electoral oblivion.
Once the Conservative party has hit rock bottom, it will face a hard choice. Change or die. Be relevant and survive. Or don’t. But being relevant means giving voters like mine a say on Brexit and taking their priorities on housing, inequality, health, education and the environment and making them ours. However, for now it seems, the Conservative party’s journey towards electoral rock bottom must run its course.
If it had been a leadership contest about confronting these hard choices, I would have stood; instead it’s just a hard Brexit beauty parade. So I will not.
What matters to the country more is a revolution on social mobility and equality of opportunity – and change is now coming from outside this deadlocked parliament. That’s why I set up the Social Mobility Pledge last year to work with business, schools and communities to provide more opportunities for more young people. It builds on the work I did as secretary of state for education. Our businesses can be engines of change, playing a transformational role in creating opportunity in our country. Companies big and small are committing to partner with schools to help raise aspiration, offer work experience or an apprenticeship, and make sure their recruitment is fair and unbiased. In just over a year, and with cross-party support, 250 companies employing 2.5 million employees have signed up.
Together, this coalition of the willing is actually making a difference on the ground, from Bradford and Hull to Sunderland and Manchester. We are systematically sharing best practice about what works on social mobility to create a race to the top. The practical solutions are out there and we’re using them to boost opportunities for millions of young people who don’t find enough of them on their doorstep.
The real debate about how we transform Britain is beyond any single political party or leadership candidate. The answers to social mobility don’t lie in the Westminster bubble; they are out in communities across our country. The solutions will fundamentally change the status quo and be a break from the past, a radical agenda to create a different and better version of Britain than the one we see today. What we need is system change, one that profoundly recreates Britain as the first country in the world to achieve equality of opportunity.
That’s why, although it may change in the future, for now and for me, this Conservative party’s hard Brexit leadership race is the wrong contest at the wrong time.
