Common Ground Conservatism

How can the Conservative Party recover from electoral catastrophe? A new report from the Centre for Policy Studies, built around an extensive programme of quantitative and qualitative research led by James Frayne, argues that the party needs to return to the ‘common ground’ first identified by Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph in the 1970s.

Built on an in-depth programme of pre-election polling, as well as focus groups and immersive research in three key electoral battlegrounds – Guildford, Swindon, and the Don Valley.

The report finds that there is still a viable electoral coalition available to the Conservatives, if the party can overcome the stigma from its failures in government – in particular over the economy, the NHS and migration, and the perception that it only cared about the rich.

Strikingly, those who left the party in 2024 and those who stayed with it display a remarkable overlap in values – especially when it comes to policies such as immigration, law and order, welfare and the family. Frayne argues that there is no tension on these issues between ‘tacking left’ and ‘tacking right’ – indeed, that voters do not see these issues in those terms at all.

However, the report also warns that it will be much harder to persuade Tory voters to support many of the reforms that the country needs. In particular, potential Conservative supporters are – like other voters – hugely attached to the NHS, and hugely nervous about anything that might harm it, including lowering taxes. They are also hostile towards the wealthy and big business, although strongly supportive of small, local businesses.

Tory voters also tended to be supportive of Net Zero, and not to be aware of many of the debates around ‘woke ideology’ that transfix those in Westminster: their focus is firmly on day-to-day concerns, which they expect politicians to prioritise.

Key findings from the polling include:

• Among Tory defectors, the most popular explanation for why they were not voting Tory was that the party had allowed immigration to reach record levels
• The Tories having become too right-wing, or too left-wing, were the least popular explanations of all those put forward
• Only 18% of 2019 Tories said they could never vote for the Tories again, and 52% of the electorate were open to the prospect in theory
• The top policy priorities among both Tory voters and the general public were to reduce NHS waiting lists, make it easier to get GP appointments, and stop so many small boats arriving
• The biggest differences between Tory and Labour voters were over immigration, welfare and crime and justice, on which the overwhelming majority of potential Tory voters took a far firmer line
• There was also extremely strong support among Tory voters for apprenticeships, small businesses and the abolition of inheritance tax