The Conservative Party must recapture young voters and not “chase Nigel Farage” to win back the electorate, Rory Stewart has warned.
The former Tory leadership hopeful and government minister warned the party has not recovered since the “chaos” of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss and must return to the centre rather than pandering to the far-right.
Mr Stewart’s comments come as the latest polls show the Conservatives on course for a landslide defeat as they lag more than 24 points behind Labour.
Speaking to The Independent ahead of the paperback publication of his book Politics on the Edge, the former minister turned podcaster said that, since 2019 the Tories have “bet the house on voters over 65 and given up on young voters”.
“The Tory campaign went wrong at the moment when Boris Johnson was forced to resign with 50 or so of his ministers resigning under his feet,” he said. “Liz Truss became the leader and proceeded to behave in the most reckless fashion with the British economy. That is the moment everything changed. It’s where the conservative vote collapsed, and it’s barely recovered.
“Since 2019, the Conservatives’ decided they’re going to bet the house on voters over 65 in rural areas. They don’t care about younger voters and the policies they’ve announced show that. Just look at triple lock plus pensions and national service.”
Mr Stewart added that if the polls are correct and the Tory party loses, they face a choice.
“They can either lurch to the right and go soft-Farage to convince themselves they lost because they didn’t appeal enough to right-wing elderly voters,” he said. “Or, they realise voters over 65 are not the future and the only hope is to appeal to younger voters to rebuild the party.
“It’s not inevitable that young people always vote left wing. Get back to working people, young people, the energetic and fresh future of the country. That means going back to the centre of politics, not chasing Nigel Farage.”
Mr Stewart ran to succeed Theresa May as prime minister and Tory leader in 2019, and lost the whip shortly after for rebelling against Bris Johnson’s no-deal Brexit. He stood down as MP for Penrith and the Border later that year.
The former Secretary of State for International Development said one of the main reasons he left the Conservative Party and mainstream politics was Mr Johnson.
“I thought he would be a terrible Prime Minister and I thought it was very shameful for the Conservative Party to promote him,” he told The Independent. “I cannot stay in a party that makes this person the leader.
“On the other hand, I’m aware that if I’d stayed and endorsed Boris Johnson things would have changed, and maybe I would have had a chance of running to be leader and Prime Minister.
“But I would have been Prime Minister of a party that had really lost its way, facing a public that had lost all faith in us, going into an election that I probably would have lost.
“I don’t regret it. I didn’t have a choice, and I think hanging around would have left me ashamed of myself.”
The Eton-educated ex-soldier and diplomat explained in his book that he is “embarrassed” by some of the decisions he made as an MP, but partly blames the “morally corrupt” party-political system.
“I think it’s important to understand that I’m not a Saint. I don’t want to present myself as a hero or model of integrity,” he said. “I did a lot of things in politics that were embarrassing and shameful.
“I voted for things I didn’t really believe in. I sent creepy letters and texts to David Cameron, praising him for speeches so I could get jobs.
“I’m not trying to set myself up as a holy person. Like all politicians, there was a lot of stuff that I did to show loyalty to the party: vote with the whips, get promoted, parrot the party line.
“There was a lot of careerism and compromise, and it reached the point in my life where I felt I’ve done a lot of things I don’t believe in and finally decided I can’t do this anymore.”
Mr Stewart also suggested the “morally corrupt” system is not just the fault of Parliament or the parties, but partly the public who vote for “strange people”.
“It was the public that voted Boris Johnson in, not just the MPs,” he said. “Boris placed winning elections above any kind of normal principles of seriousness of government, seriousness of policy and, in the end, that comes back to bite you.”
- Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart is published in paperback by Vintage on 6 June
