Young Tories Set Up Campaign To Help Party Avoid "Terminal" Decline
5 min read
A Tory campaign group is launching a bid to improve the party's offer to young people and avoid what it warns could be "terminal defeat" for the Conservatives.
One of its senior backers, former Cabinet minister Simon Clarke, said that his party would "cease to exist" if it did not urgently address its unpopularity with young people.
The Next Gen Tories group was founded in 2022 by communications consultant James Cowling – then aged 27 – in an attempt to boost representation for those in their 20s, 30s and 40s among the Tory grassroots.
The group advocates policies such as housing tax reform, planning reform, and increasing shared parental leave to make it easier for young people to find housing and start families.
After the Tories suffered their worst defeat in history at this year’s General Election, Next Gen Tories is now launching the “next phase” in their campaign – ‘ReGeneration’. It will focus on “renewal at every level if the party is to win back young and working-age voters”, advocating for changes in policies and party operations on a national and local level.
Cowling, now 29, said: “There is a path for the Conservatives to win the next election, but only with a more coherent pitch to under 45s who have moved away from the party in overwhelming numbers.
“ReGeneration will be the first step in affecting that change. In particular, we seek to bring together the wealth of new talent rising through the ranks of the Conservative Party.”
The group has appointed a new advisory board which includes the President of the Resolution Foundation and former universities minister Lord Willetts as well as former senior ministers Simon Clarke and Bim Afolami, who both lost their seats this year. The board will also include business and media figures including Simon Dudley, Rajiv Nathwani, John Belsey, Alys Denby, James Vitali, and Lizzie Hacking.
The campaign will run multiple initiatives next year, including the ‘Next Gen Network’ to bring together “new talent rising through the ranks of the Conservative Party”, media campaigns, and outlining new policy platforms. Its first focus will be on the “rewiring” of the Conservative Party's operations and approach to government.
Clarke, who served in various ministerial roles under former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, said that Next Gen Tories were highlighting the issues which “matter most to the future of the Conservative Party”.
The former housing secretary told PoliticsHome that the “worrying truth” behind the “obviously shattering” 2024 election result was that Tory support among younger voters has “collapsed”.
Labour led the Tories among every age group except those aged older than 65 — the oldest crossover point since the 1997 election when Tony Blair's Labour led among all age groups.
“We need to address this, or we will cease to exist – and arguably, we will deserve to cease to exist,” Clarke said.
“I'm a Conservative because I believe in opportunity.
"We talk a lot about the sorts of things that we believe people ought to aspire to: a home of their own, a family of their own, getting on in their career. But in truth, a lot of the policy needed to make that possible has been lacking.”
Clarke blamed a “constrained supply on home building” for his view that everywhere “south of about Nottingham” has become unaffordable for young people to live. He accused the Conservative Party of setting itself “almost as the anti-development party”, particularly at the Mid Bedfordshire and Selby by-elections held in recent years.
“Our literature was more or less exclusively focused on 'let's stop Labour building on the Green Belt',” he said.
“That's just a ridiculous position for us to adopt. Everyone who looks at the issue with any degree of seriousness can see that the green belt is not all green…”
He added that the Tory party had not helped itself with its “lamentable” social media campaign efforts and called the national service policy announced during this year's general election campaign a “disaster”.
“It was dropped on us all, MPs included, from a great height.”
The former MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland only lost his seat by 214 votes to Labour despite there being no Reform candidate running against him – but he still sees the threat from Nigel Farage's party as existential.
Research by the UK in a Changing Europe think tank and British Election Study Internet Panel shows that support for Reform UK rises with older age groups. However, it is in the younger age groups where support for Reform has overtaken that of the Conservatives, particularly among men. Men between 18-35 were more likely to vote Reform than Tory.
Voting behaviour in the 2024 General Election according to age and gender (UK in a Changing Europe and British Election Study Internet Panel)
“The threat to the Conservative Party is existential,” Clarke said. “No one's under any illusions about that in terms of the leadership of the party.
“We've lost our sense of ourselves, and the public, who are never fooled, could see right through that. What we need to do now is rebase ourselves in a narrative around opportunity.”
He said it was important to make a “positive case” rather than just waiting for Labour or Reform to “fail”. Clarke listed new Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, her chief of staff Lee Rowley, and shadow ministers Alex Burghart and Neil O’Brien as colleagues who “recognise we fundamentally have to change our offer as a party”.
Conservatives in Canada have seen a surge in support from young people this year, with what Clarke described as a similar program to Next Gens. He said this shows “there is absolutely nothing inevitable about younger people not voting Conservative”.
“You've just got to actually set out a prospectus worth voting for,” he said.
“There is a sense in which this is a generational shift for the Conservative Party… but change needs to happen in this Parliament. We either do this or we do risk terminal defeat.
"Any Conservative who thinks July is as bad as it gets is just deluding themselves. The hard work in many ways is only just beginning.”
The former MP added: “It’s always darkest before the dawn!”
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