It is true that the majority of the Conservative Party’s voters in Scottish, Welsh, English and UK-wide elections tend to be white middle-aged men. Yet it is also true that over the past five years the Conservative Party has been working hard to expand our appeal, and we have been successful in doing so, with the 2019 General Election and the 2021 Scottish Election attracting more voters to our party than ever before. And yet the ethos of the Conservative Party is to always strive for more. That is why this is the perfect time to have an open discussion into how we can best attract people who do not usually vote Conservative to our party, younger people and people from BAME communities, and what needs to change to ensure that we keep winning elections all across the country.
In the 2019 UK General election in particular, millions of former Labour, SNP and Liberal Democrat voters trusted our party for the first time in their lives. This was because we promised to Get Brexit Done and sought to modernise our country, proposing a vision of a better United Kingdom, which the country voted in favour of. However, despite these great promises, we were still struggling to convince BAME and young voters to turn out and vote for us. In 2019, under a quarter of those aged 18-29 voted for the Conservative Party, compared to over half for the Labour Party. In that same election, 64% of BAME voters trusted in the Labour Party’s vision for the country, when only 20% voted for ourselves. If we were able to tap into these two groups and start attracting them through our policies and campaigning, 113 of Labour’s safest seats would be up for grabs, creating pathways into cities, particularly London.
One area through which we as a party can attract these groups of voters is through clearer and more relatable policies that speak to the ambitions of younger and BAME voters. Policy change is not the answer, we cannot abandon our principles and beliefs in order to chase down voter demographics, to do so would be sacrificing the better country we promised so many of our voters. However, I disagree with those who say our principles and values are incompatible with BAME individuals and young voters. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party, and now Keir Starmer appeal to young people because they speak to the worries these groups have, namely that of a better life. It is this ambition and drive for a better life for themselves and their family that the Conservative party needs to relate to and must consider when developing policies for the next election. One such challenge that we must face head-on is the issue of housing prices in our country, an issue that the opposition appears to be performing well with voters on. In tackling housing prices, we begin to show these voters that we are listening to their concerns, we do care about their ambition, and we want to support them in achieving the best life they can for themselves and their families.
The younger voter demographic, nor the BAME voter demographic, are inherently inaccessible to the Conservative Party, and they do not inherently belong to the Labour Party, despite how much their supporters arrogantly claim to be the voices of these groups. If we turn our attention to the ambition of these people, and we remove the barriers in their way to allow their hard work and ambition to go further than it does now, then we as a party can achieve the broadest possible voter base.