Inside the young Tories’ plot for a Conservative revival
Confidence requires clarity.
The Conservative Party should abolish National Insurance Contributions, shift candidate selection away from “gold star councillors” toward “intellectual seriousness”, and be honest with voters that without growth the triple lock risks unsustainability.
Those are among the more eyebrow-raising recommendations in a new report from Next Gen Tories – a group launched in 2023 to highlight how millennials have been hardest hit by today’s challenges – exclusively seen by ConservativeHome ahead of its official launch this week.
Titled Conservative Revival: A New Radicalism, the paper is one of the more ambitious, and potentially internally combustible, pieces of Conservative thinking to emerge since the 2024 defeat.
As James Cowling, founder and managing director of Next Gen Tories – and author of the report, alongside director of policy Josh Smith – tells me: “The risk of inaction and not showing change is greater than the risk of staying still.
“Kemi is doing well, they’re almost there, it’s just turning the dial up. The party needs to set the vision and up the boldness.”
The paper has attracted backing from both ends of the party’s generations. Established shadow cabinet ministers Andrew Griffith and Claire Coutinho have provided supportive quotes, as have three MPs of the new intake recently tipped for promotion: Katie Lam, Blake Stephenson and Jack Rankin.
It was Rankin who perhaps captured the paper’s spirit most directly: “From a single planning code across the UK, to an acknowledgment that the triple lock will be unsustainable without policies that achieve growth.
“This paper signals a clear break from the Conservative Party of the past. This is a blueprint for a party which confronts this country’s issues from core principles first.”
It is hard to cover each recommendation of the 32 page report but the core principles, intended as the golden thread running through Conservative policymaking and communications, are framed through three pillars: wealth creation, aspiration and community.
On economics, the diagnosis is stark. They note that real GDP per capita was barely higher in 2023 than in 2007, with Britain caught in a self-reinforcing loop of high spending, rising taxes and anaemic growth.
“For too long, debates about public spending have been conducted in isolation from economic reality,” the report reads. “Policies such as the triple lock can illustrate the point. While politically sensitive and unlikely to be scrapped, it should be stated plainly that without stronger economic growth, long-term guarantees of this kind become increasingly difficult to sustain.”
The remedy involves tackling three structural constraints: the failure to build housing and infrastructure at scale; public spending weighted toward consumption over …
Confidence requires clarity.
The Conservative Party should abolish National Insurance Contributions, shift candidate selection away from “gold star councillors” toward “intellectual seriousness”, and be honest with voters that without growth the triple lock risks unsustainability.
Those are among the more eyebrow-raising recommendations in a new report from Next Gen Tories – a group launched in 2023 to highlight how millennials have been hardest hit by today’s challenges – exclusively seen by ConservativeHome ahead of its official launch this week.
Titled Conservative Revival: A New Radicalism, the paper is one of the more ambitious, and potentially internally combustible, pieces of Conservative thinking to emerge since the 2024 defeat.
As James Cowling, founder and managing director of Next Gen Tories – and author of the report, alongside director of policy Josh Smith – tells me: “The risk of inaction and not showing change is greater than the risk of staying still.
“Kemi is doing well, they’re almost there, it’s just turning the dial up. The party needs to set the vision and up the boldness.”
The paper has attracted backing from both ends of the party’s generations. Established shadow cabinet ministers Andrew Griffith and Claire Coutinho have provided supportive quotes, as have three MPs of the new intake recently tipped for promotion: Katie Lam, Blake Stephenson and Jack Rankin.
It was Rankin who perhaps captured the paper’s spirit most directly: “From a single planning code across the UK, to an acknowledgment that the triple lock will be unsustainable without policies that achieve growth.
“This paper signals a clear break from the Conservative Party of the past. This is a blueprint for a party which confronts this country’s issues from core principles first.”
It is hard to cover each recommendation of the 32 page report but the core principles, intended as the golden thread running through Conservative policymaking and communications, are framed through three pillars: wealth creation, aspiration and community.
On economics, the diagnosis is stark. They note that real GDP per capita was barely higher in 2023 than in 2007, with Britain caught in a self-reinforcing loop of high spending, rising taxes and anaemic growth.
“For too long, debates about public spending have been conducted in isolation from economic reality,” the report reads. “Policies such as the triple lock can illustrate the point. While politically sensitive and unlikely to be scrapped, it should be stated plainly that without stronger economic growth, long-term guarantees of this kind become increasingly difficult to sustain.”
The remedy involves tackling three structural constraints: the failure to build housing and infrastructure at scale; public spending weighted toward consumption over …
Inside the young Tories’ plot for a Conservative revival
Confidence requires clarity.
The Conservative Party should abolish National Insurance Contributions, shift candidate selection away from “gold star councillors” toward “intellectual seriousness”, and be honest with voters that without growth the triple lock risks unsustainability.
Those are among the more eyebrow-raising recommendations in a new report from Next Gen Tories – a group launched in 2023 to highlight how millennials have been hardest hit by today’s challenges – exclusively seen by ConservativeHome ahead of its official launch this week.
Titled Conservative Revival: A New Radicalism, the paper is one of the more ambitious, and potentially internally combustible, pieces of Conservative thinking to emerge since the 2024 defeat.
As James Cowling, founder and managing director of Next Gen Tories – and author of the report, alongside director of policy Josh Smith – tells me: “The risk of inaction and not showing change is greater than the risk of staying still.
“Kemi is doing well, they’re almost there, it’s just turning the dial up. The party needs to set the vision and up the boldness.”
The paper has attracted backing from both ends of the party’s generations. Established shadow cabinet ministers Andrew Griffith and Claire Coutinho have provided supportive quotes, as have three MPs of the new intake recently tipped for promotion: Katie Lam, Blake Stephenson and Jack Rankin.
It was Rankin who perhaps captured the paper’s spirit most directly: “From a single planning code across the UK, to an acknowledgment that the triple lock will be unsustainable without policies that achieve growth.
“This paper signals a clear break from the Conservative Party of the past. This is a blueprint for a party which confronts this country’s issues from core principles first.”
It is hard to cover each recommendation of the 32 page report but the core principles, intended as the golden thread running through Conservative policymaking and communications, are framed through three pillars: wealth creation, aspiration and community.
On economics, the diagnosis is stark. They note that real GDP per capita was barely higher in 2023 than in 2007, with Britain caught in a self-reinforcing loop of high spending, rising taxes and anaemic growth.
“For too long, debates about public spending have been conducted in isolation from economic reality,” the report reads. “Policies such as the triple lock can illustrate the point. While politically sensitive and unlikely to be scrapped, it should be stated plainly that without stronger economic growth, long-term guarantees of this kind become increasingly difficult to sustain.”
The remedy involves tackling three structural constraints: the failure to build housing and infrastructure at scale; public spending weighted toward consumption over …
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