Our 2024 General Election loss was frightening in many ways. But the one thing that stuck out with me was the average age of becoming a Conservative voter, 63. This meant that the year this average convert was born is 1961, which is older than both my parents. This is stark, but why is this?
The Conservative Party has always been the party of aspiration, seeking to enable those who put the hard work in to succeed in life, to allow families to be able to give their children a good education and to be fiscally responsible on economic matters. Yet we look at the public's view of us as a party, it's clear we have lost our way.
I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of why this is, or try and diagnose a single issue that has caused this, because there are several factors stretching back to the Cameron years. The bottom line is we have lost trust. And with young people especially.
Young people have lost hope and don't see how things can get better for them. Student tuition costs are at an all time high and will get higher still, union barons are grinding our country to a halt and holding it to ransom and for those of us in the home counties like me in Surrey, unless you have a generous donor or the ability to move to the coast, they'll never hope to get onto the property ladder. It looks very bleak and will only get worse under a dysfunctional Labour government with no direction or agenda.
In this backdrop, it's no surprise our most talented young people are moving abroad to seek opportunities in places like Singapore, Australia and the US. Our best brains are being lost because they cannot see opportunities in this country. It's therefore imperative that our party offers an alternative vision of growth, aspiration and opportunity.
We need to move our party into the 21st century and start engaging young people, and I don't mean by making them canvassing fodder. Talk to us and engage us! As the youngest District Councillor in Tandridge, I took great care to involve young people in council decision-making and helping them inform my actions at the council. That's partly why I became so passionate about improving bus and rail services in my community of Westway.
In order to win over young people, we need to start putting pressure on the Labour government to address the issues, especially around housing and affordability. We must make sure that young people can afford to get onto the property ladder and have a clear plan to do so. We also need to make Labour take steps to address the cost of living, not by imposing crippling taxes and paying union barons, but by supporting small businesses and cutting tax. We need to offer hope.
Canada's Conservatives are offering young people hope. As a result, the next generation are rallying around Pierre Poilievre and his vision to cut taxes and invest in more homes to get young people onto the property ladder. We should be looking to Canada and taking note.
On housing, I also believe we need to be innovative to enable young people to get onto the property ladder. A scheme where you can buy as you earn in return for loyalty to a bank or building society and a shared ownership scheme where a renter of more than five years can buy shares of their home are just two ways we can increase home ownership.
One young person living in Westway, the ward I represented from 2021 to 2024, told me that she would like to see more on the job learning opportunities for young people similar to degree apprenticeships, where you can earn money in your field of choice while working towards a degree, securing a qualification and a valuable degree. This is something Gillian Keegan had already started so we should be calling for more of these to be introduced.
Another young person living in Horley has told me he wants to start his own business with a shop, but feels put off by the high expense of it. Why don't we allow councils to offer six-month rebates on business rates and shop front grants to enable new high street shops to allow the new business to grow without being crippled by taxes?
Our young people are our future and it's crucial to our future viability as a political party that we engage young people and offer policies that help offer growth, aspiration and opportunity. It's the only way we can survive.
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