The Tory Reform Group hosted our biannual One Nation Day conference on 9 September 2023. We brought together one hundred Conservative activists and supporters from around the country, a dozen One Nation MPs, and a range of experts from business and think tanks to discuss the future of conservatism. We are grateful to Chamber UK for kindly sponsoring our closing drinks reception with Financial Secretary to the Treasury Victoria Atkins MP.
Two main themes were brought up again and again by both our speakers and our other guests: that the Conservative Party must focus on the One Nation centre ground, rather than the small minority of voters on the extremes of politics; and that the party must continue to deliver solutions to the real issues that impact people’s lives, including the economy, public services, and community life. We also noted the need to diversify our parliamentarians, and in particular to get more women into parliament – while organisations like Women2Win have been successful in broadening the candidates list, more must be done to select women in seats with strong prospects.
Five further areas of focus emerged throughout the day:
Building an innovative economy that’s underpinned by technology, foreign investment, and skills. We discussed the importance of the UK’s leading position in science and technology, and the role of Government in doing more to support tech businesses to start and scale up, as well as the importance of attracting foreign investment through a long-term industrial strategy and smart regulation. Finally, a number of panellists pointed to the need to reskill workers to support them thrive in the age of automation, and to get economically inactive people back into work. Innovation, investment and skills were all highlighted as key to delivering our commitment to level up left-behind areas of the country.
Addressing intergenerational fairness with a strong focus on housing; proposals included planning reform, more ‘downsize’ homes for older people, and a new wave of social housing for younger people. Others argued that tax rises to meet growing public service demands should be levied on unearned income, rather than earned income which disproportionately impacts younger people.
Maintaining our environmental commitments with strong support for the Conservative Party maintaining its commitments to Net Zero; Security Minister Tom Tugendhat MP argued there is a green thread of environmentalism running through the Conservative Party from David Cameron’s premiership to Rishi Sunak’s, not least because a strong commitment to the environment is an electoral asset, not a liability.
Supporting family and community with proposals around more flexible working arrangements, alongside increased support for childcare, to give families and older people more choice about how they balance work and family commitments. There was a great deal of consensus on devolving more powers to communities and local governments, to give people the tools to both improve their neighbourhoods and turbocharge growth.
Upholding and broadening internationalism to build on our traditional commitment to internationalism and the promotion of liberal, democratic values around the world. We repeated our support for maintaining our ECHR membership and returning to our internationally agreed 0.7% target for aid spending as soon as possible. A number of speakers pointed to the Prime Minister’s Horizon deal with the EU as an excellent example of the benefits of pragmatic internationalism.
You can read just some of the coverage of the day and of the policies we discussed in the Guardian, Sun, Politico, Spectator, ConHome, Times Red Box, Politics.co.uk, the Observer and the Financial Times.
The Tory Reform Group will continue to promote these key themes and set out practical policies for delivering them in the run up to the General Election campaign. If you are interested in supporting us in this, please contact us with your ideas at trg@trg.org.uk