I am one of the lucky ones. One of the 121 Conservative MPs recently elected. Yet, I must confess, my victory feels rather Pyrrhic. For those unfamiliar with the term, it originates from Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose costly victory against the Romans led, ultimately, to his defeat. Could this be the fate of our 121 Conservative MPs and the Party as a whole? Only time will tell.
The first week back in Parliament was mixed. Witnessing colleagues winding up their offices, letting go of their staff, and saying goodbye is a sobering experience. Winner’s guilt, I guess.
To top it off, the sheer scale of Labour’s numbers became evident when we sat down to elect the Speaker of the House. Labour members filled the entire Government benches, overflowing onto the balcony benches and even the non-speaking area opposite the Speaker.
As I struggled to pick out any of the faces I had become used to debating over the last five years, I told myself it was simply because their seats had changed on the swap over from Opposition to Government. But after the General Election there are more new Members of Parliament than those who were re-elected and the magnitude of the change, particularly for those of us getting used to sitting on the Opposition benches, is daunting.
As we face this new reality, many are trying to understand what went wrong. Should the Conservatives shift to the right to address the 4 million people who voted for Reform? Or consider the 3.5 million votes for the Liberal Democrats and the collapse of the SNP? I am no psephologist and these questions will be debated for years to come. But what is clear is that Keir Starmer’s rise to power with 9.7 million votes (fewer than Jeremy Corbyn’s 10.3 million in 2019) reflects a broader discontent.
This tallies with my experience on the doorstep. I repeatedly encountered voters who felt trapped. Undecided and looking for the ‘least bad option’. It was saddening. I wanted people to vote positively; for something they believed in and are passionate about.
So often I would hear ‘We like what you have done Luke…’ followed by either ‘but we can’t vote for you because of the Party above you’ or ‘So we are voting for you despite the Party you are a part of.’ I had enough of the latter, not the former. Anecdotally, this sentiment resonates with other Conservative MPs in conversations in the tearoom.
In closed circles in our first week back, discussions about the future of the Conservative Party are rife. Many are eager to diagnose the problem and administer a quick fix. I would caution against this. As a doctor, we must stabilise the patient before proceeding with further treatment. We need to get the basics right: learning how to be an effective Opposition, managing Party finances with the loss of short money, and recovering from a gruelling election. “Time is the wisest counsellor of all,” as the saying goes......
You can read the full column on ConservativeHome here: Luke Evans: Respect must be the cornerstone of the future of the Conservatives | Conservative Home
