13 Jul 2024
Looking at the national picture following the General Election, we were keen to understand what the St Albans and Harpenden candidates make of the current state of British politics, and what they think will happen to the Conservative Party in the wake of its devastating defeat.
St Albans Tory candidate James Spencer wants to see a return to more civilised politics: “One of the things that pleased me most when taking part in all of our local hustings, was the degree of cross party agreement on the issues that mattered most to St Albans.
“There were disagreements about how we thought the issues should be tackled, but there was an immense amount of good will in that we were all trying to achieve the same ends. This is part of the reason why I believe the election campaign in St Albans was extremely cordial. It is a pity that this approach is not replicated nationally, or in political discourse in general.”
But what of his own party? “We’ve obviously been through a massive drubbing. I don’t think the country was opposed to our policies, but I think they were just fed up with the melodrama of inter-Conservative Party politics.
“Labour’s majority, whilst undoubtedly massive, is relatively soft – a great number of their constituencies are held with a majority of around or below 1,000 votes. This means that the Conservatives have one shot to win a large number back at the next General Election. To do that we must remember that we win elections from the centre and not the extremes!”
Fellow Conservative candidate Nigel Gardner, who stood in Harpenden and Berkhamsted, said the real story was no longer what the Tories were doing, but how Labour performs with the economy, the NHS, the Green Belt, VAT on school fees and so on.
The question for the Conservative Party is where does it go now? I’ve said many times that elections are won by centre ground parties who provide competent, responsible, uplifting leadership.
“It’s a long hard slog to the next election. Unless something extraordinary happens, there will not be another election for four or five years, and that’s a huge amount of time for parties either to get worse or get their act together.
“It’s not axiomatic that a political party which has been defeated badly necessarily gets its act together.”
Simon Grover, who campaigned for the Green Party in St Albans, said it was a great relief to finally have a progressive government after years of Tory and Coalition misrule.
“The government needs to be pushed to act fast and boldly on the huge issues facing the country. Greens in Parliament will do that.
““We need to rebuild public services like health and education, take back control of trashed privatises utilities like energy, transport and water, and urgently tackle the climate crisis by insulating homes and investing in clean energy.
“The Green campaign nationally and locally went exactly to plan, with our four target seats returning Greens with healthy majorities and big increase in the local vote. So it’s hard to think what we might have done differently or better.”
He was less certain when asked what the future holds for the Conservatives: “Who knows! They seem likely to pick a right-wing leader as they don’t have many moderates left right now. That implies that they would then seek to ‘win back’ Reform voters, by lurching further to the right.
“That’s unlikely to work for them, as they need to appeal to a wide audience if they want to regain support.
Reform don’t look like the kind of outfit that’s capable of building a modern political party, and I suspect their MPs will disgrace themselves in office, so they could fade away.”
But what of Reform UK’s St Albans candidate John Dowdle? As you might expect from someone who has been very outspoken during the campaign, he has his own views on the country’s political landscape.
“One thing I think is a positive outcome of this General Election is that the concept of Union has emerged considerably reinforced. Reform UK can claim a lot of the credit for this.
“The huge decline in SNP MPs and usual lacklustre performance of PC in Wales has – I think – cemented the ties which apply to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. While Sinn Fein gained the most seats in Northern Ireland, I do not believe this marks any great appetite among the Northern Irish to be conjoined to the rest of the island of Ireland or vice versa.
“I believe the best future move would be to restore a Union of the British Isles but this would have to be determined by a referendum of all the peoples of the British Isles, possibly including the Channel Isles.”
He said he firmly believes the Conservative Party will now self-destruct, adding: “My advice to Conservative Party members is to join Reform UK. While Reform UK right now is clearly not a party of today, it most definitely is a party of tomorrow. One thing that became very obvious during the General Election campaign was just how popular Reform UK is among young people, particularly among young males usually below voting age. They could become a major driving force within Reform UK in the future.”
The SDP’s Stewart Satterly has written off the Conservative Party for the foreseeable future: “It has a decision to make as to whether it will move further to the right or to try to rediscover it’s more centre-right roots. A lot will depend on its next choice of leader however I’ll be surprised if they return to government for at least 10 years.”
He added that he will be watching the actions and progress of the Labour government with a lot of interest: “Let’s see how good they are at the execution of the promises that they have made.
“My own view is that of the major political parties are on the wrong track, particularly in economic strategy but you always want the state of our country to improve – and let’s face it, it could not be much worse!”
