When we launched Prosper UK at the end of January, the response by some on this site was not especially warm. The polite version was that we were a support group for people who had lost an argument. The blunter version was that the centre right had already had its turn, made a poor job of it, and that anyone serious about winning again should be looking rightwards rather than setting up a movement aimed at the middle of the electorate.
Six months in, we’ve got a bit of a record now and the evidence to back it up, so it’s worth a proper answer.
To be honest, part of the charge is fair. The last Conservative governments were led, in large part, by people who’d put themselves on the centre right of the party, and on some things they got it wrong. We need to own that. Anyone from my end of the party asking for a hearing has to start there. Fine. I start there. Where I get off the bus is the conclusion that gets bolted on after, that the only voters worth chasing now are Nigel Farage’s.
Prosper UK has spent a fair chunk of the past six months in halls in Newcastle, Liverpool, Cardiff, Guildford, Edinburgh and Birmingham, listening to people who used to vote Conservative and stopped. They didn’t go happily. They went to Labour holding their noses, or to the Lib Dems, or they stayed home and watched the telly. But they are looking for a home.
What we’ve heard in those halls matches the polling too. More in Common asked people last month whether they’d consider voting Conservative. Nearly half of likely voters said yes or already do, which is a bigger pool of potential support than any party in the country has. Bigger than Reform’s. Bigger than Labour’s. Two years after the worst defeat in our history, that’s not nothing.
