The Jobs Foundation at Conservative Party Conference

I’m currently reading ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ to my 8-year-old son, which involves Harry, and three other school children, take part in the Triwizard Tournament, hoping to win ‘eternal glory’. Sound familiar? Well, if you had gone to Birmingham last week for the Conservative Party Conference, it might be.

Four packs of potential leaders, supporters in tow, paraded round the ICC, with huge banners, their enlarged faces beaming down, each promising ‘eternal glory’ to a future Conservative Party. This seemed to lift the mood somewhat as party members poured their frustration into this beauty contest – and seemed, slightly perversely, to be enjoying themselves amid the maelstrom (visions of a plane going down when you are given a whistle to blow, comes to mind).

Conversations abounded between Tom’s sensitive streak, Kemi’s brash tone, Robert’s zeal, once exposed to the hubris of the Home Office, and James’s overall nice guy persona. Three days of this was enough, certainly for me, and I think the general sense was that Kemi had a bad conference – although she was still the most talked about – and Tom had the best. As one of Tom’s team told me proudly, “we won the merch war!”. Whether that morphs into any real advantage, we will see when the results come in later today as the candidates drop down to three. And that is the reality - with 121 Conservative MPs, nothing can be presumed. Tight margins, and an even tighter pathway to cutting though, as the Party attempts to recalibrate in opposition.

Certainly, the role of business and the crucial social mobility it provides, has most definitely got stuck at the bottom of the in-tray over past years, which is extraordinary really, when this goes to the very heart of conservatism. Future leaders take note - whoever takes the party forward must not just pay homage to this truth but allow enterprise to be the poverty busting machine it can and needs to be. A fact for all political parties to take heed, something myself and the team discussed at length at both major party conferences the Jobs Foundation attended.

In terms of predictions for what comes next, I left Birmingham none the wiser. The excellent Ashcroft polling, released on the Sunday of conference, framed the scale of the challenge for whoever leads the party back from the brink. In short, the Conservatives need to completely transform their reputation, and they don’t have 10 years to do this with the Reform Party snapping at their heels. Questions around why and how it ended so badly; and crucially understanding how only one in ten voters now believe the party was on the side of people like them, needs be answered, and fast.

Once home and back to reality, I popped over to my neighbours for a cup of tea, and possibly suffering from Stockholm syndrome, asked who they might like as the next Conservative Party leader. They responded by reaching into their kitchen cupboard and taking out a mug emblazoned with ‘This House is a Tory-Free Zone.’ ?I think that says it all folks.