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It takes a brave candidate to contest a by-election for any party of government that has been in power for a long time. Stepping in for a charismatic prime minister, toppled by his own colleagues, to fight a tough contest in a corner of a capital city that defaults to the Left required another level of courage. Or a masochistic bent that might have been cause for concern had Steve Tuckwell not pulled it off. So congratulations to the former Royal Mail manager and his campaign team for defying political gravity overnight.
They managed it by avoiding the depressing defeatism that has smothered the parliamentary ranks of the Conservative party. After the political equivalent of a mass nervous breakdown last year, Tory MP’s have been wallowing in a sea of self-pity, staring blankly at opinion polls, paralysed by how seemingly bad they look.
The dominant media narrative is that the pendulum is swinging: Conservatives have been in power too long and it’s Labour’s turn. Some in significant positions in the party even mutter that it would be to their benefit to be out of office for a while to sort themselves out. What nonsense. Any Tory who genuinely thinks that should step aside and make way for the next Steve Tuckwell, because there is no political pendulum guided by the laws of physics, and opinion polls can change direction like the wind.
What voters need is a reason to get up, get out and put their cross in one box rather than all the others. They had it at the last general election and delivered a record win for Boris Johnson – even by the standards of the Conservative Party – historically one of the most effective election winning machines in the world. Uxbridge and South Ruislip has just proved there is life after Boris. It may be duller. It’s certainly different. But a compelling pitch can be made for voting for one lot and against another, because the outcome has consequences.
The pitch in Uxbridge was not contrived. It was a very clear difference over a policy proposal that will have a very real impact on the lives of a huge number of people in the patch. The acronym – Ulez – sounds harmless enough, but what it means is that from the end of this August anyone getting into an old petrol or diesel car to drop off their kids at school, do the family shop or ply their trade will pay £12.50 a day to do so. This is not a Covid hangover or the painful economic price of Putin’s attempted invasion of the Ukraine, but a policy choice made by the Labour Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
I get the big picture. And clean air is not just about saving the planet but improving the health and quality of life of all of us right now. But driving change, if you’ll forgive the pun, requires positive incentives and attractive alternatives – not simply punishing those who can’t afford to trade in an old banger for a shiny new Tesla.
The point here is less about Ulez than about focussing on the nitty gritty consequences of real politics, as opposed to the shallow nonsense that has dominated so much of the debate over the last couple of years. Labour thought they could win Uxbridge by pressing repeat on an old playlist of anti-Boris anthems that left the electorate cold. But people clearly decided to think hard about what was really at stake and defied expectations by voting accordingly.
So let’s see the same focus on next year’s Mayoral election. Having seen first hand how much positive change can be delivered by City Hall, I’ve despaired at the apathy and indifference of the high ranks of the Conservative party about that contest. They’ve hardly put up a fight against Labour’s dominance of the Welsh Senedd either, despite the dismal failings of the Labour administration there.
And stop thinking that time is up. For better or worse the Conservatives have gone through a more comprehensive refresh in office over the last few years than Labour have even attempted in opposition. But faint heart never won fair election, so I encourage those disheartened MP’s to shuffle up to Steve Tuckwell at the earliest opportunity in the tea room – not just to make him feel welcome but in the hope that his sense of purpose and possibility is contagious.
Guto Harri was Downing Street Director of Communications February 2022 to September 2022
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