Alex Cobb is a stakeholder manager at Murphy Construction. He left the Conservatives in November 2024, he has just rejoined.
If the Conservative Party wants to renew itself, it must dismantle nepotism and elevate real people with real stories, not just the same old insiders.
Just because someone has hung around multiple MPs doesn’t mean they’d make a good MP or Special Adviser. Proximity to power is not the same as readiness to lead.
Nepotism corrodes trust in politics. It’s the practice of favouring relatives, friends, or insiders—especially in jobs or positions of influence, regardless of merit.
In Westminster, it’s not just about family ties.
It’s about who you know, where you went to school, and how well you play the internal game. From rigged candidate selections to sly gossip and backroom manoeuvres, nepotism thrives in the shadows of party machinery.
And let’s be honest: the Conservative Party has not been immune.
If the Tories want to govern again: not just manage decline, they must inspire.
That means offering something Reform and Labour currently lack: coherence, conviction, and connection to real life. The fragmentation of political discourse is a symptom of a deeper malaise: too many politicians who say nothing, believe in nothing, and represent no one outside their own echo chambers.
I rejoined the Conservatives last Friday. Not out of nostalgia, but out of hope.
Hope that the party can become a home for people like me, and millions more, who didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge, but went to state school, built businesses, raised families, fell on hard times, and got back up again. People who know what it means to struggle, adapt, and lead without a safety net.
The fundamentals of joining the party, voting in leadership elections, shaping local campaigns, attending conference, are a start. But the deeper reform must come from within.
We need to destroy the idea of Tory circles.
Half the problem is that jobs, whether in Parliament, think tanks, or advisory roles, are handed to talentless people with no real-world experience. The kind who’ve never had to meet a payroll, comfort a grieving neighbour, or navigate a broken benefits system.
And the data backs it up. In 2024, 76 per cent of elected Conservative MPs were male, and only 12 per cent came from ethnic minority backgrounds.
The overwhelming majority are white, straight, and privately educated, with a disproportionate number having attended elite universities. Yet many of those institutions now churn out graduates who struggle to find meaningful work or develop real-world skills, while some still find their way into Westminster through connections, not competence.
I’m fed up with people who just talk and never listen.
I went to an association dinner at a constituency recently, and it was frightening.
People talked over each other, gossiped about backgrounds, and passed judgment without knowing the first thing about someone’s life. It’s not just toxic, it’s a barrier to progress.
Too many in politics today lack the basic human skills that leadership demands. They don’t listen. They don’t empathise. They don’t care about the people they claim to represent. They use others, speak in platitudes, and treat politics as a personal brand strategy. One thing I’ve learned: many people in politics just use others. They’re not people persons. They don’t genuinely care about the general population. They care about status, proximity to power, and being seen.
That’s why voices like Matthew Syed’s are so refreshing.
He doesn’t just parrot tribal lines, he challenges them.
Whether writing on meritocracy, diversity of thought, or the dangers of groupthink, Syed brings intellectual honesty and lived experience. He’s proof that you can be rigorous without being robotic, and principled without being predictable. We need more of that energy in politics.
So how do we dismantle nepotism, not just in theory, but in practice?
Open candidate selection: Local associations must be empowered to choose from a genuinely broad pool, not a shortlist stitched up in CCHQ. Central control breeds sameness. Local democracy breeds relevance. If we want MPs who reflect their communities, we must trust those communities to choose them.
Transparent mentoring schemes: Aspiring candidates from non-traditional backgrounds, state school graduates, small business owners, carers, veterans, should be paired with MPs who listen, not just lecture. Mentorship should be about mutual growth, not gatekeeping. We need to build ladders, not reinforce walls.
Real-life experience quotas: This isn’t tokenism. It’s realism. Every candidate slate should include people who’ve worked outside politics, who’ve faced redundancy, run a business, raised children, or navigated the NHS from the patient side. Lived experience is not a liability. It’s a qualification.
Public accountability: Publish the backgrounds of candidates and appointees. Let voters see who’s lived a life beyond Westminster. Not just where they studied, but what they’ve done. Transparency breeds trust, and trust is the currency politics is running out of.
Say what you will about Nigel Farage, he believes in things. That alone sets him apart from the bland cohort of MPs who treat politics as a career ladder, not a calling.
You don’t have to agree with him to recognise the power of conviction.
And conviction is what the Conservative Party must rediscover if it wants to win back working Britain.
So, here’s my hope for rejoining: XYZ isn’t just a placeholder. It’s a call for Experience, Zeal, and Grit.
The kind of qualities you don’t learn in a debating society, but in the real world. The kind of qualities that don’t come from networking drinks in Westminster, but from navigating hardship, building resilience, and earning respect.
Politics should be about serving, not climbing. And if the Conservative Party wants to renew itself, it must start by asking: who are we elevating, and why?
