Clark Vasey: The case for a leaner and more practical Conservatism, focused on the British worker

Clark Vasey is co-founder and Executive Director of Blue Collar Conservatism.

This part 2 of 2 of ‘Re-Introducing Blue Collar Conservatism’. Part 1 can be read here.

Across the Western world, right-inclined voters have become more working class.

Those looking rightwards work hard but are more likely to feel economically insecure than a conservative base from 40 years ago. Currently, they are looking to Reform in greater numbers, but without convincing a significant majority of them that we are the party that will best deliver for them, there will not be another Conservative Government.

Since conference, Kemi Badenoch has given us more cause for confidence about our future, but we are going to need to do more than shift a few points. Reform knows it needs to get past 40 per cent to avoid its route to power being blocked by tactical voting. Reform needs to be the only viable vehicle on the right if it is to succeed. That is no less true for us.

Winning over Reform voters with understanding and a better offer for hard-working Brits is our only option.

We need to set out a blueprint for a truly Blue Collar Britain, where national renewal is achieved through an unrelenting focus on jobs and backing the potential of every one of our citizens. This would simultaneously address many of the economic, social, and structural challenges facing the UK, but it requires a joined-up approach with the British worker at its heart. A good starting point for this would be a Labour Market Strategy.

We can quibble over the word “broken”, but Britain clearly does not work. At the top of the list are migration and welfare. Our party has been increasingly bold on both, but we will need to go much further and approach them as part of the same problem. They are mutually reinforcing policy failures.

A welfare system that makes it easy for people not to work creates a demand for migrant workers, while a flow of low-skilled migrant labour undercuts wages and displaces domestic workers from the labour market.

A Labour Market Strategy would be a comprehensive plan for national renewal rooted in work. Kemi’s Plan to Get Britain Working is a great start, bringing together business and welfare policies, but it must go further adding education focused on work, a clearer approach to strategic sectors, and ensuring that migration is never again used to paper over the cracks.

Our welfare system needs overhauling, and not working must never be a choice or pay more than working. Our business and economic policies must provide conditions in which jobs can be created, even above the demands of revenue collection. Labour’s jobs vandalism must be reversed across every sector as a bare minimum. We must be relentless in giving business the conditions to create jobs and compete. Remember the left has never truly been on the side of workers, because to be pro-worker, you must be pro-business.

We have lived beyond our means for years, and it cannot continue. Labour is busily peddling the fantasy that it can, making matters worse with every tax rise to keep our zombie state going. Instead of feeding a never-ending bloated state, we need an approach with the individual British worker at its heart.  Achieving prosperity and growth through the people who work to create it and contributing to a Britain that is competitive internationally and a place where people want to invest.

Even if we sorted out our planning system so we could actually build the homes and infrastructure we need, we know we do not have enough builders. Industry estimates suggest we will need between 161,000 and 239,000 additional workers by 2030 just to meet housing targets.

“Better pull the migration lever” will come the inevitable cry of those who think of the UK as the sum of its state rather than its people. No.  Not when we have 946,000 young people not in education, employment, or training. Why not train enough of them to meet our requirements? It would add to our national renewal and, more importantly, hand a young person a career.

Education must be unashamedly a tool of worker creation. The measure of our education system should be its ability to get all young people into work. From the next AI star to the care home worker. There is a benefit to being in work and dignity in every job. Our schools must instil this.

Let’s actively create future taxpayers and contributors rather than welfare recipients.

Job creation has significant social benefits, adding a sense of worth and human connection. Around 67 per cent of the 6.5 million people on out-of-work benefits have no requirement to look for work. At a national level, that is a crisis of unsustainable proportions; at an individual level, it is a human tragedy of wasted potential on an unforgivable scale.

A comprehensive Labour Market strategy should sit at the centre of our offer to working Britain. Becoming the vehicle for a broad coalition of working people from engineers and builders to agricultural workers and carers.  It will give our party purpose.

At this point, Labour’s claims to be a working class party are entirely historic. That means reaching millions of hard-working Brits who are currently looking to Reform. With care, understanding and the best offer we can do it.

This is why Blue Collar Conservatism exists.

We want to bring together activists and MPs who share our vision and determination to make this happen.