David Gauke: The one area where the Conservatives could carve out an advantage isn’t helped by talk of ‘Brexit betrayal’

David Gauke is a former Justice Secretary and was an independent candidate in South-West Hertfordshire at the 2019 general election.

There are three issues that matter most to voters at present.

According to YouGov, who tracks these matters, voters identify the economy (50 per cent), immigration and asylum (also 50 per cent) and health (36 per cent), well ahead of any other issue.

Conservative strategists are presumably asking themselves upon which of these issue should focus at the next election.  That is not to say that they can ignore any of these issues.  It might be that the Tories need to neutralise a weakness.  But where, exactly, do they intend to score some runs?

Health would be an unlikely choice.  Labour tends to lead substantially on this issue for reasons that date back to the formation of the NHS.  The Conservatives were competitive in 2010, but that was after a long period of Labour Government by which point every inadequacy in the system was laid at their door.  By the time we got to the eve of the 2024 General Election, 85 per cent of the population thought that the Tory Government was handling the issue of health badly and 11 per cent well.  The best the Conservatives can hope for is to rebuild trust on the topic and try to ensure that the issue has little salience.

What about immigration?  There are certainly voices in the Conservative Party who would like to make this a bigger dividing line with Labour, but there three reasons to think this will not work.

First, last Monday’s publication of the Government’s Immigration White Paper demonstrates that Labour is prepared to go to great lengths to reduce its vulnerability on this matter by tightening the rules.

Second, the Conservatives have a difficult record to defend, with net migration reaching 750,000.  If low levels of immigration matters most to a voter, that voter may not be quick to forgive.

One person who will be making this point will be Nigel Farage, which is the third reason why a strategy of focusing on immigration is unlikely to work for the Conservatives.

For voters who prioritise reducing immigration above all else, there is a party specifically for them, with no track record to defend.  Even in the past, when Farage’s various parties were never serious players in Westminster elections, increasing the salience of immigration was helpful to UKIP or the Brexit Party.

Now, Farage would be very well placed to benefit from an election campaign dominated by the issue.

Again, a strategy that rebuilds trust on immigration is necessary, explaining how the rhetoric and the reality were so out of line (which should acknowledge flaws in the rhetoric as well as the policy) is necessary.  But it is hard to see how the Tories win a General Election on the issue of immigration while Farage and his party are centre stage.

This leaves the economy.  In contrast to health, this is a traditional strength for the Conservative Party.  Labour may also be vulnerable on the issue, depending upon how the economy performs between now and the next election, but it is all too plausible that the next few years might see even higher taxes, struggling public services and a continued squeeze on living standards.

This should be a favourable backdrop for a credible opposition.

The economy is also an area of vulnerability for Reform.  Chris Philp was quite right to say that Reform’s fiscal policies resembled Liz Truss on steroids, although it might not have been a good idea for the point to be made by Truss’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

The reality remains that the policies upon which Reform fought the last election, and which have been restated in recent days, would – if implemented – result in a bond market meltdown.  Presumably, Farage and Richard Tice will dump some of their more extravagant pledges before the next election, but their collective economic credibility is thin.

So there we have it.  An important issue on which competing parties are vulnerable.  The Tories – with a lot of hard work and discipline – could turn the economy into their own issue.  Except, today is another day when the Conservatives are demonstrating that they are not yet ready to do that.

Ask most economists or business people what the UK could do to make us more economically prosperous, and the answer will be clear.  We need to make it easier to trade with our nearest and biggest trading partner.  We need fewer border checks, better access to EU consumers.

We need to reduce the bureaucracy, particularly on small businesses, exporting to the EU.

That is one of the objectives of today’s summit which is attempting to reset EU and UK relations.

The particular measures announced may be relatively minor, but the ambition is to mitigate much of the damage done by our current relationship with the EU.  The UK Government remains cautious (too cautious, in my view), and is maintaining its stance that there will be no return to the Single Market, Customs Union or of freedom of movement (and a youth mobility agreement is not the same thing).  We will still be outside the EU; we will still be upholding the referendum result of nine years ago.  But it will be an agreement that has some incremental benefits for the UK economy.

That, however, is not the impression one would get from listening to the Conservative frontbench.  Instead, even the smallest reforms – reforms which make it easier for businesses to trade and create wealth – are characterised as being a betrayal of Brexit; the event is described as a “surrender summit”.  There is even an attempt to stymie any deal by promising to rip them up unilaterally the moment a Conservative Government is in office (not that this threat is likely to create undue concern).

By trying to play the Brexit betrayal card, as if we were still in 2019, the Tories look backward-facing and dogmatic.  To the extent that the country at large cares about Brexit, it has concluded that it was a mistake.  Demographic changes will only make that conclusion more emphatic by the time we get to the next election.

It is an approach that means, once again, the Tories put themselves in opposition to business opinion.

A substantial new deal (which we do not yet have) would mean that the Office for Budget Responsibility would be able to downgrade its assessment of the economic harm of Brexit, and an upgrade for its projections on growth and the public finances.  The Conservatives position appears to be a firm commitment to oppose it.

It is exposes a real problem for the Conservatives.  It can be the party of the Brexit deal negotiated by the Boris Johnson government – a hard Brexit that has come at a large economic cost – or it can be the party of economic growth.

It cannot be both.

By allowing Brexit purity to trump economic pragmatism, the Tories are throwing in the towel on the one important issue on which they might prevail.