Our Survey: Members think the Party should be moving more quickly in developing policy

Earlier this month, Alex Burghart wrote on this site to announce the launch of the Conservative Party’s ‘renewal programme’, and inviting members to get involved.

This review of policy, promised by Kemi Badenoch during her leadership bid, has been the subject of some little controversy. Initially, and as reported across the media, it was supposed to be a couple of years or so until the Party would have detailed policy positions.

But when, inevitably, Badenoch started adopting them in response to the Government’s legislative agenda – as over Indefinite Leave to Remain – sources in the leadership became very insistent that no such deadline had ever been in place!

No matter, the review has now creaked into life, and we disturb your Easter Monday holiday to briefly elucidate what our panel thinks about the timetable.

More than half think that the Party should be moving faster toward developing a full policy programme. This doesn’t necessarily mean having one in place by now, but it isn’t obvious why the current programme for the ‘renewal programme’, with its page for submissions (of top-line views, not detailed prescriptions) could not have been in place months ago.

Just under four in ten think that policy development is being done at the right place, presumably seeing the wisdom in the idea that there is little use coming up with really granular policy so far out from a general election.

Yet as the Opposition is learning, it is very hard to take the fight to the Government with no answer to the obvious question: “Well, what would you do?” Perhaps that’s why only six per cent of panellists thought the Party should be taking any more time than it already is.

Another related question we asked was about how Badenoch should handle the previous government’s record – inspired in part by Priti Patel’s abortive attempt to demand thanks for the Boriswave a few months ago, and Badenoch’s attempt to draw a line under the issue.

The issue highlighted a structural problem. Badenoch was elected in part on a promise to confront hard truths about the Conservatives’ time in office, of which the abject failure to control immigration is merely the standout example. Yet this has not, to date, happened, and the difficulty of keeping the peace amongst a fractious parliamentary party militate against scrutinising the records of many of its members.

Our panel reveals a close split on the question. Just over half believe that the Party should continue to address the mistakes it made in office if it is to have any chance of winning a hearing with the electorate which so recently handed it a shattering, generational defeat. Yet almost as many believed either that the Party had either done enough or too much in that direction already, and should move on.

(Do these questions reveal a measure of status quo bias on the part of the panel? The split in each was between one criticism and the option that basically represents what the Party has been doing to date; neither “go even slower on policy” or “already apologised too much” attracted anything like as much support.)