Piers Baker: If the Conservatives want to renew they really need to rebrand

Piers McKenzie Baker is a Conservative Party activist and commentator.

I need to make a confession.  I have been a conservative all my life.

Since my early years, and at least as far back as my memories of a bouncingly eccentric Ann Widdecombe addressing my primary school’s Speech Day, I’ve been a dyed-in-the-wool Tory.

Every election I have been out on the pavements to support the cause; canvassing, leafleting and helping candidates in whatever way I can up and down the country.  I have worked for different Conservative MPs in various capacities, I’ve chaired my old university’s conservative association, and I’ve stood in local elections.  I am a true blue conservative and always will be, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that at times it’s been hard.

There’s a lot to be frustrated about following the last fourteen years.  There are many achievements to celebrate but equally quite a few obvious mistakes.  This isn’t controversial to say.  You will be hard pressed to find anyone in the party, from grassroots to parliament, not uttering similar things.  In recent days I’ve attended meetings at the local association level, in parliament, and through the doors of CCHQ.

Everywhere I’ve been there is the appetite for radical change.

So, Kemi Badenoch has been right to launch this period of introspection and call for renewal.

The party has needed to look at itself in the mirror and really root out its faults.  I don’t think we need to spend very long doing so.  It’s clear to a lot of people where we went wrong.

We’ve lost our sense of mission.  We don’t have a guiding purpose.  But thanks to the approach of the leadership and her top team, we’re allowing energetic and strong voices like Robert Jenrick, Katie Lam, and Nick Timothy (to name a few among many) to begin to articulate the new beginnings of a shared, coherent conservative vision.

Ultimately, action will always speak louder than words.  Just talking about new ideas won’t get us anywhere.  We won’t win back supporters who’ve defected from us to Reform unless we show them serious and real change.

This will mean the creation of robust, well-thought-out policy but it will also necessitate visual change too.  Voters need to see we’re different and we mean business. The party’s current branding is old and tired.

It needs a reboot.

The tree, first introduced by David Cameron’s reforms, now represents the mistakes of the recent past.  It’s symbolic of our desperate pursuit of the centre to the detriment of our base.  In pushing for socially liberal and overly green policies, we forgot and compromised on our core values.  We forgot what it really means to be conservative.

Like the Sycamore Gap, the last general election felled our tree.  It’s chopped up, it’s dead, it’s fit only as firewood.

On the campaign doorstep, I heard voices from our old supporters who abandoned us for Reform.  I heard variations on a theme, ‘we’re voting for them because they’re how you used to be’.  There are many different responses we could have to the rise of Nigel Farage’s party.  But what it does show us is that voters have wanted a credible right-wing offering at the ballot box.  They’ve wanted the sort of party we were in the past.

Whilst proper renewal of the party and winning back the public’s confidence will take time; there is one quick and easy decision the leadership could make to show we’re changing.  We need to return to the old party icon, the imagery which led us to nation-saving victories under Margaret Thatcher.  We need to light up once more the torch of liberty.

The imagery of the torch’s flames could not be more relevant today.

Gustav Mahler said, ‘tradition is the preservation of fire’ and tradition is sadly a word we didn’t hear very much in the party’s vocabulary whilst we were in office.  We didn’t roll back the damaging Blair-era reforms which did so much to wreck the old working order and cause the country’s present crisis.  We didn’t sufficiently interrogate and attack the vicious left-wing culture wars which seem omnipresent in the institutions they’ve infected.  We didn’t do enough to safeguard the ancient individual freedoms passed down to us from Magna Carta.

So what would be more symbolic of our return to traditional conservative values than holding proudly this beacon of freedom once again?  But don’t think the torch is just a rewind to a Thatcherite vision of Britain.  The potent force of fire is primordial.  It’s an energetic enthusiasm for transformation of the party and the country.  The lit torch is for free markets and free people, but it’s also a reminder that we’re returning to the natural order of things.  Like the eternally burning Olympic flame it stands a watchguard, protecting and nurturing our island-nation’s history and our unique way of life.

The old party oak tree might be dead, but from its burning body ignites the flames of tradition and rebirth.  Purifying its sins, from the ashes the party can rise renewed and ready to deliver the assertive agenda necessary to save our country once again.

Such a small, simple rebrand is not the only answer, but it has massive meaning.