We lost because we got Brexit done but nothing else

We have suffered a crushing defeat. This was the Conservative Party’s worst result for centuries. Not only did we lose almost all of the “red” and “blue” walls, but vast swathes of our inner heartlands too.

Among the casualties were countless hard-working colleagues, deeply motivated by public service, who fought to make their constituency — and our country — a better place. Their personal records were strong, but they were sunk by the Conservative Party brand.

What’s more, it could have been worse. We narrowly avoided being wiped out altogether. It seems we were granted a stay of execution by millions of conservatives deciding to hold their nose and vote Conservative in the final few days of the campaign.

There can be no moving forward, no recovery, until we understand just how damaged our party is with voters and why such damage has occurred. So it is time for us Conservative politicians to pause and properly consider what went so badly wrong.

Looking at the result, our heavy defeat was in large part because in 2019 the centre-right vote was united behind the Conservatives whereas in 2024 it was not.

In two thirds of the seats we lost, the Reform vote was greater than the margin of the Conservatives’ defeat. Critically, this happened everywhere, north and south. Many, myself included, only hung on because we were able to successfully subdue the threat from Reform.

However, the leakage of our vote to Reform, while lethal, was not the whole story. If every Reform voter had backed us we would be sitting on a much healthier 290 seats but we still would not have won the election. Defections to Labour, the Lib Dems and to apathy cost us as well.

So why did people change their minds?

The reason for this near-existential result was not that we were too left-wing or too right-wing. Nor because we had this slogan not that slogan. No, the fundamental reason we lost is because we failed to deliver what we promised for the British people.

We got Brexit done. But we must collectively confront a hard truth: we then failed to deliver the strong economy, NHS, and secure border we promised.

Our biggest and most damaging failure was clearly migration. This was the main issue which drove those millions of 2019 conservatives to Reform, which cost us so many seats.

The great reform was leaving the EU, ending freedom of movement and taking back control of the levers of migration. But the government then insulted the public with decisions that caused net migration to spiral to unprecedented levels. Even when the failure was evident and alarm bells ringing, corrective action was painfully slow.

We promised we would stop the boats. But despite progress last year, boat crossings are now at a record high. The government adopted strident language, but stopped short of the robust action required to deliver. In short, we let down millions of voters who are rightly concerned about this.

Migration was not our only failure. We lost the confidence of the British public in our ability to manage the economy. Yes, we were hit by some external shocks such as the pandemic and war in Ukraine, but we need to ask tough questions of our own mistakes. We abandoned fiscal responsibility in a mini-budget that promised both lower taxes and huge spending, and working people suffered as a result.

We must confront more hard economic questions. Why has the growth in living standards proven respectable but far from impressive? How did a party full of people who want lower taxes allow the tax burden and government spending to rise to an all-time high? Where were the supply-side reforms, like with the planning system, that would liberalise and energise our economy?

And we must acknowledge our failure on the NHS too. Yes, the pandemic and strikes knocked the NHS off course. But these factors do not explain the poor NHS productivity we oversaw. Over the last five years we increased the amount of money, nurses and doctors by a fifth, yet the amount of healthcare barely increased.

That is not to say we did not have important achievements over the past 14 years. We did. We inherited a bankrupt country, restored our public finances and welfare system, and unleashed a decade of good and full employment. Because of the education reforms we undertook, our children are now the most numerate and literate in the western world. We took a major step towards restoring our national sovereignty by delivering Brexit. And we led Europe’s defence of Ukraine.

Over the coming months we must take the time to perform a full, considered balancing act. We must fiercely defend what we got right. And in the areas where we failed we must be brutally honest, seek forgiveness and begin the long, difficult road back to restoring trust.

We must firmly unite behind what is decided. It is not the time for score-settling or for any one faction to try to claim the mandate of heaven. The public have had enough and want to see that we are an effective and serious opposition. We owe that to the country.