A first job and help towards buying a home might make the Conservatives less at sea in the polls

The bad news comes from Sir John Curtice, our leading psephologist. He spoke at a fringe event and gave a bleak account of the state of the Conservatives in the polls.

Conservatives lost our reputation for competence above all because of Partygate and the Truss/Kwarteng budget. The old Tory Coalition based on middle-class professionals had been broken by Brexit. But Boris had then assembled a new Coalition based on working class voters with lower levels of education (no snobbish value judgements here, just facts about education level). Research also shows older voters with their mortgages paid off were another key part of what I have called the ‘Coalition of the excluded and the insulated.’

However that Brexit Boris Coalition has in turn broken down because of the failure of Brexit to live up to expectations. 25 per cent of previous Tory voters have gone to Reform. It appeals particularly to voters with traditional anti-liberal cultural attitudes which had also been associated with voting for Brexit. And these voters who have defected to Reform from Conservatives are also more likely to see the Conservatives as incompetent – indeed they may regard what has happened to Brexit as evidence for that.

However Labour are in trouble too.

Labour has suffered an extraordinarily rapid decline in support since entering Government. Between them the two main parties have now only got the support of 40 per cent of people intending to vote – an unprecedented failure by both major parties combined.

Historically the role of the main parties has been to incorporate the further parts of the political spectrum into big centre right and centre left parties. Those big internal coalitions were partly also the result of our electoral system. But they have broken down. The Greens are a real threat to Labour. Reform are clearly doing massive damage to Conservatives. The LibDems have taken many prosperous middle class pro-business pro EU seats in the South-east and now seem well dug in there.

England has got five party politics. It makes electoral politics unusually unstable.

There are three issues at the top of voter concerns – the economy, the NHS and migration.

Older culturally conservative voters are particularly worried about migration which is Reform’s strong point. However the younger voters who had gone to Reform are at least as worried about the economy and are not so comfortable with the cultural attitudes. Conservatives may find it easier to dislodge these younger voters from Reform than older cultural Conservatives.

Moreover, these younger voters are the future. They will gradually displace the core Reform block – older Brexit voters with lower education levels and culturally conservative attitudes. The best way to dislodge the younger voters is not to focus on migration – Reform’s strong point – but instead to focus on an economic offer which is where Reform is a lot weaker.

However bad things may be at the present there is an important place in British politics for a Centre Right party that believes in a market economy, fiscal conservatism, and spreading property ownership. Those propositions can appeal to younger voters including those flirting with Reform. Young people are increasingly university educated with more liberal tolerant attitudes but it is wrong for the Party to think that means they must be socialist. They are not and could be won over.

Mel Stride’s speech yesterday morning was a bold attempt to do just that. He set out the case for a Centre Right economic policy. It was a good strong speech. No rash promises of big tax cuts when the public finances are under such pressures – very different from Reform who he denounced as “the party of more spending and more debt.” . And there was even an offer specifically for younger voters – the First Job Bonus which he explained as follows:

“When someone takes their first job, the first £5,000 they pay in National Insurance won’t go to the taxman, it will go towards a deposit on their first home, or it will go towards their savings for later life.

For a working couple that means £10,000.

Helping them buy a home, build a family, save for the future. That is the Conservative dream!”

I have long wanted to see a Conservative offer for young people and have advocated a £10,000 capital grant to help spread property ownership as council house sales and privatisation did.

Now at last we have an offer like that, skilfully linked to their getting started in work. It was refreshing to hear such a message which is an attempt to make the best strategic move to get out of the Party’s deep difficulties.

Maybe there is a way forward.