If the Conservatives want to win the next election, we need to stop focussing on Brexit

The recent launch of Onward, the new Conservative think-tank fronted by Ruth Davidson and Michael Gove, was heartening. Good, personally relevant, life-improving policies are needed for a credible election campaign, and Davidson is right to argue that the party must do more to look approachable.

However, I would add one qualification. The deal with voters is sealed through something more fundamental than individual policies put forward: it is cemented through a connection on values that people hold dear. As the pioneering American political scientist Richard Wirthlin observed, you persuade people through reason but you motivate them to vote for you through emotional identification.

Here lies the source of the Conservative Party's current electoral problems. It's why frankly—in words and deeds—the party needs to make Brexit less central to what it is trying to do.

Although holding a deceptively high total share of the vote, the Conservatives are struggling to attract voters under the age of 45 and from aspirational, but by no means wealthy, backgrounds.

This is an outcome partially borne of inter-generational unfairness, the consequences of which have been well rehearsed. But I don't think this paints the whole picture. It ignores the elephant in the room that is Brexit—and the deeper cultural flux that the referendum unleashed.

According to IPSOS Mori, among voters aged 25-34 the Conservative Party had a 29 point deficit to Labour at the 2017 General Election. It had a 16 point deficit among 35-44 year olds. Just 2 years previously they were virtually neck and neck.

Similarly, among AB voters where votes for the Tories are usually weighed, the lead in 2017 was only 10 points; half the lead in 2015 and the same as in the wipeout of 1997. Looking through the social demographic, the lead among C1s in 2017 was only 4 points—down from 12 points in 2015.

Part of this can be explained by the unique circumstances of Jeremy Corbyn—and, of course, a lousy election campaign. But such a shift over the course of 24 months necessitates a more fundamental structural explanation. It does not take a rocket scientist to work it out.

Brexit, and what it is perceived to say about the country we aspire to be, provokes strong reactions. It is not the detail of Brexit that moves people; rather, the value judgements they apply to those talking about it in an extremely polarised debate. People are not talking about max fac and customs partnerships at the school gates or at the football. It is the intensity with which politicians talk about it that leaves an impression.

Every time the issue is discussed on social media, on television or in the newspapers, the salience is raised. There are murmurs of agreement among many older and less well-off voters who, quite understandably, see unfettered globalisation and uncontrolled immigration as something to be wary of. Meanwhile, there are wincing looks among many younger voters who see the process as economically uncertain and—for a smaller number—culturally difficult. The Conservative Party has paid the electoral price among the latter group as the implementer and identifiable supporter of Brexit.

This has implications for the party’s ability to construct a majority. The Tories have never won a parliamentary majority without achieving near parity with Labour among 25-44 year olds, and comprehensively beating them in the ABC1 demographic. It should not be forgotten that we won votes in 2017 from people who historically have never voted Tory. This is great. The challenge now is to hold onto this new support while crafting a unifying message that appeals to the people we’ve lost.

So what should the Conservative Party do now?

Assuming a date of 2021 or 2022 for an election (itself a bold assumption), it has three options. One: carry on as it is and try to please both sides of the value divide by different people saying different things to different audiences. Two: do more to own its choice on Brexit and position itself as the anti-globalisation, anti-immigration party. Option three is by far the most difficult but the most profitable in the long-term: clarify what a sensible Brexit means.

This would involve being much more forthright about what Brexit is and what Brexit is not. Tell people the truth and they will be your judge.

Yes—it is an instruction to leave the European Union and to gain greater control of low skill migration. No—it is not an era-defining moment where we reset our view of globalisation and reassess our values as a nation. It is this misinterpretation which is the recipe for division, especially among people under 45 that the Conservatives need to speak to in order to win a convincing parliamentary majority.

A measured approach would allow the issue to be settled to a much greater degree post-March 2019. Surely, for instance, it would better to settle now on a close economic relationship with Europe with minimal disruption. Away from Westminster, this is pretty easy to justify on the doorstep. As someone who followed the referendum campaign closely, I do not remember much discussion about the Customs Union at the time.

Then, sensibly, we could use the transition period to focus on a lasting solution when it comes to low skilled immigration, finding common cause with other countries. There has been a perceptible noise emanating out of some European capital cities in the past 12 months that unfettered free movement is not quite the panacea it was previously held to be. If Emmanuel Macron can talk domestically about addressing the symptoms of unfettered low paid migration, then there is hope for all of us.

Critically, this definition would allow the leader of the Conservative Party at the time of the next general election to use a mantra that I suspect will become increasingly resonant in the next couple of years: enough Brexit now.

Brexit cannot become the only definition point by which voters judge the Conservative Party. It divides many younger and aspirant working people otherwise attracted to the values inherent in the Conservative brand—opportunity, security, and community. And it distracts from the vast web of other issues that voters care about: their future jobs, the quality of their local hospitals, the safety on their streets from crime—to name just a few.

It will take huge levels of discipline for this definition of Brexit to occur. A level of discipline that sometimes eludes the party. (There is, of course, the inconvenient lack of a majority to add into the mix.)

Politics has always been the art of the possible. Leadership though is about bravery, shaping direction and taking calculated risks, not just following the conventional wisdom and political winds. Whether my former boss Theresa May, or one of the many contenders with an eye to the future, the next Conservative Prime Minister to win a convincing majority will be the one assured enough to use the phrase “Enough Brexit now.”