Neil O’Brien among those to warn conference about need to re-engage beyond core support

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The Conservatives could “go out of business as a political party” unless they re-engage with the needs of younger and minority ethnic voters, some of its MPs have warned at the start of the party conference in Birmingham.

In the opening speech in the main conference hall, Brandon Lewis,the party chairman, told delegates that the UK was changing quickly, with the Conservatives at risk of being left behind.

In a long section devoted to party modernisation, Lewis cited the Tories’ record in areas such as equal marriage and reforming police use of stop-and-search tactics.

This was “a proud record”, he said, adding: “But if we are honest, it hasn’t done enough to change the perception some people have of our party today.”

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Earlier, an event on the conference fringe discussing how the Conservatives can gain more younger voters heard from a series of backbenchers, all of whom urged swift action.

Neil O’Brien, who became MP for Harborough last year, noted that in the 2017 election there was a massive deficit between the Tories and Labour in terms of younger voters, and those from minority ethnic backgrounds.

At the 2015 election, O’Brien said, the Tories lagged two percentage points behind Labour for voters in their 20s, and by four percentage points for those aged 18-24. Just two years later these deficits had shot up to 26 and 40 points behind.

The party was also doing increasingly less well among other groups whose numbers were rising, such as those with degrees, people who were unmarried, and those who rented their homes or live in cities, said O’Brien, a former director of the Policy Exchange thinktank.

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“All these different social bases of Conservatism are being eroded,” he said. “Either we have to do much better amongst these groups of people, or we’re going to go out of business as a political party.”

Such structural changes would have an impact, he added: “It’s a bit like a beam that is rotting away, and eventually it snaps.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The prime minister, Theresa May, at the Conservative party conference. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

Another leading reformer, George Freeman, MP for Mid Norfolk who formerly chaired Theresa May’s policy unit, said the differences in how people of various ages voted was key for the party’s future.

He said: “It isn’t just about, can we get more new people in the Conservative party, it is the dividing line in politics. And I think we’re on the wrong side of it. It’s not too late to get on the right side of it, but it won’t just happen.”

While in 2010, just 28% of female voters under 25 voted Labour, by 2017 this had risen to 73%, Freeman said: “We have a real problem, a massive problem. We have a demographic, structural and economic crisis in our political support base, and it’s getting worse, just with the passing of time.”

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Solutions for the party raised at the event included radical changes to the housing market, a cut in interest rates for student debt, and an attempt to become less tribal over Brexit.

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The way Brexit was being debated in the party risked putting young people off the Tories for good, Freeman said. “That religious zealotry, I think, is completely weird to a generation under 45, and I fear will lead us to Jeremy Corbyn having the keys to post-Brexit Britain.”

At yet another event the former education secretary Justine Greening urged a new focus on social mobility, calling it “an existential challenge for our party”.

It was, she noted at a fringe speech, 31 years since the party last won a significant Commons majority, under Margaret Thatcher in 1987.

“It is 31 years since we last truly carried the political argument in this country,” she said. “It means we stopped connecting with people a long time ago.”