Cllr Tony Devenish represents Knightsbridge and Belgravia Ward on Westminster City Council. He is a former member of the London Assembly.
It’s four long years since we Conservatives won a set of local elections – the same day that under Boris Johnson, the Conservatives won the Hartlepool parliamentary by-election. Keir Starmer considered resigning. How the world has changed (or not). Every May since, we Conservatives have been told, loud and clear that we have let down our public. It’s become Groundhog Day. Little changes during the following 12 months, the public rightly fume that we (still) aren’t truly listening – and then they tell us again the following May. We then discuss what happened to the Canadian (or Australian) Conservatives.
Rather than obsess about who leads the remaining Parliamentary Party (all 121 of them), who’s plotting to be the next Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition, we must focus every single day on the business of serving our public – while some of them are still ‘ours’. The councillor who messaged me once this May’s results were in, that we Conservatives are still the second biggest Party in local government, is (with respect) missing the point.
The Westminster village obsesses about personalities. But Winston Churchill learnt 80 years ago that winning a World War didn’t guarantee winning an election. So, how do we start winning back public trust? In short, we must spend more time talking to the public, rather than to each other. Mayors like Ben Houchen already do this. I know Paul Bristow will too (congrats to the people of Peterborough and Cambridgeshire for electing a ‘doer’).
Local Conservatives must tackle a crisis that “real people” talk about. Most (not all) Councils and Mayors have almost given up ever mentioning in public ‘real issues’, outside a few professionals in a responsible department who guard their responsibilities zealously, while blaming failure on ’not enough money’ (despite record public sector spending) as they fail to scratch the surface in making an impact. The public (rightly) barely notice.
The crisis we could eliminate by the next set of local Elections is a two part crisis . Part one is that of the NEETS: one of the few ‘public sector’ terms which isn’t waffle. A term the public actively engages with and fully understands because it’s plain English. Concerned parents, grandparents, neighbours, and business owners often raise this with me. Why, they ask are young people allowed to hang around weekdays? ‘Why are NEETS not in Employment, Education or Training? ‘
Councils, Mayors and Central Government spend billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to (and I loath this word) ‘address‘ NEETS. Despite so-called full employment in much of the country for the last 15 years no-one (I have spoken to) has a credible answer. Covid is still often trotted out as part of a series of lame excuses and ‘not enough money’ (seriously) whenever I raise this with a Council or Greater London Authority officer, NHS professional or Department of Works and Pensions official. Their eyes glaze over. Or they spout the most underwhelming public sector waffle. The last politician whom cut through with the public on NEETS and so called ‘hidden unemployment ‘ was Iain Duncan Smith MP , who moved Conservative tanks onto Tony Blair’s territory and embarrassed Labour that they had no answers on NEETS or long term unemployment. The foundations of our 2019 Red Wall win built from 2001 onwards. IDS resigned from the Cabinet in March 2016. Can anyone recall a politician in the last 8 years’ who has cut through with a plan to solve this crisis ?
Yes this is a complex issue. But that is no excuse for our collective failure to solve it. There is no lack of money. Just lack of leadership. Online working, rampant drug abuse, mental health and a whole host of ‘excuses’ (yes even Brexit) is trotted out . That’s why the public have lost faith in all of us. Human beings all thrive on a routine which includes getting up in the morning and going off to a job, or to study academically or vocationally. Many of our charities are under staffed – an ideal pool of NEETS could assist. Whether we are a teenager or in our 20’s or much older. So how do we solve it? Not just by telling NEETS there’s no benefits from a given date (though this will be part of the solution) but by tying in solving this crisis with the other crisis, which both alarms the public (try and phone your GP Surgery or HMRC), has led (in part ) to the election earthquakes and in part explains why the public sector aren’t able to ‘do their jobs’ on so many other fronts.
Yes, part two of eliminating NEETS is having a well paid workforce to solve this issue. We have the well paid workforce, it’s called the public sector, they just disappeared from their offices in March 2020 and in large part haven’t returned five years’ later. One email from a constituent of mine when I was still a London Assembly Member puts it best:
“How can young people be persuaded to go off every morning from home to work or college when they have relatives, friends and neighbours, of all ages, on well paid jobs who are still in bed?”
It’s hard to argue with this logic.
Political Leadership (any leadership) isn’t easy. But the message I have received loud and clear since at least the day David Cameron resigned in 2016 is that the public have increasingly got fed up with the total lack of (serious) leadership from successive Prime Ministers.The good news is Councils and Mayors don’t need Keir Starmer to lead on this (it would be nice, but seriously we can’t expect a human invertebrate to lead) – we Councils and Mayors can get on with eliminating NEETS locally and scaling back working from home across our parts of the public sector. Yes of course the trade unions will try to bully us and run to Angela Rayner. The leftish law courts will intervene. Luddite behaviour will need to be gripped. Conservatives must lead on this where we have the power to do so.
Congratulations to all Conservative Councillors who did win re-election this May. Huge thanks and commiserations to those incumbents and candidates whom paid the price of the public’s anger at our collective failures. We must do better. The Conservative Councillors Association will play its part. Please keep working on solutions – the answer is not the statist nonsense our opponents offer. Nor yet another change of Party Leader.
