Can ‘one nation’ boris win the north? | thearticle

With the vast majority of Tory MPs stuck in London, everyone thought that the Conservative Party Conference would be a damp squib. But somehow, it managed to be a buzzy and optimistic

gathering. Minimum disruption to the schedule meant that the PM was able to make his speech extolling a One Nation policy programme, hailing business and scientific advances in Manchester

(where he stood), and expressing his hope of bringing the country together. Faced with the loss of Remain-voting seats, the Conservatives must logically target 60-70 Labour Leave ones for a

comfortable majority. This is exactly what they tried in 2017 – and it didn’t work. Why? Because cultural antipathy towards the Conservatives outweighed a desire to get Brexit done.

Manchester, which has now hosted Conservative conferences for 10 years, is a particularly bitter reminder of Tory failure: no Conservative MPs since 1987 and not a single Conservative inner

city councillor for nearly 25 years. Greater Manchester (where seven local authorities voted to leave) has borne the brunt of austerity. In 2018, its residents were more likely than anyone

else living in England or Wales to be victim of a crime, and it contained the ward with the highest level of child deprivation. But there are many different sides to Manchester. The city of

radical protest is also a capital of entertainment and entrepreneurship, in the midst of a construction boom. “The only thing that can stop the growth of the city centre is a world

recession,” says Nick Buckley, CEO of a local charity. The city is also not quite as solidly Labour as one might first believe. There is disaffection with Manchester City Council for

continuing to build up reserves while making service cuts, and election turnout is often low. In principle, the small “c” conservative “labourist” tradition of the conurbation’s outlying

towns is fertile ground for a revival of One Nation Toryism. Boris enters the scene, local Conservatives claim, as a working class hero, a Heineken politician. Area officer Stephen

Carlton-Woods reports a flurry of interest in recent weeks including from “life-long Labour supporters”. The relentlessly anti-Boris press has helped, Carlton-Woods suggests – “[people] have

figured it out for themselves”, and decided they quite like Boris. Leigh-based Richard Short was struck by Boris’s rockstar reception on the campaign trail in Warrington in 2015 – “he

literally stopped traffic, people sounding horns… he instantly connected to people there”. Short then witnessed Boris’s transition to utter seriousness as he briefed him about local issues,

returning to his familiar jollity for a speech. But if Boris is serious about reconnecting with the North, he must do more than charm. He needs to play the long game. Part of this will be

focusing on what Northern activists identify as vote-winning policies, even if those policies conflict with the proposals coming out of London-based think tanks. Many Greater Manchester

voters, for example, are passionate about the Green Belt, and aren’t satisfied with substituting inferior pieces of land to make up for losses. Lots want HS2 scrapped, since they think it

will whisk even more Northerners away to work in London. Reconciling what members in all regions of Britain want will be no mean feat: creating regional party branches with the autonomy of

Scottish Conservatives, as Didsbury Conservatives chair Damian Flanagan argues for, and bringing back proper members’ debates at conference might at least make a start. The PM might also

pursue, before going all out for solidly Labour seats, the kind of electoral pacts that the Conservatives very often forged before the Second World War – with the Brexit Party and perhaps

also with Labour Brexit pragmatists. This would be the most likely way the Conservatives could be influential in places like Greater Manchester. It would also be a welcome act of

consensus-building that we’ve seen precious little of in recent politics.