Meet the young conservatives fighting to change their old party: ‘Where do we go from here?’ | Conservatives

When Jayde Tanisha Edwards saw the exit poll on July 4, she was shocked. “I think everyone had come to the conclusion that the Conservatives were going to lose, but I don’t think we realized how badly we were going to lose,” she says.

Edwards is an unlikely Conservative campaigner. She is 25, and when she got involved with the party a few years ago – running for council in 2019 – she was a teenage mother living in temporary accommodation. Although everyone in her family and community supported Labour, she was drawn to the Conservative aspirational message. “It was this fundamental belief in prosperity and being able to build yourself up and do what you want,” she says. Most people in her age group don’t share that view: just 8% of people under 25 voted Conservative on 4 July. In 2019, that figure was 21%. Given that so few people in their age group support the party, young Conservative members are extremely few in number. Even Edwards, a committed campaigner who knocks on doors at every local and general election, is uncertain. “During this campaign, that passion for young voters just wasn’t there,” she says. “So how do I convince people on the doorstep?”

As the party licks its wounds, she and other young conservatives are wondering what comes next and what role they should play. The task seems urgent. “If the party doesn’t start talking to young people, it’s going to disappear in 10 to 15 years,” says Adam Wildsmith, a 23-year-old from Durham who is deputy director of Blue Beyond, a grassroots young conservative group.

Throughout the campaign, many young Conservatives were frustrated by policy announcements clearly aimed at older generations: the triple pension, national service for young people. “It was increasingly difficult to defend – and simply insensitive to the concerns about housing, jobs and the cost of living,” says Wildsmith. Blue Beyond surveyed its members in June and found that 85% did not think the Conservatives’ policies addressed the concerns of young people.

Some activists are already thinking about how to attract more young people. Faaris Khan, a 20-year-old from Surrey Heath, joined the party at 17 after hearing about it in his A-level politics class. He soon became chair of his local Young Conservatives branch. Khan was actually the only member of the group, but undeterred, he worked to recruit a handful of other students from nearby grammar schools to join. “I made it my mission to not just get people interested in the party, but also in politics,” he says.

Since the disastrous election result, Khan has been wondering how he might rethink the party’s national approach to young members. “I want to do something like the National Republican Youth Congress in the US – with more social and informal events,” he says. Khan has already met with donors and plans to hold rallies around the country and fringe events at the Conservative conference. His only frustration is with the party’s headquarters. “I tried to pitch this idea last year, and I was basically blocked – and look where we are now,” he says. “I think it’s critical that they come on board and help us rebuild, because it could really help us get through to the next election.”

While most young Conservatives believe they have an important role to play in the party’s regeneration, the battle can sometimes seem uphill. Blue Beyond was founded in 2019 by young Conservatives frustrated by the party’s lack of youth engagement. “It’s easier to be a young Labour activist than a young Conservative activist,” says Samuel Rhydderch, a 25-year-old Blue Beyond member based in London. “Labour has been fantastic at galvanising young people’s support, whereas in the Conservatives we’ve had to join through our own will and machinations.”

After its worst electoral defeat in history, the party is at a critical juncture: deciding how to rebuild and whether to move right or try to recapture the centre. Some see this as an opportunity. “I’ve always thought the Conservative Party needed a defeat or a reboot,” Rhydderch says. “We’ve lost that spark and that creativity in policy. There’s no energy. It’s hard to stay in power for too long.” He hopes to see a young star emerge as the party’s leader, as Barack Obama did in the US or David Cameron in the UK. But with just 121 MPs, it’s unclear who that candidate will be.

Many young Conservatives are uninspired by the potential leadership candidates. “I’m a little bit lost, and my peers are the same,” Edwards says. “The biggest question we have is who do we want to lead our party now, who has the skills and the vision. And the answer is we don’t know. We don’t really know what the Conservatives stand for right now.”

The Blue Beyond poll found that the majority of voters would support Penny Mordaunt as the new leader, but she lost her seat. Some fear a shift to the far right. “Putting someone like Suella Braverman in charge of the party would lose us the next election, 100 per cent,” Khan said. “I’m not sure I could stay in the party if she were elected.” Wildsmith shared this view. “I think it’s important to stay and try to change the party from within, but Braverman as leader, or bringing in Farage, is a red line for me.” He called Braverman’s speech in Washington, in which she made offensive comments about the LGBT pride flag, “despicable,” and the focus on culture war issues during the campaign “out of touch and cruel.”

About 9% of under-25s voted for Reform, putting the party roughly on par with the Conservatives in that age group. Wildsmith attributes this to a well-run campaign. “Reform’s social media campaign, particularly on their TikTok account, has been fantastic, whether you agree with them or not,” he says. “The mainstream parties need to try to tap into that.” Khan agrees: “I know people who voted Reform just because they’re very active on social media and they think Nigel Farage is funny – but I know for a fact that if they read their policies, there’s no way they’d vote for them.”

Others find the inevitable infighting over ideology depressing. “I think the debate about whether we should move right or left is arbitrary. The reason voters have changed their minds is because the Conservatives have had a disastrous record of performing in office,” says Max Waddington, a 23-year-old political science student from East Yorkshire who was campaigning for his local MP David Davis. “The only priorities should be competence, unity and results.”

Recently, Waddington attended a dinner for about 250 Conservative Party members in his area. “I looked around and thought, ‘I might be the only person alive in this room in 20 years,’” he says. “Then where’s the money, the advocacy and the campaigning going to come from?” He believes the aging membership is also affecting policy decisions.

“The party needs to focus on issues that affect working-age people: graduate wages, paying off student debt, building housing,” he says. “But I don’t think the party members understand that because they are overwhelmingly older. I don’t think they understand the existential threat that’s facing them.”