Politics
The dogged art of making yourself heard when people say they’re not listening
I have a growing fascination with the homeless.
I don’t mean rough sleepers or those in temporary accommodation, though I believe we have a moral duty to help those people, whatever party you are in, especially veterans.
No, I mean the politically homeless.
My writing about the Conservative cause, might lead you to assume that those hovering in the no man’s land between Reform and Conservative – or have jumped into Reform’s forward trenches as new friends – are no concern of mine.
Not so.
I meet far too many voters, many who are friends, and most – much like Nigel Farage and his entire team who used to be Tories but aren’t now – who, nearly two years on, are still very reluctant to give the Tories a second glance, let alone chance. I don’t like it, but I get it, because it’s our problem, not theirs.
They feel let down. They feel they’ve ‘nothing to lose giving Reform a try’ – much as some did to Labour in 2024 – but many are watching and looking, even if with cynicism to see if the Tories can produce something they might feel able to get behind. Most have not quite given up on us.
The Tories musn’t give up on them.
“I’m a former Tory but I really think they are finished for me. I just don’t think they have changed. They haven’t said anything, Kemi is silent, the party is nowhere” is something I hear over and over again.
Now just for the record, because I’m paid to – and and happy to – watch, read, listen to everything the Conservatives say and do I know, for a fact this is not true.
Even Robert Jenrick did think the Tories could change, because he was determined to lead it. They have changed with him, and will now without him. There are plenty who’ll say not enough, I might even agree, but it’s not credible to say not at all.
But whatever my level of belief that doesn’t make these people’s convictions and feelings their problem. It’s the Tories’ problem.
Lord Ashcroft’s latest focus group was instructive:
“Kemi comes across really well. She’s more straight-talking. I trust her to do what she says more than I would Keir Starmer. Not that I’m going to vote for her necessarily, but I think she far exceeds Starmer;”
Like her, probably not going to vote for her. Conservative problem.
Here’s another:
“I think she speaks well but I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her. With the amount of people who are leaving the party, there’s obviously something that isn’t ringing home to them;” or “She was in the Tory government, so if she came out and said, I’m sorry we got stuff wrong, I tried to change it… But unfortunately, I haven’t heard her apologise for the crap the country is in;” “ The Tories are still all over the shop. Kemi Badenoch aside, they are a mess, an absolute bloody mess.”
Now I know, the Conservative are hearing all that, even if some voters aren’t hearing them.
Senior Tories will list – and it’s a big list – all the the new policies they’ve announced, costed and can deliver – and if they hadn’t done so much Reform wouldn’t had speeches last week – they list all the changes internally, the money coming in, the new candidate structures. Almost in a frustrated tone, saying:
“If this doesn’t look very different to the offer in 2024, then someone is just deliberately being obtuse.”
That was actually said to me a week ago. I pointed out there needed to be much more coming, more radical, still Conservative and if that’s unpopular truths, so be it. I also noted some of our natural voters are still in “la,la,la not listening” mode.
It was Iain Duncan Smith on election night 2024, when the scale of the debacle was clear who gave the party its best bit of starting advice; “They have to earn the right to be heard again“. When Badenoch became leader with that firmly in her mind, she warned it would take ‘at least two years.’
My former colleague Henry Hill had a rule of thumb for gauging whether the Tories were being heard by how much was in the papers about them. Not enough is the answer – and if it’s getting slightly better it’s still a Conservative problem.
So what do you if people simply won’t listen?
You take a lesson from my driving instructor: ‘Take space to make space.’
This week Kemi did.
She was on TV talking about a new policy offer to younger voters – on top of the abolition of stamp duty – around Student loans and Plan 2 interest payments. So far so old school normal.
She was sat on the Good Morning Britain sofa with Susanna Reid, and the former Labour MP, and Gordon Brown SpAd Ed Balls.
Quick detour. I still don’t get how ITV think it’s appropriate for the spouse of a Labour Cabinet Minister, with his background to be asking questions of the leaders of rival parties, or those whose jobs his wife was hoping to take. Or indeed the final apex of inappropriateness his actual wife. I’ve complained before. I still think it’s really bad optics.
Money Saving – and lots of money-making – expert Martin Lewis pops up unannounced and starts telling her she’s wrong and pretty much talking over her. Now he apologised later, and Balls did on air, but here’s the key; she took space to make space, and apart from the egregiously biased Bev Turner, most people think she did a great job.
She wasn’t being heard, so she pointed out two men were shouting her down. She didn’t get angry, but made her case – a case she was fully across because the policy was thought through, and she had the details. She stayed calm, and delivered. That’s how you make yourself heard.
She then wrote a classy online response to Lewis:
“…honestly, don’t worry. I do love a feisty debate! It helps people understand what the real issues are. You and I agree on the principle: student loans have become a scam.
Whatever the Coalition government brought in back in 2012, it’s clearly not working for the world of 2026. So I’d genuinely love to come on your show and debate my plan vs yours. I’m putting student loans on the political agenda because we’ve got to do more for young people. It’s just one part of our New Deal For Young People. As the opposition, Conservatives may not be able to change the law right now, certainly not without cross-party support, but we can set the agenda especially while the government seems distracted by all sorts of other things.”
Martin Lewis would be mad not to invite her on. Labour crowed how she was attacking a Conservative policy for no longer working. She could remind his listeners that that’s the logic for every Labour U-turn – and those who say the Conservatives haven’t changed now have a clear example of change.
Will this win an election? No, not even close. Nobody’s saying that. But she’s repeatedly showing how it’s done.
I’ve banged on about the fact she can’t do this alone. Carving out the space to be heard must be done by every MP, Councillor, and volunteer – in the House, on the streets and on the doorstep. It is the only option, and it can be done. It’s not about ‘turning up the volume’ but amplifying the quality of the message, the sense and values in the policy – and selling hope.
I’ve talked recently about a slight wobble in confidence that momentum had dipped. I had evidence, but I also got messages from Tories insisting how much they’re up for the fight. They’re finding that fire from Kemi’s lead but also being fed up with the broken record of those vowing to ‘destroy’ them or insist they’re ‘finished’ – the same folk who’d foolishly assumed the Tories were already dead.
Still alive, still kicking.
Do I want to see more, and better? Yes. But the art of being heard by people who don’t want to listen takes determined calm not frustration. It requires a tactical swallow of humility and then to “KBO” consistently stating your case.
Again, and again, and again. Until you win.