Why the Conservatives need new faces again

When David Cameron took the reins as Conservative leader more than twenty years ago, he announced that he wanted to “change the face of the Conservative party by changing the faces of the Conservative party”. It was a conscious attempt to break with the past and alter the party’s image to make it look more like the country it sought to govern.

Today’s Tories have a new reason to think seriously about changing the faces at the top: putting further clear blue water between themselves and Reform UK – and it is an idea gaining traction inside LOTO and CCHQ.

In recent weeks, Reform’s steady intake of Tory defectors – including Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick and Nadhim Zahawi – has saddled Nigel Farage’s party with a growing quantity of political baggage. Reform now boasts more alumni of Liz Truss’s cabinet than Kemi Badenoch has in her shadow cabinet.

A dividing line is opening up, handed to Badenoch courtesy of Farage’s twin instincts: to recruit those with ministerial experience (even when that experience produced outcomes he denounces) and to finish off the Conservative party altogether. Those close to Badenoch believe she should exploit it as part of the route back to power.

Reform’s problem is simple: it has no fresh pool of elected talent. Instead, it has been forced to fish in Tory waters, reeling in figures already scarred by their own records – Braverman and her Home Office record; Jenrick and the Afghan scandal; Zahawi and his tax affairs.

This irony was neatly illustrated yesterday when Reform’s head of policy, Zia Yusuf, quote-tweeted a newly elected Tory MP’s Commons video questioning a policy from 2022, by asking: “Who was in government in 2022?” The answer, inconveniently, is that this person wasn’t an MP at the time, while half of Reform’s parliamentary cohort were. Recycling the same old faces risks turning Reform into Tories 2.0.

The Conservatives, by contrast, have options. At the last election, a new intake of 26 MPs entered the Commons on the Tory benches, personally untouched by the sins of previous governments. “Hard-working, competent, young, ambitious,” one senior Tory tells me. “Some are ripe for the picking” – and would offer a visible break with the past.

And as one of the new intake tells me: “If the top team are only the Truss/Sunak people who the voters dumped, Conservatives will look stale.”

History offers a useful parallel. Cameron, Osborne and Gove felt like a different era from Major, Heseltine and Rifkind – the outgoing generation they replaced. Badenoch’s challenge is to find the new faces to make the party around her look fresh – make her assertion that the party is renewed genuinely credible – in five years, not thirteen. That means promoting unknown faces quickly.

All of the 2024 intake were given junior roles at the outset of Badenoch’s leadership, either in the whips’ office or as PPSs. So far, only Nick Timothy has been elevated – and some don’t count him as a true newcomer, given his stint as Theresa May’s joint chief of staff in No.10 – after Jenrick’s defection opened up the justice brief.

Some in both the shadow cabinet and the new intake thought Jenrick’s departure should have triggered a wider reshuffle. But, as one LOTO source puts it: “All changes are not without cost.” There is a fresh nervousness following defections about managing disappointment among those who would lose out.

Still, senior Conservatives argue that some of the new intake are already ready for the shadow cabinet. “A lot of them are showing more drive than some of my current colleagues,” one shadow cabinet member tells me, “we could be bold”. Arguments about inexperience, they note, ring hollow when one recalls that Cameron went from new MP to party leader in four years.

As one figure in the whips’ office puts it: “There are more pros than cons – if it’s managed properly. If we focus on merit, we can make appointments that are both sensible and imaginative.”

A broader reshuffle – possibly involving members of the 2019 intake, like Gareth Davies, Robbie Moore and Matt Vickers, alongside the 2024 group – may yet come, though it is unlikely to be before May. In the meantime, discussions continue about how best to deploy the party’s newest MPs. Several shadow cabinet members complain that they are desperate for fresh, effective communicators to be pushed into broadcast roles.

I’m told these conversations have reached Badenoch herself. I understand that one idea gaining traction in LOTO is to promote strong communicators into briefs where the party most wants to land its message – immigration and the economy chief among them.

“We’re doing really good policy work,” one shadow cabinet member says. “But if it isn’t cutting through, what’s the point? The public has probably heard five per cent of it – and forgotten most of that.”

“Since conference I’ve only heard Kemi speak about stamp duty twice. We need to bang on about it until we get some saturation with the public, not just some light coverage and Westminster recognition.”

Another shadow cabinet member adds that Jenrick’s loss “was a blow to the party’s communication machine” and that there is a struggle to find those both keen to do media and good at it, especially as some members of their ranks seemingly have a total lack of appetite, for example refusing to do certain broadcast gigs like Question Time.

Two of the 2024 intake have already stepped up: Harriet Cross and Joe Robertson – a rural surveyor and a lawyer, both new to Westminster politics – having successfully survived their appearances. Their names have now come up within LOTO as solid media performers, alongside mentions of former army colonel Lincoln Jopp and Katie Lam, the former Home Office and No10 advisor who has immediately risen to prominence amongst Tory circles.

Cross and Lam are mentioned most often, and both are being courted by CCHQ. Other names tipped by those in shadow cabinet include former journalist John Cooper and former council leader Lewis Cocking, who has racked up a series of appearances on Good Morning Britain.

“The whole ‘not as responsible for the past’ thing is useful,” one member of the Whips’ Office tells me, adding that “the game is won” on getting the party’s message out through broadcast, media and social media videos, “but it needs money behind it”.

There are those within CCHQ who want to see more money spent on research and comms to be able to support this work, and even provide MPs with some extra training and party resources. LOTO have just appointed Edward Massey as their dedicated digital member of staff in the hopes of freeing up more of CCHQ’s digital and video team to work with the wider party.

“We need strong politics, strong comms and strong messengers,” one Tory tells me, “anything that helps towards that can only be a good thing”.

As Badenoch herself said in a speech last week: “I am building a Conservative Party for the next decade, and the next generation.” Perhaps making more of the next generation within the parliamentary party is her next step.