Northern Tories Need a Chips-and-Gravy Offensive

March 2014

Parts of Liverpool remain poor. Toxteth, an area south of the city centre containing street after street of derelict terraced housing, is one of the most deprived parts of Britain. But Liverpool's economy is sturdier than it once was. In the recession, unemployment in the city peaked at 7 per cent. That number was as high as 20 per cent in the 1980s. According to the Centre for Cities annual Cities Outlook report, published in January, Liverpool created twice as many jobs in the private sector as it lost in the public sector between 2010 and 2012. In 2012 Liverpool's economy grew by 3.2 per cent, faster than the economy as a whole.

The worry is that the party that took the blame for the city's past economic woes is not getting credit for recent good news. Michael Heseltine, who was awarded the freedom of the city in 2012, is credited by Liverpudlians with kick-starting the city's revival. When he came to Liverpool, the derelict Albert Dock stood as an awkward reminder of the city's industrial decline. Thanks to the "minister for Merseyside", the docks have been redeveloped and house, among other things, Tate Liverpool. (The Labour-run council wanted to knock them down.) Yet little of the praise Lord Heseltine has received has rubbed off on his party.

Andrew Garnett recalls campaigning in rundown parts of the city in 2010. "Part of it is tribal," he says. "People would say ‘We're a Labour family. I vote Labour because my granddad voted Labour.' Others would say ‘At least Labour are trying. The Tories don't try.' How do you cut through that?"

Tellingly, Liverpool Conservatives are a youthful bunch. "Scousers have long memories," says Caldeira. But for a few pensioners, he is the oldest person in the Liverpool Conservatives. "People in their twenties and early thirties dominate the party up here," he says. The chairman of Liverpool Conservatives, Hannah Withey, is in her thirties and at the time of the last general election, Liverpool's Young Conservatives were the fastest growing branch of the party's youth organisation. A lot of these recruits were students from elsewhere studying in Liverpool, but there was a sizeable local contingent too. While the youthfulness of Liverpool's Conservatives is an indictment of the party's history there, it is also an opportunity for future electoral success.

Chris Kerr, an undergraduate at the London School of Economics and deputy chairman of Liverpool Conservatives, tells me it is easier to be a young Conservative today than it was for the likes of Garnett. Why, I ask Kerr, does he think more young Scousers are voting Conservative? "I think people see them as the party of aspiration. Very few people in the city who are my age have a real problem with the Tories — we are a generation that isn't scarred by the Thatcher years."

Promising to fix the party's northern problem has become de rigeur for a new Conservative leader. In 1997, William Hague announced that there would be "no no-go" areas for Conservatives; Cameron did the same in 2005. Yet this promise is made with little appreciation of how steep a climb the party faces in places like Liverpool. Garnett describes the challenge as "Everest-like" in complexity. Tempting as it will be for the Conservatives to divert resources elsewhere as next year's election draws closer, they should not ignore the north's cities. Dismal performance there spills over into important marginals.

At present, Labour's poor showing in the south cancels out the Conservative's northern problem. But the south's aversion to Labour is not as deep-seated as anti-Tory sentiment in the north. Tony Blair's electoral success was proof of that. His victory in 1997 was so emphatic that seats thought to be comfortably Conservative returned Labour MPs and some have never reverted. What ended with success for Labour in affluent places like Hove began with the prawn-cocktail offensive; the city schmoozing paid off, Labour regained economic credibility and southern voters eventually warmed to them. George Osborne, who is also the Tories' election strategist, calls Blair "the master" and listens to an audio book of his memoirs, A Journey, on his jogs around St James's Park. He should seek to do in the north what Blair did in the south. Labour needed a prawn-cocktail offensive; the Conservatives need a chips-and-gravy strategy.

A truly one-nation party cannot write off cities like Liverpool. A party that seeks to govern the country as a whole must persuade northern voters, urban and rural, that it has their interests at heart. If the Tories can do that, a parliamentary majority could be theirs for the first time in decades.

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