When Jayde Tanisha Edwards saw the exit poll on 4 July, she was shocked. “I think everybody came to the conclusion that the Conservatives were going to lose, but I don’t think we realised how badly we were going to lose,” she says. Edwards is an unlikely Tory activist. She is 25 years old, and when she got involved with the party some years ago – standing as a councillor in 2019 – she was a teenage mother living in temporary accommodation. Although everyone in her family and community supported Labour, she was attracted by the Conservative message of aspiration. “It was that fundamental belief in prosperity and being able to build yourself up, and just do whatever you want to do,” she says. Most people in her age group do not share this view: just 8% of people under 25 voted Conservative on 4 July. In 2019, it was 21%. With so few in their age group supporting the party, young Conservative members are a vanishingly small number. Even Edwards, a committed activist who is out knocking on doors in every local and general election, is uncertain. “During this campaign, that fire and that passion for young voters just wasn’t there,” she says. “So how can I convince people on the doorstep?” As the party licks its wounds, she and other young Tories are wondering what comes next and what role they have to play. The task feels urgent. “If the party doesn’t start talking to young people, it’s going to be wiped out in the next 10-15 years,” says Adam Wildsmith, a 23-year-old from Durham who is deputy director of Blue Beyond, a grassroots group for young Conservatives.
Throughout the campaign, many young Tories were frustrated with policy announcements clearly aimed squarely at older generations: the triple-lock pension, national service for the young. “It was increasingly difficult to defend – and just tone deaf when we are all worried about housing, jobs, cost of living,” says Wildsmith. Blue Beyond surveyed its members in June and found that 85% did not think Tory policies addressed young people’s concerns. Some activists are already thinking about how to bring in more young people. Faaris Khan, a 20-year-old from Surrey Heath, joined the party when he was 17 after learning about it in his politics A-level class. He quickly became chair of his local Young Conservative branch. Khan was, in fact, the only member of this group – but undeterred, he worked to recruit a handful of others from nearby sixth forms to join him. “I made it my mission from there to not just get people interested in the party, but interested in politics,” he says. Since the disastrous election result, Khan has been wondering how he might overhaul the party’s national approach to young members. “I want to do something like the young Republican National Congress in America – with more social, informal events,” he says. Khan has already met donors and is planning to organise gatherings around the country and fringe events at the Conservative conference. The one frustration he has is with party HQ. “I tried to float this idea last year, and I was essentially stonewalled – and look where we are now,” he says. “I think it’s integral that they join in on this and help us rebuild, because it could really help us going into the next election.” While most young Conservatives think they have an important role to play in regenerating the party, it can feel like an uphill battle. Blue Beyond was set up in 2019 by young Conservatives frustrated with the lack of youth engagement from the party. “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 in galvanising youth support, whereas in the Conservatives, we have had to affiliate ourselves through our own will and machinations.”
After the worst election defeat in history, this is a decisive moment for the party, as it decides how to rebuild and whether to veer to the right or try to reclaim the centre ground. Some see this as an opportunity. “I was always of the view that the Conservative party needed a defeat or reset,” says Rhydderch. “We’ve lost that spark, and creativity around policy. There’s no energy any more. There is such a thing as being in power for too long.” He hopes to see a young star rise up as leader, like Barack Obama did in the US or David Cameron in the UK. But with only 121 MPs, it isn’t clear who that would be. Many young Conservatives are uninspired by the prospective leadership candidates. “I’m a little bit lost, and it’s the same with my peers,” says Edwards. “The biggest questions that we’ve had is who do we want to lead our party now, who has the credentials, has the vision? And the answer is we don’t know. We don’t really know what the Conservatives stand for at the moment.” Blue Beyond’s survey found that a majority would support Penny Mordaunt as the new leader, but she lost her seat. Some are anxious about a shift to the hard right. “Putting someone like Suella Braverman in charge would lose us the next election, 100%,” says Khan. “I’m not sure I could continue within the party if she is elected.” Wildsmith shares this view. “I think it’s important to stay and try to change the party from within, but Braverman as leader, or bringing Farage in – that’s a red line for me.” He thought Braverman’s speech in Washington, in which she made offensive comments about the LGBT Pride flag, was “despicable”, and the focus on culture war issues during the campaign “out of touch and cruel”. About 9% of under-25s voted Reform, placing the party roughly on parity with the Conservatives in that age group. Wildsmith puts this down to savvy campaigning. “Reform’s campaigning on social media, especially their TikTok account, was fantastic, whether you agree with it or not,” he says. “Mainstream parties need to try to lean into that.” Khan agrees: “I know people that voted Reform just because they’re on social media a lot and they think Nigel Farage is funny – but I know for a fact if they read their policies, no way would they vote for them.”
Others find the inevitable infighting over ideology depressing. “I think the debate over whether we should move to the right or left is arbitrary. The reason voters changed their minds is because the Conservatives had a terrible record of delivery in office,” says Max Waddington, a 23-year-old politics student from East Yorkshire, who was out canvassing for his local MP David Davis. “The only focus should be on competence, unity and delivery.” Recently, Waddington attended a dinner for about 250 Conservative party members in his local area. “I looked around the room and thought: ‘I might be the only person in this room still alive in 20 years’,” he says. “So in that eventuality, where will the money come from, the outreach, the campaigning?” He thinks that this ageing membership affects policy decisions, too. “The party needs to focus on things for working-age people – graduate salaries, student debt repayments, housebuilding,” he says. “But I don’t think people in the party understand that, because they’re overwhelmingly old. I don’t think they understand the existential threat.”