Why Conservatives Have Reason to Be Hopeful Again
Aberdeen South may mark the beginning of a Conservative revival
“Economics are the method; the object is to change the soul.” Margaret Thatcher’s famous observation captured something most modern politics has forgotten. Conservatism is not just about fiscal arithmetic or Treasury spreadsheets. It is about shaping a society where people can build secure families, own homes, start businesses and feel that effort still leads somewhere. For much of the past decade, the Conservative Party appeared to lose sight of that mission.
I have been a member of the Conservative Party for many years, yet during the years dominated by Brexit trench warfare and the Johnson/Truss premierships, I was often embarrassed to admit it and briefly cancelled my membership. The party that once defined competence and economic credibility became subsumed by chaos, scandal and drift.
That reputational damage has not vanished. Even now, in June 2026, national polling still places the Conservatives at around 19 per cent on average - a long way from where most Conservatives believe they should be, and still struggling to win back millions of former voters. Yet for the first time in years, there are signs of life.
The Conservative victory in Aberdeen South - the party’s first Westminster by-election gain in Scotland since 1967- was more than a local aberration. It suggests there is still a sizeable centre-right electorate looking for something that feels serious, grounded and economically competent.
The Conservative candidate Douglas Lumsden’s victory, taking almost half the vote and securing a majority of more than 6,000 over the SNP, was not achieved by accident. Kemi Badenoch visited the seat three times and deliberately framed the contest around North Sea oil and gas - a live economic issue in a region where jobs and investment are on the line. The result was emphatic. Reform UK, despite expectations that it might surge in Scotland, finished a distant third.
For Badenoch personally, the result matters. More in Common polling now places her with a net approval rating of around minus nine - still negative but a sharp improvement on the minus 32 she recorded before last year’s Conservative conference and ahead of other party leaders including Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage (at the time of writing Keir Starmer is still the Labour leader!).
Increasingly even voters who are not Conservative describe her in relatively positive terms: direct, clear, unshowy. The issue is that the party she leads still does not benefit from that personal reputation.
That gap - between leader and party - is now the central political problem facing the Conservatives. The task is not simply to improve Badenoch’s standing, but to rebuild the Conservative brand as the natural home of economically serious centre-right voters. And that means rediscovering what Conservatism is actually for.
Reform’s recent plateauing in the polls and its uneven by-election record suggest voters may already be tiring of its declinism. The party still sits in the mid-twenties in many national surveys - YouGov recently had it around 24 per cent down from 27 per cent earlier in the year - still extraordinary for a party with five MPs, but no longer the unstoppable surge some once predicted.
As polling guru Sir John Curtice has noted, there are early signs Reform may be approaching a ceiling, with its support concentrated rather than expanding.
The by-elections tell a similar story. Reform has now lost four of the five Westminster by-elections since 2024, most notably in Makerfield, where Robert Kenyon won 34.5 per cent falling well short in what had been billed as a key test. The party also underperformed in Aberdeen South and failed to break through in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry.
Some of this is clearly tactical voting. British voters remain highly pragmatic when they think a particular outcome matters. In Makerfield, Labour, Lib Dem, Green and even Tory voters consolidated behind Andy Burnham to block Reform, and similar anti-Reform coordination has appeared in places like Caerphilly in Wales and Gorton and Denton in Greater Manchester. But tactical voting only explains part of it.
There is also a more basic question emerging: what exactly is Reform offering beyond anger? There are only so many times voters can be told that Britain is crap and broken before they start asking what the solution actually is. Pessimism can be an effective campaign tool but it is rarely a governing philosophy. At some point voters want to know what happens on Monday morning after the revolution.
Increasingly Reform looks exposed on that question. The party has at various times backed scrapping the two-child benefit cap, criticised privatised utility models and led the campaign to nationalise steel. Voters will tolerate inconsistency in a protest movement. They will not tolerate it in a government. And that is where the Conservative opportunity begins.
If Reform’s diagnosis is often politically effective but economically muddled - and I would argue that the potency of its message is beginning to wear off - then the Conservatives must once again position themselves as the party that offers both diagnosis and discipline: a clear-eyed understanding of Britain’s problems, matched by credible, workable solutions rather than slogans.
That means, first, confronting the welfare state. Helen Whately, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, has been right to recently highlight the scale of the challenge. With more than four million people now on Personal Independence Payment and disability-related spending rising sharply, the current system is unsustainable.
The Conservative Party’s call for a root-and-branch review of sickness benefits reflects a necessary truth: a welfare system that leaves genuinely vulnerable people struggling while trapping millions in long-term inactivity is failing everyone. These are not easy arguments. But they are serious ones and the Conservative Party must keep making them.
Second, the Conservatives need to re-establish themselves as the unapologetic party of enterprise. Badenoch’s recent proposals on financial regulation are a clear signal of intent: reviewing post-crisis banking rules, scrapping outdated ring-fencing requirements, reforming the Financial Ombudsman Service and reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens that constrain investment.
As Badenoch has argued, London is losing ground internationally. If Britain wants higher growth, it has to become more attractive to capital, not less.
That should go hand in hand with a broader agenda: lower taxes when fiscal conditions allow, planning reform to unlock housing supply, and a clearer focus on policies that support family formation and home ownership.
Because beneath all of this is a more basic political reality. Too many young people feel shut out of the British promise. High housing costs, stagnant wages and rising taxes have created a sense that effort no longer guarantees progress. Conservatism, at its best, is supposed to challenge that fatalism.
Margaret Thatcher understood that economics was never just about efficiency. It was about empowerment - about giving people control over their own lives rather than dependence on the state.
If the Conservatives can relearn that lesson and back it with credible policy rather than slogans, then Aberdeen South will not just be remembered as a surprising by-election win. It may turn out to be the moment the Conservative Party began to look like itself again.
(Me campaigning for the Conservatives back when it all felt a bit simpler…)
