We need to turn young people into capitalists
I have always said we need to do the jobs that need doing in the order they need to be done. The first, for the Conservative Party, is to get our house in order.
That means rediscovering our unity and our discipline. But we must also unite over a vision for our country to give people a reason to vote Conservative again. And that means offering the right solutions to the problems in front of us, whether it’s increasing defence spending in an unstable world or providing the solutions to complex challenges, like global mass migration.
I believe one of the biggest problems we face today is a creeping crisis of confidence in capitalism. For too many people in Britain today, it feels like life is too hard, unbalanced, and stacked against them. People will vote for Starmer’s statism if they don’t feel capitalism is working for them.
We must remake the argument for capitalism to be successful again. Capitalism is the bedrock of our success. Free markets and free trade drive economic growth, which is what makes all of us better off. Growth increases opportunity, brings people out of poverty, and creates the wealth we can use to invest in our public services.
We left Labour a growing economy. The fastest in the G7. But just to reach our pre-2008 average annual growth of two per cent would seem like a minor miracle today. We need to unlock real growth again, turn more young people into capitalists and ensure nobody is in any doubt who is going to support the wealth creators in this county.
When my father started his business it was under Margaret Thatcher’s government and it thrived. When I started my business it was under Gordon Brown’s Labour and it didn’t survive the 2007/8 crash. The Conservative Party was the obvious political home for someone like me. I will make us the party of business again.
We need simpler, lower taxes, on business and on work, delivered in a sensible way, with sound money. That means prioritising, and making the right decisions on public expenditure. And it means less regulation too. We can’t keep adding to the burden of the private sector and expect growth to go unaffected.
At the last election, you had to be in your 60s for it to be more likely than not you voted Conservative. That is unsustainable and has to change. The truth is, too many young, aspirational, hard-working people have deserted us and our ideas.
Just as Thatcher gave council tenants the right to buy, we need to give young people a bigger stake in our society.
Cut stamp duty
It’s why we were right to cut stamp duty for first-time buyers. But I want our ambition to be to abolish stamp duty for residential properties completely. It’s a bad tax that is stopping too many people getting on the housing ladder. It disincentivises housing transactions, stopping older people from downsizing and young families from upsizing, and slows the building of new homes.
As Conservatives, we should root out bad taxes and avoid perverse effects on markets.
But we shouldn’t stop there. We must find other innovative ways to unlock the capital for our young people that could provide the security of their own home, an investment in the future as safe as houses, and somewhere to start a family.
This is a survive or die moment for us. If we believe in freedom and choice, keeping more of your own money because you know how best to spend it, we should put our money where our mouth is.
To give younger voters a stake in capitalism and a reason to vote Conservative again, it’s also vital we build a lot more homes. We should do whatever we can to build up, to build the homes where they are needed. I want our cities to be as dense as those of our European counterparts.
For the Conservative Party to win the next election, we need to resell our conservative values, be the party of prosperity, and remake the argument for capitalism. We need to prioritise driving economic growth, not through high migration but through lower taxes and cutting regulation, and by giving working people a bigger stake in our society.
Under my leadership this would be one of the central messages of the Conservative Party. With the right Conservative approach to the big challenges of the day, we can win again and make sure our country’s best days are ahead of us.