Tom Collins: To win the future, Conservatives must rebuild a property-owning democracy

Tom Collins is a graduate of the London School of Economics (LSE) and is currently an MPhil student at the University of Cambridge.

As the bells chimed seven across Cambridge, the cobblestones heaved under the heat as tourists strolled, dodging cyclists, through the sweet midsummer air. Just beyond the honey-coloured stone fortresses which line King’s Parade, a small army of over-sixties filed into a glitzy conference room. The Cambridge Conservative Party’s AGM – the social event of the season – had begun.

The atmosphere crackled with unease. Councillor Anna Bailey (deputy to Paul Bristow, the new Tory mayor) radiated diligent, mild-mannered competence. Under the Conservatives, she protested, Cambridgeshire had kept council tax steady for 12 years.

Yet cast aside by the electoral tsunami of last spring, local Tories were powerless to stop a rainbow coalition of Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Reform councillors agreeing to cross party-lines to raise taxes – only to fund the council’s working week being cut to four days whilst handing themselves an 11 per cent pay-rise for the trouble. Who said bipartisanship was dead?

Bailey’s voice at times cracked with despair. Over a decade of hard-won fiscal restraint, of quietly saving today for jam tomorrow, had been wiped out within months by greedy politicians, exercising all the cautious reserve of Matilda’s Bruce Bogtrotter gorging down fat fistfuls of chocolate cake.

Passing to Anthony Browne, the former minister, the picture nationally was bleaker. One million immigrants have moved to Britain to claim universal credit. Worse, one-in-four Brits (some 17 million people) today claim some form of disability benefit. Having arrived in office under the spectre of the highest taxes since 1948, Sir Keir Starmer decided not just to raise taxes a further £40 billion, but to balloon borrowing to £151 billion this year alone.

Meanwhile, despite having styled herself as ‘the iron chancellor,’ Rachel Reeves’ promise to cut winter fuel payments vanished quicker than Tommy Robinson after knocking out a voter on the Tube. Even when the Government tried to instill the vaguest semblance of fiscal discipline with their Welfare Bill, which tried to cut off 400,000 perfectly able-bodied claimants from disability benefit, Labour MPs called it racist and overturned the Prime Minister’s 160-seat majority to block it.

Britain under Labour now spends more on servicing its debt (£105 billion a year) than it spends on defence, education, and policing combined. Despite working 35-hour weeks, French workers produce 20 per cent more than British workers, whilst compared to the United States we are only half as productive worker for worker.

Yet, for all the righteous indignation, something was missing. Whilst it was clear what everyone in the room was against (fiscal irresponsibility) it was harder to tell what anyone was for.

If politics is the art of competitive storytelling, then the Conservatives need to turn a new chapter. As Thatcher said on the steps of Downing Street in May 1979: “where there is despair, may we bring hope.” Campaigning on a platform of fiscal responsibility is right – we simply cannot spend £1.5 trillion a year if we receive only £1 trillion in revenue – but elections are won on the promise of a better tomorrow.

I was asked, as the only person in the room without a hip replacement, why Reform is doing so well amongst my 18–24 cohort. The answer is simple: Reform offer hope.

Where the Conservatives could credibly claim to have been the party of ‘property-owning democracy’ under Thatcher and Harold Macmillan, most recently home-ownership amongst under-40s dropped from 59 per cent to 39 per cent after 14 years of Tory government; the average first-time buyer is now 34 years old, a full decade older than when Thatcher was in No10.

The crisis is not just economic, but moral. The Conservatives have always championed mass home-ownership because it creates stakeholders in our society. By transforming renters into owners, Thatcher gave young people not just the freedom to start their own families and enjoy financial security, but a feeling of pride in themselves and in their country. During the Eighties and Nineties, the Conservatives were the party of the aspirational because they offered a fair deal: a clear path to home-ownership for all willing to work hard and play by the rules.

One third of under 30s voted Conservative in 2010, evenly split with Labour and the Lib Dems. Yet they only won a humiliating 8 per cent of under-30s in 2024. This is not because young people have changed; it is because the Conservatives did. When they weren’t tripling tuition fees (and adding an almost criminal annual nine per cent interest rate on top for good measure) they built on average a post-war record low of 170,000 homes a year (down from 354,000 in 1954) whilst welcoming 706,881 immigrants into Britain in 2023 alone. As a result, where the average cost of a house was 3.5 times average income in 1992, today it is nearly 10 times.

Meanwhile, thanks not only to immigration but also AI, there are only half as many graduate jobs available today as in 2023, just two years ago. Even for a job stacking shelves, intense three-round interviews and nauseating assessment centres are the norm. For decent graduate jobs on £30k base, 1250 applicants chasing 12 jobs is standard.

If Thatcher represented the Conservatives as the party of aspiration, Rishi Sunak represented the party of living with your parents until your mid-30s – even for many Russell Group graduates.

In other words, young people today feel that the social contract which bound Britain together is broken; little surprise that the average Conservative voter in 2024 was 65; under-40s today feel that no matter how hard they work or how stringently they follow the rules, their aspirations are unattainable.

The young people I meet on the doorstep do not want socialism: they want the same things that their parents wanted. They want to own their own home, to start a family in a safe environment, to afford a holiday (or two) a year, and enjoy reliable public services for as little tax as possible. However, where their parents found that the Conservatives delivered all this, young people today feel that these bare necessities only become more remote with the Tories in office.

If the Conservatives want to survive – they must once more become the party of home-ownership. The mood music must shift from Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again to Fleetwood Mac’s Don’t Stop. The Tories must rediscover Disraeli’s one-nation roots and offer a vision which represents the whole country: the party of affordable housing for the young and a secure retirement for the old.

We must make it clear that the Tories are on the side of the young and aspirational – and prove it. If the Conservatives want to win 40 per cent of the under 30s, as they did in 1992, then they can no longer just offer red meat to the old with the triple lock without delivering for the 81 per cent of Brits who aren’t over 65.

The more young people who own their own homes, the more young people will feel that they have a stake in our society, and the more likely they will be too to start their own families, feel part of their community, proud of themselves – and proud to be British.

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