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Home Secretary Sajid Javid.
- Sajid Javid says the Conservative Party need "more good ideas," have failed to create a "positive narrative" and spend too much time "looking back at the past" in a blunt criticism of his party's strategy under Theresa May.
- The Home Secretary told Business Insider that the party must revitalise its message or face losing the next general election to Jeremy Corbyn's Labour.
- "We need more good ideas and we need to get better at articulating those ideas," he said at the Conservative party's annual conference in Birmingham.
- Javid is tipped to be a potential successor for May.
BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND - The Conservatives face losing the next election because they spend too much time "looking back at the past" and are not offering a "positive narrative," Home Secretary Sajid Javid has said.
Javid, who is widely tipped as a potential successor to Prime Minister Theresa May, told Business Insider on Monday that the Tory party needs "more good ideas" and needs to "get better at articulating those ideas."
Speaking to BI at a fringe event on Monday night, Javid suggestrf his party is failing both to "articulate" its vision and to criticise the Labour party in a way that "connects" with British voters.
"We have a big challenge. We saw at the last election when Labour did incredibly well all things considered. I've said before there's a realistic chance that Labour we can win the next election," Javid told BI.
"Therefore, if we want to prevent that, we have to work harder. We have a vision but we need to add to it. We need more good ideas and we need to get better at articulating those ideas."
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He added: "For example, last week Labour built on its economic plans and told us about the massive confiscation of private property, more rent controls, and all this kind of rubbish. We have had a tendency to warn people 'they did this in the 70s and 80s and look what happened' but most voters have no relationship with those times.
"We need to still condemn those ideas but in a way that connects with peoples' futures. Their families, jobs and ideals."
Javid's comments are clear criticism of May, who repeatedly attempted to frame Corbyn as having "a desire to go back to the disastrous socialist policies of the 1970s," during her failed 2017 general election campaign.
He then claimed the party was failing to offer a positive narrative, telling BI: "Instead of looking back at the past, we need to look forward to the future and build a much more positive narrative about how Conservatives will help people get what they want. It's not just about vision and policies - it's about narrative as well."
Javid's criticisms of Conservative party strategy come amid intense speculation about May's future, with Javid along with a handful of other Tory MPs, including Boris Johnson, thought to be considering a bid to replace her.
George Freeman, May's former policy advisor, warned on Sunday that the Tories will hand the keys of 10 Downing Street to Corbyn's Labour if it didn't reverse its increasing unpopularity with young and ethnic minority voters.
Freeman MP said that the Conservatives looked like "lawyers" and "besuited bank managers of austerity with no vision," and claimed that the party's handling of Brexit had made it look like the "armed wing of UKIP."
Former Education Secretary Justine Greening warned that unless the Tories find a way to reconnect with people under 45 - a group which largely backed Labour at the last election - they "will not be winning elections anymore."
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