Mel Stride Says He Will "Completely Overhaul" Tory Campaign Machine If Elected Leader
Mel Stride was a leading spokesperson for the Conservative campaign during the General Election (Alamy)
6 min read
Conservative leadership contender Mel Stride wants to “radically drive change” in the Tory party in the wake of its shattering election defeat, including a “complete overhaul” of the campaign structure.
In a sit-down interview with PoliticsHome, Stride said Conservative Campaign Headquarters was "outdated, over-centralised" and "not fit for purpose".
Stride and five other Tory MPs have thrown their hats into the ring to take over from Rishi Sunak as leader, following the Conservatives’ worst electoral defeat in history. Joining the former work and pensions secretary on the ballot are former home secretaries Priti Patel and James Cleverly, ex-security minister Tom Tugendhat, former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, and former business secretary Kemi Badenoch.
While some contenders had reportedly been planning their leadership campaigns for months, Stride, the Conservative MP for Central Devon, was still in the process of putting his campaign team together at the time of this interview. As a member of former prime minister Sunak's Cabinet, he had a particularly busy General Election campaign, often the appointed spokesperson for the party in the broadcast media — so much so that the regularity of his appearances became a running joke in Westminster.
Now the election is over, he intends to throw everything into the leadership campaign: “I want to win this contest because I care about my party."
All six candidates claim they are best placed to unite the Tory party after years of infighting and return it to a strong electoral position ahead of the next General Election in five years' time.
Stride stresses, however, that recovery will not be possible without first bringing about a complete overhaul of the party machine.
“What we've got to do is make it much more localised, and we've got to get that into place well in time for the May elections next year. On the policy track, we’ve got a longish journey, we've got five years to do it and we mustn't rush it. On the organisational track it’s absolutely urgent that we get a grip on it straight away.”
Describing the campaign operation as “out of touch” with the membership, Stride said that members in the far reaches of the UK felt “very distant from the organisation”.
“Your contact with it is likely to distil down to a series of emails asking you for money periodically... We’ve got to turn this into a mass movement organisation where people are involved because there is something in it for them," he said.
PoliticsHome reported multiple stories through the General Election campaign of unmotivated Tory activists and campaign disorganisation. Conservative candidates who failed to win their seats at the General Election have been invited by party chairman Richard Fuller to take part in a major review into where the campaign went wrong.
Stride said the digital operation needed to be “far slicker, far more powerful”, and that candidates at both a local and parliamentary level should be put in place ideally a couple of years ahead of time. “It does not work to have people coming in right at the last minute," he told PoliticsHome.
What Stride will not do, he said, is use the leadership campaign to declare strong personal positions on particular policies.
"If stark positions are taken on some issues early on, that could be quite detrimental,” he said, adding that he believed candidates should avoid trying to appeal to “sections of the membership” and risk dividing the party further.
This, in his view, includes taking a strong position on whether the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as a means of tackling small boats crossings.
“That is an issue on which we should reach a conclusion as a united parliamentary party, not one where an individual should go to the party and say ‘I put the stake in the sand, it’s immovable, that’s it’,” he said.
Stride told PoliticsHome he would not try to appeal to certain "sections of the membership" in his bid to become the next leader of the Tory party (Alamy)
But for party members and Conservative MPs who are still deciding who to support in this race, what are Stride’s politics and how do they differ from his opponents?
Last year, when he was still in government, Stride told The House magazine that he wanted to become a Conservative to provide the help of the state to those that need it.
Speaking to PoliticsHome now, he said while his position on that had not changed, he believed that “large government for many areas is not delivering”, including in the NHS.
“Lower taxes and less government in many ways are more efficient,” he said.
“We have got to absolutely look after the most vulnerable in society, because that's my mark of a civilised society. But if you're going to do it, you've got to do it, I'm afraid, in an efficient and targeted manner because otherwise it becomes unaffordable.”
Despite his criticisms of “big government”, Stride clearly deeply believes in the importance of the welfare state. Asked which figures he most admires in politics, he listed the usual Tory heroes Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, but also Labour’s Clement Attlee – remembered for establishing the NHS and a new system of social security following the Second World War.
“He was also a transformative leader… in his quieter way actually, I think he was a deeply impressive individual,” Stride said.
“I certainly wouldn't want you to take away from this interview that I adore Labour politicians – I don't – but I do recognise good leadership and people that get things done and transform society.”
And being a good leader, in Stride’s view, also means having a “hinterland” – a range of interests that lie outside the world of work. For Stride, that is a deep passion for history. He is a qualified tour guide having completed two years of training so that he can conduct tours at sites including Westminster Abbey, Stonehenge and the British Museum. Sadly, he confirmed he has never had to dress up in costume to carry out a tour.
Having grown up in an "unpolitical" household, Stride said that getting into grammar school and being the first to go to university in his family had taught him a "very powerful lesson" that "if you are given opportunities and you seize them, you can really make something of your life and by extension of course your family and your community".
Both his parents left school early and his father, who had grown up in orphanages and foster homes, went on to build his own business "from the kitchen table". Stride later followed in his footsteps and set up his own business before entering Parliament aged 48.
Now, Stride has his own teenage daughters, who he admits have had “such a different upbringing to me”.
“When I was a younger boy, I would not have been able to conceive that I might ever be a member of Parliament," he said.
"Somebody might have suggested I was gonna walk on the surface of the moon, it was never gonna happen. And it has happened. But of course, [my daughters] have grown up seeing me as an MP all of their life and it’s quite naturally normal. They saw me being a secretary of state as just another thing that daddy is doing at the moment, he’s on the TV again.
"But they’re lovely children in that I don't think there's any sense of entitlement, they're just very lovely people who are humble in their own way and confident in their own way. And I'm very proud of them.”
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