How Conservatism Vacated the Centre-Ground
The ‘Middle England’ of Thatcher and Major could not be reconciled with the austerity and oligarchical tendencies of Cameron and Johnson, writes Stephen Colegrave
Crafting Conservative political campaigns at Saatchi & Saatchi in the 1980s, our marketing strategy was clear: to fight for, and convert, the centre-ground of the country. We wanted to give voice to this ‘silent majority’ through aspiration.
These voters would be rewarded by increased home ownership and share interests, and a ‘Big Bang’ in the City that unleashed the economic growth of the 1980s. Of course, not everyone benefitted or felt part of this new world.
Margaret Thatcher’s combative style with trade unions, and the misery of those made redundant by the demise of heavy industry, ensured that she would be hated by working-class voters. But the middle-class and aspirant middle-class were a large enough franchise to ensure her success.
We understood the mindset of this middle-ground audience as we had already sold them soap powder and shampoo. Thatcher understood this centre-ground better than anybody.
The daughter of Alfred Roberts – a grocer, preacher, and local politician from Grantham – Thatcher went to Oxford University and became the UK’s first female Prime Minister. She was the embodiment of opportunity and social mobility.
Her successor had an even better story in this respect. John Major’s father was a former music hall performer whose business went bust, with Major only achieving three ‘O’ Levels, and failing to get a job as a bus conductor. Instead, he passed banking exams and had a successful early career at Standard Chartered Bank.
Leaving the aristocratic days of Harold Macmillan behind, the Conservative Party – through Thatcher and then Major – became synonymous with ‘Middle England’. Both understood their electorate because it was their lived experience.
At Saatchi & Saatchi, we knew that the only way we could help deliver a victory for Major in the 1992 General Election, with an electorate exhausted after 13 years of Tory rule, was to literally get him onto a soap box and visually present him as ‘a man of the people’.
Our entire focus was on winning over swing voters in the centre.
This cohort remained the most important voting bloc in British politics well into the New Labour years.
Tony Blair understood its importance in 1997 when he targeted ‘Mondeo man’ – the stereotype of the former Conservative voter in the centre-ground. He could only win him over by convincing him that his aspirations could still be met under a Labour Government. Such centre-ground voters would still be able to become homeowners, keep their shares in privatised industries, and not pay more tax.
So how has Conservative politics today shifted so far from this centre-ground?
It is too simplistic to argue that it has been swept away in the political polarisation facilitated by social media. Analysis by the National Centre for Social Research in 2024 of the British Social Attitudes data estimated that 43% of the population could be classed as part of the centre or middle-ground.
Indeed, University College London also conducted a More in Common Poll in 2024 that found that 73% of English respondents said they neither want to “recreate the country’s past” nor “forget it entirely” – rejecting polarised extremes, with only 13% saying that they thought the Establishment was ‘too woke’.
This suggests that there is still a ‘silent majority’ that is much more reasonable and centrist than the established press on the right or the current Conservative Party leadership under Kemi Badenoch – and, appearing on the horizon, Robert Jenrick – would have us believe.
The real problem has been that, after the John Major era, the leadership of the Conservative Party lost its strong connection with its middle-class base.
David Cameron and Boris Johnson, both Etonians from comfortable backgrounds, were unable to understand the aspirations of their electorate in the visceral way Thatcher and Major had.
Small business donors made way for hedge funds and oligarchs.
Conservative media outlets pushed the UK’s membership of the EU to the top of the agenda, with Cameron casually betting on a referendum in the interests of his party, not the country – introducing the ‘culture wars’ and the economic consequences of a damaging hard Brexit into much of what followed.
With austerity and an increasing tax burden, social mobility in the UK has declined – so much so that, in 2023, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that it was harder for children from poor households to move into higher income brackets than 40 years ago. Thatcherite aspiration appears dead.
No longer able to offer tangible forms of aspiration in people’s everyday lives, the Conservative Party has increasingly come to offer the politics of grievance and othering – increasingly in the style of Donald Trump’s MAGA Republicans.
Much of this is also being driven by the threat to its right from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
It is all fuelled further by social media and the mainstream press – but it is also a cultural and social shift in a party that has lost touch with its centre-ground supporters, and with them its chance to regain its legacy and success.
This article appears in edition #78 of Byline Times
Stephen Colegrave was the Marketing Director for Europe, Middle East and Africa at the leading advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi