‘Obsession’ with Reform UK could leave Tories out of power for 20 years, tells Andy Street

Andy Street has spent the summer thinking hard about what went wrong – and about the future. It is almost four months since he lost his job as the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, a post he had held for seven years. “Oh, how we were thwarted,” he groans, recalling the pain of a very narrow defeat at the hands of Labour, and the reasons for it. Two months later the same irresistible anti-Tory tide would, much more decisively, sweep the Conservatives out of government at Westminster.

Helped by a holiday in the US, the ex-boss of John Lewis seems to have come to terms with the double disaster and appears fully re-energised. Street has done his postmortems, diagnosed the reasons for the Tories’ national election defeat and settled on what steps he would like to take next on his own career path. He is adamant that becoming a backbench MP is not one of them.

On the condition of the Conserv­ative party he is crystal clear. “The situation we are in is very, very serious,” he says. “We lost our reputation for competence and integrity.” He describes himself as an “optimist” and, as a result, likes to think that if the Con­servatives choose a sensible “middle ground” leader to replace Rishi Sunak they could even put up a fight at the next general election. Labour’s recovery from its depths in 2019, he says, is proof that these days party political fortunes can change quickly if the right lessons are drawn from terrible losses.

The trouble is, he fears, the Conservatives may do the very opposite. So far Street has not been encouraged by what little he has heard from the six leadership candidates.

His concern is that too many in his party believe it should react to defeat by moving rightwards to neutralise the threat of Nigel Farage and Reform UK . “A lot of people say we need to take their [Reform’s] ground, their clothes. But it seems to me that we lost for much, much deeper reasons than that – ultimately because of a failure to deliver, a failure to govern effectively. There was a sense that voters were utterly disillusioned. So they looked for whichever route they could to punish the Conservative government.

“The lesson of Conservative history is that you win from the centre ground. Look back to Chamberlain, Baldwin, Macmillan, even Thatcher in 1979 – she did not become a radical until later on – and of course with Cameron, all the big Conservative wins were from the centre ground. And you see it with the Labour party as well – you see it with Wilson, you see it of course with Blair, and the most obvious story is Starmer winning that middle ground back.

“Yes, we haemorrhaged huge numbers of votes to Reform, but if you look at it we lost far more to the Lib Dems and Labour, and so if we become obsessed with Reform you put yourself in a position where you are fighting for 15% [of votes] on the far right, where actually the middle ground is opened up.

Just like in business: if you get obsessed with one competitor you will lose a lot of the rest of the market.”

We have met in the Exchange building in Birmingham city centre, whose impressive marble interior is now used by its main university as a place to welcome visitors. Street says he used to go there as a little boy, when it was the Municipal Bank, carrying a black box with his savings inside to deposit them in the vault.

He wants his party to be led by someone who believes in further regeneration of truly diverse places like Birmingham. He names Michael Heseltine as his “political mentor”.

“That is why I wanted to be mayor here. The most diverse place in Britain. It is far more diverse than London. The Conservative party needs to be relevant in places like this for it to be in charge of the country in future. We demonstrated we could do that here. The youngest, most diverse place in Britain had a Conservative mayor for seven years. It is quite shocking – well, not shocking. It is exciting when you think about it like that.”

Street is not uncritical of his seven years as mayor. Above all he regrets not having been able to do more to reduce inequality. He was also incensed at the cancellation last year of the Birmingham to Manchester leg of HS2 , though that was entirely down to Rishi Sunak. “I was very, very cross. I felt he let the area down.” He is also critical of Sunak for calling the general election in July before he needed to. Many of the candidates were not ready, he says, the economy has since improved and the Tories could have made headway by putting Labour under pressure over their economic policies had he waited.

Out of his own defeat Street draws some solace, because it outshone the Tories at the general election. But that it did so is not a real reason for encouragement. “We lost by just 1,500 votes among 2 million voters, and the swing was only 4%. We did considerably better [than the Tories at the general election] – and why did we do considerably better? Because the positioning of my brand [he calls it ‘Brand Andy’] as a Conservative was distinctly different to the national brand. We were very much in a moderate position, an inclusive position. We tried to deliver on the things young people really needed. So we were the only region to hit our housing targets, we were improving qualifications dramatically, we were investing in infrastructure, we were investing in technology, we were seeing inward investment in terms of jobs created, we had a pro-environment policy acknowledging the climate change crisis.”

Asked which of the Tory leadership candidates he prefers, he says it is far too early to say. This week the party’s MPs will vote to cut the six candidates down to four. “What I really want to see is that their personal values are in tune with the British public’s, and that is where this question of moderation, integrity, compassion, service are important.” And what if the party does choose a rightwinger? Could it be out of office for the long term, for as long as 20 years? “Correct – that is why this is so important” is his response.

On his own future Street now knows what he wants and what he doesn’t. He says he ran John Lewis for a decade and a region with 2 ­million people for seven. Both were huge executive roles. He wants now to run something bigger in public service. “I would dearly love to take what I have learned to run a national public institution,” he says.

Related: Centrist Tories urge Andy Street to stand for parliament – and maybe one day for leader

As for becoming an MP – on the road one day to going higher in politics – he admits he was encouraged to stand “by the great and the good in the Conservative party” before the general election. But no. He now wants to run things.

“I decided not to for one very simple reason. MPs’ jobs are important jobs, but I am an executive leader – the role of the mayor is an executive political post. I was executive leader of John Lewis for 10 years, and executive mayor here for seven. You don’t then suddenly become a backbench MP.”

For those on the left of the Tory party who might have seen him as a potential leader, that may come as a disappointment. But as Street himself says, things can change fast in politics these days.