Eve Norridge: Renewing, reshaping and rebuilding. The three pathways to taking Conservatism onward

Eve Norridge is Head of Research at Onward

May 2025 will mark seven years since Onward was founded. From the beginning, we have set out to reenergise the centre right with practical policies that meet the needs of real people.

Onward’s work has focused from the outset on building opportunity and strong communities particularly for young people and particularly for those who live outside of the South East. That agenda was important in 2018 and it is a hundred times more so today.

We aim to live up to our name and continually move the debate forward. With pressure from both sides of the political spectrum, one thing that the centre right does not have right now is the luxury of time.

That is why, at Onward, we are starting work immediately on a fresh and positive vision for the whole of the UK. A vision that will move Britain forwards not back and that will make Conservative thinking credible again.

Onward has launched three new research programmes that will span the current parliament: Renewing our Social Contract; Reshaping the State; and Rebuilding our Economy. There is an urgent and immediate need for bold and practical policies that can win elections, starting with local government and the devolved nations and then in Westminster in 2029.

Our first programme, Renewing our Social Contract, aims to articulate a fresh collective understanding of the balance between rights and responsibilities in our society. It will continue Onward’s highly-regarded work on repairing the social fabric of our communities. It will consider how to arrive at outcomes that are widely accepted as fair, even when the needs of different groups or communities are directly in conflict.

In terms of the policy areas we intend to tackle under this research programme, helping young people get on the housing ladder and have the children they want will be first on the list. As will trust and community cohesion. It is imperative that we grapple with why young people are turning away, not just from the Conservative Party, but from the institutions and systems of our democracy.

Our second programme, Reshaping the State, will be bold in setting out where the size and shape of the British state needs to change, within a renewed social contract. It will push into new areas of work for Onward and will ask tough questions about our country’s institutions, public services, personal taxes and benefits. It will identify where they need a deep rethink in a changing world. On public service reform, it will assess how to harness the benefits of technology to deliver lean, efficient, top-quality services that are fit for the 21st century.

Finally, and of crucial importance, our third programme, Rebuilding our Economy will argue for a radical overhaul of the UK’s broken economic model. It will focus on the pressing need to bring industry and jobs to the UK’s regions, particularly in places where these are currently lacking. It will identify the main barriers to growth, including obstacles created by the state, and areas where the state is insufficiently strategic. It will argue for an economic approach that delivers widely shared growth, a dynamic environment for businesses and a better deal for families and communities across the UK.

In each of these programmes we will maintain a relentless focus on getting out of the Westminster bubble and talking to the people across the UK whose opinions, views and experiences really matter.

Having worked for the Conservative Party in the optimistic years pre-2010, I returned to Westminster in January after quite some time away.

I lived for five years in Hong Kong, then several months in Dubai, experiencing first hand the completely different ways that other cultures operate. I have spent countless hours in playgroups and playgrounds chatting with other parents from all walks of life while raising three young children. And most recently, I joined Onward from a business-facing role, based in Canary Wharf.

Many workplaces can be a bubble – and sometimes that can be a good thing, where it allows for a real focus on the task in hand. But, even after only three months back in Westminster, I am acutely reminded that the political bubble we experience here is far from positive because it so easily distracts from – and masks – the views of the real people that our policies are supposed to help.

I am determined that our work at Onward will not fall into that trap.

We will not shy away from what people across the UK really think, nor from the realities of daily life for different communities. We need practical policies that resonate and that actually work.