model-willem walks up the stage at a secondary school in Exeter while people were holding his manifesto

Good evening everyone and welcome here to my manifesto launch for the leadership election of the Conservative Party. It feels good to be back here in Exeter after quite a long time. I remember being here for a campaign event once visiting a ballroom dance competition here on my way to become the MP for Cornwall and Devon.

This place has always had a great place in my heart, not just because the people of Devon are amazing people, but also because this was the first (and only) constituency that I’ve won in a General Election. I could talk for hours and hours about the wonders of Devon, but that’s not why we are here tonight.

Tonight, you guys are here to see my manifesto launch in this secondary school. I chose this location because I used to be a teacher once, before becoming an MP and being here only seems the right place to start.

I have been collecting these ideas over the last couple of weeks to see what the party wants and to ensure that these ideas form a cohesive goal for our party. I’ve spoken to people on the frontbench and on the backbench, people from our party in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland about what their needs are and how we can unify this party.

My manifesto is built on two goals, to try and reform the working of the party itself, things that are going wrong at this moment and that need fixing. The second part will be my vision for the country and the party. As I have outlined in my previous speech and also in interviews is that we have lost track of what the Conservatives really stand for and we need to rediscover what our party stands for.

In my eyes, our party, which is a broad tent of ideas, should focus on three things: fiscal and economic responsibility, one-nation conservatism and as third, internationalism. We have made policy decisions that sounded great but resulted in costing lots of money. In the future, we have to be more careful about committing to huge spending and rethink it at least once. One-nation conservatism in my eyes is a good way of combining our broad party, we should focus on the people that need our help but individual responsibility should always be the key in these policies. People can’t rely on the state for everything, the state should merely be there to assist those who can’t make it on their own. Internationalism in my eyes means that we should retain our centre-stage position on the world stage, by doing this we can aid the countries that need it but be strong on violations of human rights issues.

Our party itself is doing not so great, declines in debates, a loss of vision and lack of ways to climb to the top of the party. We need to change this to become the party of greatness and governance again. Other parties have been putting real work in debating while our MPs weren’t visible here, a lack of guidance was coined a lot by backbenchers. We need to act on that, it can’t be that party members are lost in the debates because of this. By ensuring that the leadership takes a stance in the debates, giving guidance to the party members wanting to participate and helping them along the way is, in my opinion, the way to go.

For new Conservatives, it can all seem a bit overwhelming to know what their role is, what they can do and to who they should go about it. Every single person that is in Parliament has endured that, but that also means that we are the people to assist them because we went through the same process. It is our role, as Leadership, to help these people along the way, by talking regularly to them, looking at ways that they can contribute to our party and what their hopes and dreams are.

Earlier in this speech, I outlined my vision for our country, my vision for the Conservative Party, but this isn’t the complete story. I want every backbencher to feel included, every party member should have their say about our policies. To achieve this, I want to reintroduce committees for larger topics, like all public services combined to one committee, all foreign policy areas combined, all economic policy areas combined. In these committees, people can share their ideas for the party, debate on issues that they think should be carried out by our party to really ensure that we have policies for the entire party instead of a few individuals. These committees shall be the places where we can start our manifesto earlier on.

There is a long road ahead of us, but that’s also a beautiful road, this process, these talks and these meetings can show us how beautiful our party really is and what we stand for. We can rediscover ourselves and show the country that we are the party that can be trusted and have an idea for the future of our great country. I am the person to lead us through that rediscovery and towards a new era for the party.

Thank you.

On the way out posters of model-willem were handed out to everyone in the audience.