What is popular conservatism? Here are some facts – drawn from the House of Commons Library’s paper UK Election Statistics: 1918-
2023, A Long Century of Elections.
The Conservatives won 61 per cent of the vote in 1931, and came in at 50 per cent of the vote, or thereabouts, for three of the next six general elections (1935, 195, 1955 and 1959). They have not gained more than a 45 per cent share since 1970, though they have come in at the mid-40s in six elections since. In the last seven general elections, they have won more than 37 per cent only twice – during the two Brexit elections of 2017 and 2019.
There has been no automatic relationship between a relatively large share of the vote and a big majority in the Commons. Consider that 1970 result, in which the Tories gained 46 per cent of the vote. Their majority in that election was 30. Or turn by contrast to the Conservative landslide victory of 1983, which returned a Tory majority of 144. The Conservative vote share in that election was 42 per cent – four points lower than in 1970.
Nor is there such a relationship between votes cast and seats won (as well as vote share). The highest number of votes cast for the Conservatives in any general election since 1918 was in 1992, when they scooped 14 million votes. But the Tory vote share fell for the third successive general election (though not by all that much), and the Conservative majority in the Commons was slashed from 102 to 21. What does all this tell us about the Tories and popularity?
First, that they have won 13 of the 28 general elections since 1918 outright – almost half. Add the Lloyd George Government during the First World War, two national governments in the 1930s plus the wartime administration and the David Cameron Coalition, and that makes the Conservatives election winners 17 times. They have been the natural party of government not only in the twentieth century but in the twenty-first so far – having governed for 14 of its 24 years to date. If not popular with voters, they have at least been tolerated.
Second, however, their hold on the electorate, based largely on the middle class after Labour displaced the Liberals, has been fading for the best part of half a century: see those lower shares of the vote post-1970. If you believe that the Brexit elections of 2017 and 2019 were a special case, you are left with the uncomfortable realistion that the Conservatives have not otherwise won more than 40 per cent of the vote since 1992. To be tolerated – or seen as the lesser of two evils – is not to be popular.
Third, though, the Conservatives can win elections with lower shares of the vote if opposition to them is divided, as in the 1980s during the era of the SDP/Liberal Alliance, or if the main alternative government under first past the post – Labour – is seen as extreme or tainted. This helps to explain how Cameron was able to form two governments on low relative shares of the vote: 36 per cent in 2010 and 37 per cent in 2015. The Conservatives may not have been popular for most of the past century but Labour has usually been less so, if anything.
Fourth, popularity – or tolerance, or patience – only lasts so long. The Conservatives had run out of puff by 1964, after three successive election wins, and arguably too by 1992, after another three: it was residual fear of Labour that pushed the Tory vote up that year, and got John Major past the Commons winning post. One reading of recent history is that there is a natural cycle of about 15 years in government, broken only during the turbulent 1970s.
And since the new Popular Conservatives want a popular Conservative Party, it’s worth pointing out at the start, before coming to their programme, that none of the necessary preconditions for Tory popularity – or at least acceptability – are in place during this near end of a fourth term in government. Class politics as it existed before the New Labour era has long gone, no-one much is frightened by Sir Keir Starmer (at least yet) and, if there is a 15 year cycle in British politics, it’s almost up.
So, then: all that before one even begins to consider the financial crisis, Brexit, Covid, war in Europe, the worst squeeze on living standards in modern history, an embattled NHS, mass migration, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
Next – moving on from facts to interpretation – what can be learned, if anything, from those three long periods of Conservative dominance – 1951-1964, 1979-1997 and 2010-2024?
I would jettison the last at the start. This isn’t to deny that some good work has been done – see Michael Gove’s recent piece on this site – but, even had the record of the past 13 years not been chequered, the circumstances of the last two Conservative election wins were sui generis. There is no present appeal to be made to voters with the emotive power of “Get Brexit Done”. The Popular Conservatives are looking to highlight the way we’re governed – and there’s something in it – but voters are not engaged with that issue with the same intensity.
That leaves the Macmillan and Thatcher eras. What did they have in common – the times of the Old Etonian who almost joined Labour in his youth, and the woman who epitomised the spirit of provincial conservatism?
If you trawl back through this website’s files, you will find two articles by Andrew Gimson, illustrated by Carla Millar. The first is called “How Macmillan built 300,000 houses a year”. The second, “How Thatcher sold council houses – and created a new generation of property owners”.
The Popular Conservatives had much to say earlier yesterday – most of it interesting and some of it right. The commentariat will inevitably focus on the ambition of seeking to marry Liz Truss to voter popularity. And it’s doubtless true that voters won’t even begin to listen to the Conservatives while she and her admirers seek to present her disaster in office as some kind of success.
But simply to slate the former Prime Minister would be futile: after all, it’s not as though Rishi Sunak is doing all that much better. It’s more important to point to what seems to be a blank in the new group’s thinking. The post-war affluence of the 1950s helped the Conservatives win three elections. So did the economic revival and restructuring of the 1980s.
The Macmillan housebuilding programme and the Thatcher council house sales were key parts of both – means of persuading younger voters that the party of capital would give them a stake in capital. Where is the equivalent today, beyond Gove’s ambitions?
No wonder only nine per cent of 18-24s, 10 per cent of 24s-29s, 12 per cent of 30-39s, 16 per cent of 40-49s, 24 per cent of 50-59s and 31 per cent of 60-69s plan to vote Conservative. According to YouGov, the Party commands a plurality of voters only in the over 70s.
Let me repeat that. According to YouGov, the Party commands a plurality of voters only in the over 70s. As far as voting intention is concerned, the Conservative Party is literally dying on its feet. And since it won’t declare its membership figure it may also be doing so literally.
If the Popular Conservatives really want popular Conservatives, housing should be at the core of their pitch. It isn’t. And to be fair to them, it isn’t elsewhere on the right either, if one excepts a few MPs such as Sir Brandon Lewis, Sir Simon Clarke and Robert Jenrick, plus the Centre for Policy Studies, Policy Exchange, Onward and the free market think tanks.