Matt Goodwin is an academic. He shares his research at mattgoodwin.org.
The latest budget is a reminder that it really is make or break time for Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt, and the Conservative Party. In the latest polls, in the week before the budget, the party has averaged just 22.6 per cent of the national vote to Labour’s 45 per cent.
Were these numbers replicated at the looming general election then the Conservative Party would plunge to just 65 seats to Labour’s 500, handing Sir Keir Starmer and his party an enormous majority – and a unique opportunity to usher in wholesale economic, cultural, and constitutional change.
More fundamentally, such a result would also plunge the Conservative Party into a full-blown electoral and philosophical crisis.
With Labour set to return as the dominant force in Scotland, reclaiming every seat in the Red Wall, piling up even larger majorities the big cities and the university towns, and its support continuing to cascade out to the suburbs and commuter belts, the Conservatives’ future electorate would be very unclear.
At the very moment a heavy defeat to Labour would leave the Conservative Party far more dependent on the few socially liberal, southern, and one-nation Tories who remain in parliament, the party will also be forced to confront the stark realisation that it is non-London England – a far more culturally conservative, pro-Brexit, anti-immigration part of the country – that offers the most plausible route back to power in the future.
This will mean rebuilding the very coalition of mainly working-class, non-graduate, older, and culturally-conservative voters that One Nation Tories have, visibly, struggled to appeal to and maintain ever since the Brexit realignment.
It will also mean trying to bring back voters who were promised lower immigration (or, in Boris Johnson’s words, “lower overall numbers”), and a self-governing, independent nation – but who were then given record rates of net migration, broken borders, and the refusal to leave international conventions that might otherwise allow us to take back control.
While it is certainly true the polls will narrow as some (though not all) of the party’s former 2019 voters return to the fold, fearful of a Labour government, in the face of these wider challenges it appears increasingly implausible to think this will be enough to prevent some kind of Labour-led government.
Furthermore, other polling data points to longer-term problems. One concerns how the Conservative Party, more broadly, is no longer seen as a competent political party. In the latest polling, from Redfield and Wilton, just 17 per cent of voters think it is competent while more than half of voters, 51 per cent, think it is incompetent.
This is clearly not just about the events of 2024. After the last fourteen years, the Tories are no longer seen as effective in government, or safe custodians of the most important issue facing the country: the economy.
In the latest YouGov data, 69 per cent of voters think the Conservative government is handling the economy “badly”, while only 24 per cent think it is handling the economy “well”.
And it’s not just the economy. If you look at a wide array of issues – the NHS, education, taxation, inflation, and the cost-of-living crisis – it is the same basic story. The Conservative Party no longer ‘owns’ any major issue in British politics; in the eyes of many voters, it has become a deeply toxic and divisive political brand.
It’s even lagging behind Labour on traditional conservative issues such as Brexit, crime, and immigration, which most voters (including conservatives) feel have been badly managed.
These are the voters the Reform party is now picking up. Only this week, the insurgent party hit a new high of 21 per cent of 2019 Conservative voters, most of whom are thoroughly disappointed with the Government’s record on migration.
Much of this reflects how, in the eyes of all voters and its own 2019 voters, the party has consistently failed to deliver, even while holding an 80-seat majority. On one level, this also helps to explain Sunak’s dire leadership ratings; his net approval score this week stood at -26, close to a record low (Hunt is not far behind on -12).
But it also reflects how the Conservative Party more generally has now become highly toxic in the eyes of many voters. The ‘net satisfaction’ score for the current Government is typically hovering around minus 60. To put that in perspective, Prince Andrew’s net approval rating is -65. I don’t really need to say anymore.
Consistently, most voters now say the party no longer trustworthy, out-of-touch with the values of ordinary people, and only looking out for its own interests, not those of the wider country.
Starmer and the Labour Party are certainly not setting the country on fire (his net approval rating is just +2) but then nor do they need to –so long as they are doing a little better than Sunak et al that is all that matters.
Lastly, when it comes to the polls there are some questions that matter more than others. One of those actually has nothing at all to do with leaders or policies. It is what we would now call a “vibes-based” question, namely: “Is it time for a change in Westminster?”
When you ask voters this question, as Ipsos-MORI recently did, then you’ll find that close to 70 per cent of voters think that it is while just 22 per cent think it is not.
As the Chancellor sets out his budget, therefore, his party continues to sink to new lows in the polls. On all the key metrics that usually tell us much about what is likely to happen at an election – perceptions of competence, leadership ratings, and general perceptions of Westminster – the odds are stacked firmly against the Conservatives.
They will no doubt be hoping that this budget, perhaps followed by another fiscal event in the autumn, might just be enough to turn the tide. But, like millions of voters out there in the country, I remain deeply sceptical.
It’s going to take a lot more than a few pennies off National Insurance to save the Conservative Party from what looks set to be a looming election defeat.