Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
As every schoolboy once knew, Rudyard Kipling composed “Recessional” in response to Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, writing and publishing the five stanzas at the end of the celebrations. Going against the general spirit of imperial pomp and splendour Kipling expressed his sadness the British Empire would one day join its predecessors in the dust. Never such innocence again…
The 2019 Conservative victory is a poor theme against the fragile grandeur of Lord Salisbury’s Britain. To write a poem about it would have been a bit weird. But a Tory party pooper who produced a work of Kipling-esque gloom on December 13th, 2019 would look prophetic. From Sunakism’s dying days, Boris Johnson’s triumph looks like a victory from which the Tories will never recover.
The polls are only going in one direction. YouGov’s latest survey had the Conservatives on only 19 per cent – a level only previously seen at the nadir of our long weekend with Trussonomics. Less than half of the voters who gave Boris Johnson an 80-seat landslide would back the Tories now. Labour are 25 points ahead at 44 per cent, with Reform UK on a record 15 per cent.
Plugging the figures into Electoral Calculus gives the Conservatives 40 MPs – minus 336 – and Labour 519, a majority of 388. With 50 MPs, the Liberal Democrats would become His Majesty’s Opposition, as the Tories sink into third. Suella Braverman, Oliver Dowden, Penny Mordaunt: all amongst the hundreds handed their P45s. Will the last Tory MP to leave please turn out the lights?
Such a scenario seems unimaginable. But it only follows the general trend. A recent Ipsos survey had the Tories 27 point Labour, more than double their lead in 1997. The Conservatives have not been over 30 per cent in over five months – an unprecedented lag. Keir Starmer often leads by 20 per cent or more. If these numbers are right, a wipeout looms. Yes folks: things can only get worse.
The Daily Telegraph’s ‘mysterious’ MRP poll was designed to spook Tory MPs by showing Sunak leading them to a 1997-style defeat. But it was too kind: a shellacking on John Major’s scale currently looks like an excellent result. The only result comparable is Labour’s defeat in 1931. In the face of the National Government, they lost four out of five of seats, reduced to only 52.
That result was once labelled “the most astonishing in the history of the British party system”. Don’t worry: Sunak could still top it. The local elections will show increasingly common anti-Tory tactical voting. Those Electoral Calculus figures didn’t account for Labour, Liberal Democrat, or Green voters holding their noses to back the candidate most likely to get the Conservatives out.
In that case, Labour 1931 could turn into Canada 1993. Readers should be familiar by now. Squeezed on all sides, Kim Campbell’s Progressive Conservatives went from 169 seats to 2, losing 26.98 per cent of the vote, and dropping to fifth place. Campbell lost her seat. No British Prime Minister has done so at an election. Could Sunak boldly go where Arthur Balfour couldn’t quite?
Readers may think I have gone mad. Not only because Tory votes are usually weighed in Richmond, but because the idea of a total Conservative wipeout seems impossible . Aren’t we the natural party of government – the world’s oldest political party? Like us or loathe us, the Conservatives are supposed to be a fixture of our national furniture, a tacit cornerstone of our constitution.
Hence why most Tories aren’t yet panicking. Jonn Elledge has an excellent rundown of reasons why. Habits, history, herding: personal biases, institutional incentives, and an unwillingness to believe the exceptional is possible all cause us to refuse to accept the data in front of us. Surely Starmer can’t really win a bigger majority than Tony Blair? The Tories won’t come third.
But what if this time is different? Remember 2015. Beforehand nobody believed the SNP would win all but three of Scotland’s seats, or that the Lib Dems would go from 57 to 8. No party has a right to exist. A total Tory defeat is easy to explain: voters worse off than five years ago, crumbling public services, and MPs more interested in gossiping than governing.
The case against a Canada 1993 result is that the Conservatives lack a geographically concentrated opposition – fear the Surrey sovereigntists – or a credible challenger to their right. Both together spelled doom for their Canuck counterparts three decades ago. Unfortunately for CCHQ, both have arrived: the Lib Dems in the Blue Wall, and Reform, even without Nigel Farage.
The Yellow Peril is a return to the historic norm. Tactical voting meant the Lib Dems more than doubled their seats in 1997 despite losing votes. By-elections and local elections have confirmed their once and future position as the most obvious receptacle for protest Tory votes. ‘Long Swinson’ has worn off. By contrast, Reform’s rise is more recent – and disastrous – for CCHQ.
Despite being led by an interchangeable coterie of golf club bores clinging to a platform utterly alien to most voters – the ‘silent majority’ don’t give two hoots about the WEF or a ‘vaccine harms inquiry’ – Reform’s number now touch the Tory share’s margin of error. A Farage return would put them in second place. He had the Brexit Party in first for a month in 2019, long pre-Jungle.
Again, Reform’s success is unsurprising. British politics is becoming more European. We have hitherto been unusual in lacking a populist right-wing party in first or second place. Brexit and “Brexity Hezza” were thought to have lanced that boil and won disillusioned older, working-class, non-urban, and non-graduate voters for the Tories. Long live the Vote Leave coalition.
Unsurprisingly, the sheer extent of our failures on immigration, crime, and the economy has seen those voters abandon the Conservatives as swiftly as they hopped aboard. Fourteen wasted years. As both Matt Goodwin and James Frayne have argued, the pitch is rolled for an anti-establishment party with a platform of radical change. Right-wing voters need a British Donald Trump.
They’ll be even more desperate after five years of Labour. Keir Starmer versus Ed Davey will not make for an enlightening PMQs. Even with an extraordinary majority, Labour will be hemmed in by a dire inheritance and recalcitrant backbenchers, even before a Chinese attack on Taiwan – or another potential Covid or Ukraine-style geopolitical crises – crashes the world economy.
As Stephen Bush has pointed out, for Labour to go in a single term from their worst defeat since 1935 to knocking on the door of their largest-ever victory is a sign of post-Brexit electoral volatility. If the Tories had even 150 MPs a return to government within one or two terms would not be impossible with talented leadership, a coherent pitch, and a disciplined party.
But in a Labour 1931 scenario, such a return would be impossible. Open warfare would break out amongst the few remaining MPs, with left and right blaming each other for the party’s demise. Amid calls to “unite the right” with a Reform that may have won more votes but few seats, a split would look inevitable. Donors and media allies would desert. Paul Marshall would want his money back.
Under a Canada 1993 outcome, all this would be sped up. Every facet of political life built on the assumption there would always be a Tory party – CCHQ, Tufton Street, and the wider right-wing entertainment industry – would enter a collective nervous breakdown. Dominic Cummings and Nigel Farage would cheer. But millions of Conservative members and voters would be utterly appalled.
This is a worst-case scenario. Having a personal and professional interest in the continuing existence of the Conservatives, I find this hard to write. But readers should be under no illusions: we Tories face an extinction-level event. I turn from Kipling to Sting: “Hey mighty Brontosaurus/Don’t you have a lesson for us?/ You thought your rule would always last/There were no lessons in your past.”