Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
After last week’s result, we have no choice. We must put the future behind us and boldly look to the past. No, that’s not a typo. This really is a time to look backwards, not forwards.
For one thing, it’ll be years before the voters start listening to us again. Just as importantly Conservatives, both in and out of Parliament (mostly out), need the space to sit back, reflect, and knock seven bells out of one another. It’s going to happen anyway, so let’s get it over with.
Who knows, we – meaning the survivors of the impending civil war – might even arrive at a shared understanding of what’s gone so horribly wrong. Certainly, if we don’t face up to the truth then our recovery will be delayed, perhaps indefinitely.
And by the truth I mean the whole truth. It won’t do to find a scapegoat or two. Nor should we focus on the last couple of years alone. A defeat this complete has deep roots. We must therefore look back over the full sweep of our post-2010 record.
The administrations of each of our last five leaders bear at least some of the blame. But how much? In terms of their contribution to the worst election defeat in our party’s history, I give my black marks out of five:
David Cameron (2010-2016) ✖️✖️✖️✖️
You might think that the Cameron years were too long ago to have much bearing on last week’s catastrophe. But the past casts a long shadow.
To begin with, Brexit. I believe that one day it will become clear to the whole nation that we were lucky to get out when we did. But that, of course, was never Cameron’s intention.
His miscalculations forced him to honour a promise he didn’t think he’d have to keep. He was humiliated by the ensuing renegotiation, and couldn’t keep fellow Cameroons like Michael Gove onside for the referendum campaign. He left behind a badly divided party – not to mention a swathe of Remainer-y seats, including his own, that would eventually fall to the Liberal Democrats.
That said, the loss of the Blue Wall isn’t just about Brexit. As Lord Ashcroft’s poll of 16,667 voters makes clear, we’ve alienated an entire generation. Among the 25-34 age group we’re now in fourth place. For that we can blame the original sin of the last 14 years: the Cameroons’ strategy of courting the grey vote at the expense of the young.
Pensions were boosted, but not wages; students were loaded with debt in return for degrees of dubious value; and worst of all, the dream of home ownership was snatched away from millions.
And who was it that let house price inflation (continue to) rip after the lull of the Global Financial Crisis? Take another bow, David Cameron and George Osborne.
It was those two who inflated the money supply with QE, who neglected meaningful reform of the planning system, and whose response to the crisis of affordability was to subsidise demand through economically-illiterate policies such as Help to Buy.
But though they pumped money into the bubble economy, austerity choked it off elsewhere. Of course, savings had to he made in the wake of the Gordon Brown boom-and-bust, but cutting necessary capital investment is always and everywhere a false economy.
Eventually, it proves to be rotten politics too. We fought the 2024 election against a constant stream of complaints that “nothing works” in today’s Britain. Well, there’s a reason for that.
It’s true that Cameron held on to power for much longer than any of his four successors, but that was through short-term ducking-and-diving that has had damaging long-term consequences. I therefore have no hesitation in giving his administration a blame-game rating of four.
The only reason he doesn’t get a fifth black mark is that subsequent leaders had the opportunity to put right his wrongs. It’s not his fault, nor Osborne’s, that they didn’t.
Theresa May (2016-19) ✖️✖️✖️
I’m going to be lenient here, and not just because our second female Prime minster is a good egg. It’s also because she never stood a chance.
Beset on every side by bad faith actors, useful idiots, and unthinking zealots, her Brexit deal – or any conceivable alternative to it – was doomed to failure. At best (or worst) she only deserves one black mark for her part in the Brexit logjam.
However, she gets a further two for her ill-fated snap election. I’ve written about this snatching of near-defeat from the jaws of victory here, but suffice it to say there was a lot more to it than the fumbled manifesto launch. Learning the lessons of 2024 also means learning the lessons of 2017; ominously, I’m not sure we have yet.
Anyway, on the basis of all the trouble that would have been avoided if she’d secured her majority, three-out-of-five black marks for May.
Boris Johnson (2019-2022) ✖️✖️✖️✖️✖️
Has any Prime Minister soared so high, then fallen so low? If only Boris had the self-awareness to match his classical learning, he’d recognise himself as the Icarus of the last 14 years.
But to this day, his deluded defenders still talk about the birthday cake incident as if this was all it took to bring about his downfall. They conveniently overlook the fact that Partygate consisted of a catalogue of incidents in which a government that imposed three lockdowns blithely violated its own rules.
If every other part of Whitehall was able to prevent booze-fuelled parties from breaking out on its premises, why wasn’t discipline maintained in Downing Street and the Cabinet Office? There are simply no excuses for such a grievous insult to a suffering nation. Partygate alone – as grotesque as it was avoidable – is enough to earn the Johnson administration five-out-of-five black marks.
But it doesn’t end there. Nothing else did more damage to our election prospects than the surge in support for Reform UK — and nothing did more to bring that about than the surge in immigration than the Johnson Government.
The crucial Brexit promise to take back control of our borders was broken as blatantly as the denizens of Downing Street broke lockdown. The situation came to a head last Autumn when Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister, but it happened because of decisions taken on Boris Johnson’s watch.
As much as his fans on the Tory Right refuse to admit it, the fact is that their hero governed as an immigration liberal.
Liz Truss (2022) ✖️✖️✖️✖️✖️
I’m not going to waste more than fifty words on Liz Truss’s fifty days in office. A proper Conservative doesn’t crash the economy. A mature Conservative doesn’t blame the “deep state”. A popular Conservative doesn’t lose her ultra-safe seat. Five-out-of-five black marks.
Rishi Sunak (2022-2024) ✖️✖️✖️✖️✖️
After Partygate and the Mini-Budget, Rishi Sunak’s opportunities were limited, but he managed to miss all of them. You’d think he might have learned from his predecessors’ disregard for the 2019 manifesto, but instead he doubled-down.
Just to be clear, I don’t believe that Sunak set out to lose the Red Wall. Unlike certain fans of certain ex-PMs, I’m not a conspiracy theorist. But if Sunak had been on a secret mission to sabotage the 2019 realignment, he could hardly have done a better job.
The continued failure to stop the small boats, the dismantling of industrial policy, the total lack of vision — he was the prime minister who levelled-down levelling-up, with predictable consequences.
That’s worth at least three black marks. He gets a fourth for not stepping aside earlier this year when it was abundantly clear his political strategy wasn’t working. There was an opportune moment after the local elections in May, but instead of making way for a new leader, he called a general election months before he had to. It proved an insane gamble – in more ways than one.
In any case, that makes five-out-of-five black marks, and therefore the worst possible combined score for all of our leaders since 2019.
I’m sorry to be so negative, I really am. But what’s the point of pretending anymore?