Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
With all eyes on Labour and the Makerfield by-election, the state of the Conservative Party has been all but ignored by the mainstream media.
That suits Kemi Badenoch, because this could have been a tricky time for her. I hate to bring it up, but earlier this month we suffered a net loss of 563 councillors and six councils – including Badenoch’s home turf of Essex. In the Welsh Senedd elections the Conservative group dropped from second to fourth place and in the Scottish Parliament from third to fifth. Yes, there were bright spots too, but disregard the bluster — this was a bad night for us.
But to Reform UK’s evident frustration, these setbacks haven’t provoked a renewed crisis of confidence in the Tory ranks — nor in the Tory leader. Obviously the news agenda is a tad distracting right now, but that’s not the only reason why so little blame is attaching to Badenoch.
Here’s an allegorical explanation of what’s going on:
Picture a house — a rather grand house, but fallen into a state of advanced disrepair. That’s not the fault of the current tenant. In fact, she’s been working hard to deal with the shambles left behind by the previous tenants.
The first of these was a party animal — and he absolutely trashed the place. After one excess too many, he was evicted. Unfortunately, his replacement was even worse. She nearly burned the house down — not to mention half the street. And so having only just moved in, she was out in short order.
Her replacement was a sensible sort who soon extinguished the remaining fires. The trouble, though, is what he did next — which was basically nothing. Simple maintenance might have been fine in normal circumstances, but not with the house in such a state. And, so before long, he too had to leave.
As for the current tenant, she struggled at first — who wouldn’t? But now she’s getting to grips with the situation — clearing away the rubble, throwing out the rubbish, giving the walls a fresh lick of paint. It would be absurd to evict her.
And yet, she does have possession of the property under a full repairing lease, and so far she’s not addressed the more fundamental problems. After all, there’s a reason why most people still hurry past the place. It might as well be haunted.
The house, of course, is the Conservative Party and its current tenant, Kemi Badenoch. My argument is that, even though the real damage was done by her previous leaders, she still needs to commission a full structural survey.
As luck would have it, we already an outline version. It comes in the form of an ingenious chart conceived of by Owen Winter, a politics and data journalist at The Economist.
Essentially, it’s a scatter plot of the local seats contested in the elections earlier this month. Each data point is one ward scored against two variables: firstly, on the x-axis, the percentage of the electorate aged 50 and over; and secondly, on the y-axis, the percentage in a managerial or professional job. To put it another way, the areas of the electoral battleground that skew younger are on the lefthand side of the chart, the older areas on the righthand side, the poorer areas are at the bottom and the richer areas at the top.
One could use colour to show the winning party in each ward. But if you did that then the chart would resemble an explosion in a paint factory — spots of every hue splattered all over the place. Various kinds of local independent would also confuse the picture. Therefore, a statistical trick is needed to filter out the noise and reveal the underlying pattern of party support. And so the makers of the chart have coloured each data point not according to the votes cast in the corresponding ward, but according to the average outcome in the hundred most similar wards.
This resolves the chart into solid blocks of demographic territory for each of the major parties. Using data from 2021 to 2024 — i.e. before this month’s elections, you can see how the Labour Party dominated the electoral battleground — the entire younger half of the pre-2026 chart was painted Labour red, plus the more working class parts of the older half. There was small wedge of Lib Dem yellow in the most middle-class and middle-aged wards, while the remainder of the map (i.e. the older, richer areas) was true blue.
In other words, the pre-2026 chart shows a three-party system — with Labour by far the biggest party because this is a selection of seats that includes London and other urban strongholds.
However, once the chart is updated with this year’s results, the picture changes dramatically.
Instead of three colours we now have five. The Greens invade from the left, taking whole swathes of the younger half of chart — i.e. at Labour’s expense. Meanwhile, the older, poorer parts of the battleground (the bottom-right quadrant) have turned Reform turquoise. This is at the expense of both Labour and the Conservatives. The Lib Dems make less dramatic gains at the top of the chart — expanding their wedge a bit (again, at Labour and Tory expense).
Obviously, the realignment is devastating for Labour — because it’s taking place across their heartlands. But the deep structural alterations to the party system are bad for the Conservatives too.
Our retreat across the electoral battleground isn’t just geographic, it’s also demographic. The electorates with whom we’re still in with a chance are older and wealthier than ever before. In other words, we’re becoming a caricature of our former selves.
But perhaps there’s an argument for adapting to the emergence of multiparty politics. If older, richer voters are still voting for us then why not return the favour and focus on their interests? Yes, that might mean that we’re turning into a niche party, but when your back is up against the wall, a niche might be just what you need — if only for temporary breathing space.
There’s evidence that this is exactly the strategy that the party has adopted. For instance, our flagship policy since last year’s party conference is the abolition of stamp duty on residential homes. That, of course, would primarily benefit people with property to dispose of i.e. well-healed retirees who want to downsize, move abroad or otherwise mobilise their accumulated wealth. For everyone else, the policy is just a new variation on the old stupidity of subsidising demand — meaning that asking prices will go up accordingly. Sucks if you’re a first-time buyer. Add to that the Conservative message of cutting benefits for working age adults while protecting the Triple Lock on pensions — and its pretty obvious who we’re appealing to and who we’ve left behind.
So is the niche party strategy working for us? Well, since last year’s conference our poll ratings have stabilised — and perhaps ticked up a little. Unlike the aftermath of last year’s local elections, there is — so far — little evidence of a significant slide of Tory support to Reform (which is what Nigel Farage’s kill-the-Tories strategy was relying upon).
And yet becoming a niche party is equivalent to retreating to the last one or two liveable rooms in that dilapidated house. It leaves us with no chance of ever commanding a Commons majority again — it might not even win us the fight for second place, which at the next election could plausibly go to Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens or the SNP instead. In recent weeks, we’ve been greatly cheered by Kemi Badenoch’s stellar performances across the dispatch box. But if we’re not even the Official Opposition, our leaders won’t be at the dispatch box, will they?
We might also consider the fate of niche parties elsewhere in Europe. For instance, Les Républicains in France are now also-rans in presidential elections. Or what about the once-mighty Forza Italia — now a sidecar to Giorgia Meloni’s populist juggernaut. Or, most sobering of all, the Free Democrats (FDP) in Germany. This lot aren’t in fact the Teutonic equivalent to our own Lib Dems, but a business-friendly party of the centre-Right who focus on government efficiency and fiscal responsibility: much the same agenda as Kemi Badenoch’s, in fact. Though never one of the big parties, the FDP have now dropped out of the Bundestag altogether — not being able to get over the 5% threshold for seats.
In effect, there’s a threshold in the British electoral system too. A cliff-edge — somewhere in the 15 to 20% range — below which we’d lose most of our remaining seats. Given where we are in the polls I’d question whether this is anytime to be narrowing our appeal.
As to what direction we should try to broaden it, I’d invite you to take another look at Owen Winters’ chart. Notice how the younger half of the chart is completely dominated by the parties of the Left. Now, with the passage of time, imagine that generation of voters — and subsequent generations — taking over the chart completely. This is the real challenge facing not only the Conservative Party, but Reform too. And time is running out.