Andrew Allison is Head of Campaigns for PopularConservatism.
Since 1979, parties of the left have polled more votes in general elections than parties of the right, apart from 2015, the election which saw the Liberal Democrats punished for their part in the coalition government and a surge in support for UKIP.
Margaret Thatcher steered the Conservative Party to three election victories in 1979, 1983 and 1987 because the party was the only viable party of the right and the left-wing vote split. In 1979, Conservatives under Thatcher won 43.9% of the vote, Labour 36.9%and the Liberals (who had propped up Jim Callaghan’s administration) 13.8%. The combined left-wing vote in 1983 and 1987 was even larger: 53% and 53.4%respectively.
More recently, although the combined vote in the 2024 general election was 52.6% to 38% in the left’s favour, more Conservative seats fell than would otherwise have done if the vote had not been split between the Conservative Party and Reform UK.
Yes, there were some strange results because of splits on the left: one of the most notable being in Leicester East where Claudia Webbe and Keith Vaz both ran as independents and took over 9,000 votes away from Labour. This resulted in an unlikely Conservative victory for Shivani Raja who polled just 31.1% of the vote.
Something similar happened in Chingford and Woodford Green. Most people thought that Sir Iain Duncan Smith was toast, but after Faiza Shaheen was deselected as the Labour Party candidate and decided to run as an independent, Sir Iain came through and retained his seat with 35.6%.
But those two examples are outliers and as we know, Labour won a massive landslide:almost two-thirds of the seats on a little over a third of the vote because in many seats that would otherwise have been won by the Conservative Party, the vote on the right was split. Think Great Yarmouth, Wellingborough and South West Norfolk. My own constituency of Beverley and Holderness nearly fell to Labour. Graham Stuart held on with a wafer-thin majority of just 124. In 2019, his majority was 20,448.
I appreciate that loyal ConservativeHome readers will have read some these stats before and will have read many “unite the right” articles over the last couple of years, but rather than arguing for the right to unite, we ought to start by cooperating with each other and at the very least make an attempt to be civil towards one another.
Despite – and possibly because – of the losses the left has suffered over the years, they have a way of cooperating with each other that falls short of electoral pacts. Although this is never voiced publicly, parties in some seats where a split on the left would ensure a victory for either the Conservatives or Reform, decide on which party of the left is likely to win, and with and nod and a wink encourage their supporters to vote for that party instead. Left-leaning voters, of course, quite often don’t need this encouragement. They know which party is likely to win and coalesce around that candidate, hoping to ensurea candidate of the left wins. They may have political differences with the new MP they have voted for, but he or she will still be better in their view than the Tories or Reform.
Instead of doing this, on our side of the ledger, we fight like rats in a sack.
Just this week, in an X post, Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf called former Conservative Defence Secretary, Sir Ben Wallace, a “traitor”. Sir Ben defended himself, as one would expect.In further exchanges, Yusuf called Wallace a “moron”. He is neither a traitor nor a moron, but in his reply, Wallace couldn’t resist making an ad hominem comment about Suella Braverman who in turn defended herself by attacking him.
Meanwhile, Restore Britain is busy making demands of Reform UK whilst at the same time Rupert Lowe refused to say if he thinks that the King is a white Briton, and Charlie Downes called Sunday Telegraph editor, Allister Heath a “traitor to the British people” and an “agent of the anti-white establishment” for disagreeing with Restore’s ethno-nationalist platform.
Restore is not going to form a government after the next general election. In many ways they are an irritant, but all Rupert Lowe has to do is stand candidates in a few dozen key seats and it could easily mean that Reform loses, handing them to Labour.
Andy Burnham must be clapping his hands in glee. He mustn’t be able to believe his luck. He has managed one of the most audacious coups in British political history at the point where his party was heading for oblivion, and instead of using their firepower on this awful Labour government, parties on the right are instead engaged in a circular firing squad.
We have become like the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea, because putting aside the civic-nationalist vs ethno-nationalist debate (I am firmly in the civic-nationalist camp), we agree on so many of the important issues of the day.
We agree that we should leave the ECHR. We agree that we must have tougher policies on illegal migration, and we agree that the numbers of people migrating here legally are too high. We agree that the public finances are in a parlous state. We agree that there must be huge reductions in public spending to start paying off our accumulated debt and to start reducing taxation. We agree that the welfare bill is much too high and that the perverse incentives keeping too many people on welfare must be removed.
Just a few examples of many areas of agreement. We also agree that it would be disastrous for our country if Labour won another victory at the next general election – whenever that will be; probably sooner rather than later. Worse still is a so-called “Rainbow Coalition” between Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens, with the SNP thrown in for good measure.
If we agree on so much, is it really that hard to stop running down the path of mutual destruction that we have found ourselves on and perform a U-Turn?
I have told people in Reform that constantly calling for the destruction of the Conservative Party is not only wrong, but counterproductive, too. “The Conservative Party is not likely to be destroyed anytime soon”, I have told them. “Its troops are still prepared to fight”. But infantile comments like those from Kevin Hollinrake last year, likening a badge on a Reform UK football shirt to that of a Nazi symbol don’t help either.
If Andy Burnham were to call a snap general election, Labour already has over 400 candidates selected as, under Labour Party rules, sitting Labour MPs are automatically reselected in such a scenario. We on the right are woefully unprepared for this eventuality. And if the right is to defeat the left, it will have to be a collective effort. Reform is highly unlikely to win a majority. The same can be said for the Conservative Party.
I am not naive. I know that the Conservatives, Reform and Restore are rival parties and there will be policy differences that they will want to highlight for electoral gain. As a free-marketeer, I am hardly opposed to competition! But those differences are tiny compared to the differences with Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
So please, can we put at least some of our differences aside, start being civil towards one another, and focus on defeating our true opponents?