For many decades there has been an iron law of British politics which decrees it is not possible for both Labour and the Conservatives to be on the ropes at the same time. Rather like children sitting at opposite ends of a see-saw, if one is on the way down the other must be on the way up. This law should be very good news for the Tories right now. Because Labour has had a disastrous start in power.
Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, soaked in rain, as he announced the General Election (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
The trouble for the presently leaderless and rudderless Conservatives is that the law is in abeyance. At the election just gone, the combined vote-share of Labour and the Tories dipped below 60 per cent for the first time in more than a century. Insurgent forces on the left and right – the Greens and Reform – also achieved significant parliamentary bridgeheads for the first time.
Since the election, this trend away from the traditional “big two” has been getting if anything more marked. The latest poll puts Labour on 33 per cent support, with the Conservatives on 21 per cent and Nigel Farage’s Reform snapping at their heels on 18 per cent.
Most of us expect the Labour rating to fall further amid the Government’s attacks on pensioner incomes, scandals over freeloading ministers and a tax-raising Budget in the pipeline.
One in five of Tory Party supporters were lost to Reform at the General Election (Image: Getty Images)
The task of whoever emerges triumphant in the Tory leadership race is to ensure that their party is the chief beneficiary. And that is far from guaranteed.
As the party gathers in Birmingham for its annual conference – and a beauty parade of leadership contestants – conventional wisdom among the commentary class is pushing the idea that it must head for the so-called “centre ground”.
This means not fighting so-called “culture wars” against the Woke left, not getting tough on law and order, not becoming a low-tax party again, not calling for a more affordable timetable on the switch to green energy and above all not making immigration control its top priority.
Two of the leadership candidates, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly, are campaigning with the grain of such sentiments. Tugendhat even appears to believe that capturing voters from the Lib Dems is the key to rejuvenating the party.
That will not work. At the election, the Conservatives lost one in five of their 2019 supporters to Reform and one in six to abstention. It was the loss of these groups – and not a minuscule leaching of “centrist” voters to the Lib Dems or Labour – that caused the meltdown from the 365 seats won five years ago to just 121 in July.
Polling data indicates that the top issue for both these groups was immigration and that they are therefore much more likely to be won back by stauncher and more traditional Tory policies than by ones aping the parties of the centre-left.
Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick would impose a strict cap on legal immigration (Image: PA)
The two other leadership candidates – Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch – broadly accept this analysis. Jenrick has shot to prominence by giving clear undertakings that under his leadership the party will adopt policies of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and its supervisory court in Strasbourg and imposing a strict cap on legal immigration too.
Badenoch has a proud ministerial record of fighting for conservative values to point to, including protecting women’s sports and spaces and hammering the divisive racial rhetoric of the Left.
Those who wish to see a Conservative party which promotes conservative values – including a renewed emphasis on supporting the institution of the family – should hope that one of them wins through.
Under either, there is every chance that a Tory party which has returned to its fundamental beliefs can be riding high in the polls and roaring back to electoral success by this time next year. Otherwise Farage and Reform are very likely to become the next big thing. And they will do it by offering the very policies that voters always wanted to see from the Conservatives.
There is no automatic pendulum on the way back for the Conservative party. The truth is that far too many of those still in senior positions inside it were spooked by the rise of Tony Blair and decided they must imitate Blairism rather than fighting it.
They ignored stacks of evidence – including the Brexit referendum result – that our country has a natural right-leaning and traditionalist majority and instead tried to court a metropolitan elite that will always despise them.
This is the last chance saloon for the Conservative & Unionist Party, for so long the most successful election-winning machine in the democratic world. It must now identify someone who is made of the right stuff or it will wither away.
