Fighting for 2029
The election is on, but the Tories need to be thinking about the next one too.
On Tuesday 28th May, I’ll be speaking at a London New Liberals Event in Central London. There’ll be free drinks too - to attend book here.
There’s a perennial danger in politics of fighting the last election. Whether a win or a loss, the emotional pull is often to relitigate or to fail to update your priors. Between polls the world moves on, and those who move with it are destined for more success. For the Conservatives in this election, however, the real challenge is about keeping an eye on what comes next, and how 2024 might put them in the best place for recovery.
Chances of a Tory victory on 4th July are slim to nil. It is not simply that they are behind in the polls. Were that the only factor it would feel surmountable. It’s that they have been solidly behind for nearly 18 months. They have not recovered from the Truss debacle or the slow slide under Boris Johnson. All the levers have been pulled – tax cuts, Rwanda, tightening visas, relaunching Rishi – they haven’t shifted the dial. There is every chance things could get worse for them. The next few weeks are about damage limitation.
The risk to the party is perhaps greater than it has ever been. They are about to be trounced on the sort of scale of 1997 but with worse fundamentals. Their support among young people is dire. Far worse than when Blair came to power. They have boxed themselves into a demographic dead end. Quite literally, in fact – each month around 25,000 Tory voters die off and aren’t replaced by those coming of age.
Moreover, others are circling, spotting the weakness of the wounded party. Reform has had a setback, with Farage bottling it (as I said he might). They look destined to peter out. Others are moving in, however. Matt Goodwin has hinted at forming a new party to threaten the Tories from the right. Dominic Cummings relishes in the prospect of driving the Conservatives out of business with a sort of populism/technocracy combo. No analogue of this existed before when the party was down at heel.
If the party is to survive and dream of regaining power, it needs to use the next few weeks well. Part of this is simple arithmetic. The more MPs still standing on 5th July, the easier the comeback will be. If the party ends up close to, or even under 100 seats, even getting close to governing could take a generation. Strategy and tactics should be honed around deep defence more than fanciful chances of victory, to give the next leader the best chance.
There are other factors to this too. Incumbency is a real strength of political parties, not just on a seat-by-seat basis, but as national entities. First past the post makes it hard to oust them, but there are other mutually reinforcing benefits of success. MPs become a focal point for members and activists. This helps build data-gathering and campaigning networks, fuelling future success. Parties that might win have something to offer donors – not even in quid pro quo, but from the kudos of association. A photo of you with the PM is impressive in certain circles. A pic with the leader of a 50 MP party is not.
If the Tories fall to some of the worst predicted outcomes, they lose all of this stickiness. A party cut to a real rump feels like one that might never govern again. That makes it more vulnerable. A less inviting place to put your money, fewer prospects to build your career, and a less purposeful or enjoyable place to be a member. This erodes the main advantages it will have against challenger groups, allowing them to bite bigger chunks of it off if they get their approach right. So far, despite the turbulence, our major parties have avoided splitting because there is so much strength in the existing party brand. A very bad night for the Tories might destroy the dynamics of this for them.
In the midst of this, they should also be careful about who is going back to Westminster. While many selections have been made, the next few days will see a flurry of retirements, many in retainable seats. Under the “snap” election rules, the central party has more control over these than any other selections. Too often this power has been misused – throwing in people who might be good for the campaign, but have unravelled after. Indeed, the poor quality of MPs, whether venal or just ineffectual, has been a real driver of the party’s malaise.
These hurried selections, the so-called parachute regiment, could have outsized importance on the future of the party. They will be a sizeable squad in a deeply slashed Westminster party. Filling those places should be about more than “narrative” or who has sucked up most to insiders. It should be a chance to seed real talent – an intellectual and political vanguard in the party’s hour of need.
Planning for the future is about more than the result the campaign also matters. The elections that come after 2024 will depend on how many people who don’t vote Tory this time can be tempted back in future polls. To come anywhere close to winning again, the party will need to pull back those who are opting for Starmer this time around. The campaign has to remember that even if people aren’t going to vote for you now, they should at least be thinking that at some future point, they might.
Part of the problem the Tory party faces is the animosity now aligned against it. Policy failures and waning popularity are one thing, but the Tories have made countless unforced errors. The most obvious are the scandals – Party Gate, pervy MPs and the rest – and the disastrous Truss era. But they have also sowed this with their rhetoric, picking fights with things like working from home that at best should have favoured their natural voters and at worst should have been neutral. A common theme among younger voters who economically ought to be Conservative is not just that party policies have failed them, but it seems like the party hates them too.
It will be hard to fix these in this campaign, but easy to make them worse. Over the next few weeks, the Party is likely to fall into “motivate the base” mode. In some ways, this serves as a rearguard action, but in others, it can make things worse. The campaign will be the last thing most people pay attention to from the party until 2028. If it comes across as too nasty, embittered and against them – or just uninterested in their concerns – the lasting memory will be one of dislike.
The changing nature of the electorate makes this more important. Demographic and social change is the plate tectonics of politics, slow-moving but almost unchangeable. As the SMF and others have noted, the British electorate is becoming better educated, more liberal, and more cosmopolitan. Next month will show that the Tories can’t rely on their ageing, authoritarian-leaning base now. In every future election, it gets harder. If through this campaign they further alienate younger, better-off voters they are poisoning the well of future success even more. Put bluntly, this campaign can’t be another thing the next eventual Tory Prime Minister has to row back from and apologise for.
Right now, many in the party close to the decision-making will be thinking that the worst thing that can happen is defeat. It’s not. The worst thing that can happen now is a defeat on such a scale and in such a form that it becomes almost impossible to recover from. One that opens the door to challenger parties, or even just sees the Tories, after two hundred years, slowly expiring over the next few cycles. This election needs to be fought with safeguarding the future in mind.
This of course means doing as well as is realistically possible. But realistically is the key word there – they need to be ruthless to avoid the strategic errors that end up costing seats 100-150 because they chased too hard after 200-250. At the same time, the party needs to be mindful of how it fights, where it fights and who with. Clinging to a core vote too hard could further push away the voters the party needs to win back for a return. So too could filling the depleted ranks in parliament with more ineffectual MPs. The Tory fight is not just for 2024, but for whatever comes after.
Good piece (and I say that as someone who devoutly wishes that this party does disappear forever, sorry).
Your demographic point seems key and underrated though, is there anyone at the higher levels of the party or any of its big factions who are acting like they care about the fact that the average age of their voters is 70 and rising?
The past is behind us. The Conservative Party needs to rediscover how conservative values can thrive for the future which will be very different - internationally/ defensively robust, economically focused on fairly distributed but growing wealth based on investment and productivity and reflecting social values of the majority neither woke nor of the 1950s