{"id":141968,"date":"2024-06-08T13:00:11","date_gmt":"2024-06-08T12:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politics.co.uk\/?p=141968"},"modified":"2024-07-02T15:50:58","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T14:50:58","slug":"week-in-review-the-conservative-doomsday-clock-strikes-midnight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politics.co.uk\/week-in-review\/2024\/06\/08\/week-in-review-the-conservative-doomsday-clock-strikes-midnight\/","title":{"rendered":"Week-in-Review: The Conservative doomsday clock strikes midnight"},"content":{"rendered":"

The below content first appeared in Politics.co.uk\u2019s Week-in-Review newsletter, sign-up for free <\/i>here<\/i><\/a>\u00a0and never miss this article.<\/i><\/p>\n

Political failure, anticipated or actualised, is typically understood by some manner of metaphor. Think \u201clandslide\u201d \u2014 a word that literally describes the rapid downward trajectory of a great amount of soil and rock; unless you are analysing the dynamics of an election campaign, in which case it signifies a drastic victory and\/or defeat. Parties who thwart likely landslides are deemed to have \u201cdefied gravity\u201d \u2014 their unfortunate opponents might have \u201cimploded\u201d or suffered some \u201cmeltdown\u201d. Ultimately, the ousted party can be regarded as having been the victim of a \u201crouting\u201d, (a term I like because of the visceral agency it affords the voter).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the context of the 2024 general election<\/a>, however, the metaphors commentators are employing have taken on a more ominous quality. To put it simply: suggesting that the Conservative Party<\/a> will succumb to a landslide<\/i> defeat on 4th July, no longer does justice to the scale of the expected reckoning. Commentators refer instead to a \u201cTory apocalypse\u201d or an \u201cextinction-level event\u201d; in this contest, the tenor of recent columns would suggest, there is no such thing as hyperbole.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in 1997, during the BBC\u2019s election night coverage, guest expert Professor Anthony King faced this very same dilemma: how do we narrate the development of an unprecedented result using our common stock of language shaped, necessarily, by past experience? As host David Dimbleby reflected on the result of the exit poll, therefore, King pushed back: \u201cLandslide is much too weak a word\u201d, he declared.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

King\u2019s assessment, delivered at 10.35 pm on election night, would have shaken even the most assured Tory: \u201cI offer you the following metaphor \u2014 this is an asteroid hitting the planet and destroying practically all life on Earth.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The 1997 general election<\/a> reduced the Conservative Party in parliament from 343 to 165 MPs; and King\u2019s analysis was informed by an exit poll that placed John Major\u2019s party on 180 seats. Today, poll after poll predicts that Rishi Sunak<\/a>\u2019s Conservatives will return to parliament later this year with less than 100 MPs. In short, the meteor set to strike Sunak could put Major\u2019s to shame: we\u2019re gonna need a bigger metaphor.<\/p>\n

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Robert Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, evoked King this week when he told PoliticsHome<\/i><\/a> that the Conservatives could face an \u201capocalypse\u201d this election. \u201cWe can say this right now four weeks out:\u00a0the\u00a0meteor can hit, this can be the dinosaurs getting wiped out\u201d, Ford said. \u201cThat’s what’s on the map, it\u2019s there in all the data.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is, indeed, all in the data. One of the main characters of this election \u2014 political parties and spokespeople aside \u2014 is the MRP \u201cmega\u201d poll. An MRP (Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification) is a statistical modelling technique that allows pollsters to use a national sample to work out accurate estimates of support for parties or candidates in small geographic areas. Technicalities aside, MRPs occupy such an elevated position in popular discourse this election because of the striking results they consistently produce. The first MRP of the election, conducted by Electoral Calculus, left the Conservatives with 66 seats. Subsequently, Survation\u2019s MRP landed the Conservatives on 71 seats. YouGov\u2019s inaugural election MRP, meanwhile, placed Rishi Sunak<\/a>\u2019s party on a relatively stronger footing of 140 seats.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are other possible measures: The New Statesman<\/i>\u2019s Britain Predicts model, for instance, has the Conservatives on 86 seats. But whatever your preferred yardstick, all the data suggests that the 2024-2029 parliament will be one relatively desolate of Conservatives.<\/p>\n

In the end, the destruction of the Conservative Party<\/a>, because of its historical lineage, is the sort of thing that should remain unthinkable until the moment it happens. But the structural protections afforded to Toryism in Britain have slowly eroded over the course of the 2019-2024 parliament; as Ford noted this week: \u201cThere\u2019s no safe seats left\u201d. As a consequence, the Conservatives\u2019 political annihilation \u2014 once an eccentric pipe dream of professional contrarians \u2014 is a potential election outcome worth taking seriously indeed.<\/p>\n

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In the 1997 election, Michael Portillo\u2019s brutal ejection in Enfield Southgate provided a defining moment \u2014 one which has lasted long in Britain\u2019s collective memory. But on 4th July, \u201cPortillo moment(s)\u201d are set to arrive thick and fast. The spectacle of collapsing cabinet ministers will seem relatively customary by sunrise: the law of diminishing Conservatives would suggest there comes a point when an additional cabinet routing results in a lessening of the overall shock factor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In total, seven serving cabinet ministers lost their seats at the 1997 election (namely, Michael Forsyth, Roger Freeman, Ian Lang, Tony Newton, Malcolm Rifkind, William Waldegrave and, of course, Portillo). The recent YouGov MRP \u2014 a relatively rosy reading for the Conservatives compared to, say, Survation\u2019s finding \u2014 predicts that 12 cabinet ministers are set to lose their seats, including leader of the House of Commons<\/a> Penny Mordaunt<\/a>, defence secretary Grant Shapps<\/a> and chancellor Jeremy Hunt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A \u201cPortillo moment<\/i>\u201d is necessarily less potent when it is repeated, perhaps many times over, in a single night. In this regard, far more instructive in terms of the Conservative Party<\/a>\u2019s fate and near future, I contend, will be the \u201cCharest moments\u201d (pronounced sha-ray). Jean Charest was one of just two Progressive Conservative MPs who retained their seats in the 1993 Canadian general election<\/a> \u2014 as the party collapsed from 43 per cent vote share in the previous election to 16 per cent. Returning 2 MPs may well be below the UK Conservatives\u2019 floor of support this election \u2014 but the Canada ’93 allegory is a reminder that all political parties, even the most long-lasting, have their lifespan. Repeated political failure takes a toll; and a wrathful electorate knows no mercy.<\/p>\n

That we are even considering the impermanence of the Conservative Party<\/a> is a product, in recent times at least, of Rishi Sunak<\/a>\u2019s repeat failures. Sunak, some long nineteen months ago, was shunted into 10 Downing Street to stop the Conservatives\u2019 political rot; by virtue of not being Liz Truss, he succeeded \u2014 initially \u2014 by default. But in recent months the rot has begun to worsen; today, it expands with Truss-like severity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is no secret that the Conservative election campaign has been strewn with errors \u2014 each seemingly more graven than the last. And matters culminated this week with the debacle over the prime minister\u2019s attendance, and then shock non-attendance, at the commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The prime minister saw no issue in curtailing his participation in the ceremonies, sending defence secretary Shapps and foreign secretary Lord Cameron<\/a> in his stead \u2014 nor, of course, did any of his infamously insular inner circle of advisers and political aides. But the fallout has been nothing short of brutal: Penny Mordaunt<\/a>\u2019s first contribution to the BBC election debate last night (Sunak again sent a surrogate) was to brand the prime minister \u201ccompletely wrong\u201d for his premature D-Day departure. Veterans, Mordaunt said, should be \u201ctreasured\u201d as she highlighted her own credentials as a former defence secretary.<\/p>\n

As political miscalculations go, it is grimly perfect. On the doorstep, activists of all parties already attest that Sunak\u2019s absenteeism has cut through; the episode looks set to entirely depress the Conservative base \u2014 whose morale has been the central focus of Sunak\u2019s ill-fated campaign; it casts further doubt over the prime minister\u2019s judgement and values; and, worse still perhaps, Sunak\u2019s decision to leave Normandy on Thursday saw Keir Starmer<\/a> look more prime ministerial than ever.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Above all, however, Sunak\u2019s D-Day disaster is a gift to Nigel Farage. The Reform leader\u2019s central mission this election is to exploit the manifold grievances of traditionalist, nationalistic voters; Farage, that arch-political schemer, couldn\u2019t have devised a more politically propitious development.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That the debacle will have some form of effect on the polls, therefore, is beyond doubt; the Tory parliamentary totals listed above \u2014 66 seats (Electoral Calculus), 71 seats (Survation), 140 seats (YouGov) \u2014 look set to substantially lessen over the coming days. But here\u2019s the real stinger: not only will Sunak\u2019s D-Day disaster undoubtedly depress his poll ratings \u2014 the fieldwork for these polls was conducted prior<\/i> to Farage\u2019s sensational return to frontline politics this week. Together, the D-Day and Farage factors will collaborate to make a Conservative electoral cataclysm \u2014 Canada ’93-style \u2014 a genuine possibility on 4th July.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Accordingly, no longer do Tories fear an ephemeral polling \u201ccrossover\u201d, whereby Reform merely leapfrogs the Conservatives in a few polls between now and the election. Rather, the Conservative Party<\/a>\u2019s very status as the foremost institutional expression of British right politics is at stake.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Every standard poll conducted since Farage\u2019s return (no MRP yet) has exhibited a significant boost in Reform\u2019s standing. Redfield and Wilton has Reform rising by 3 points to 17 per cent; while Survation, which has hitherto been more sceptical of Reform\u2019s prospects, has Farage\u2019s party up 7 points to 15 per cent. (It\u2019s worth stating that these polls were conducted prior to Sunak\u2019s D-Day debacle).<\/p>\n

The most striking poll this week, however, came from YouGov. Like Redfield and Wilton, the pollster has Reform climbing to 17 per cent in the polls \u2014 a mere 2 points behind the Tories. But crucially, YouGov recently switched up its methodology to make its standard poll results more in line with their famed MRP surveys. Had YouGov not made these changes \u2014 i.e. had the pollster stuck to its old methods \u2014 Reform and Conservatives would have been tied on 18 points.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At this juncture, as Reform rockets, it is worth remembering that its forebear, the Brexit Party, did not stand in Conservative-held seats at the 2019 general election<\/a>. It meant that 298 Conservative MPs (the number of incumbents then standing) did not have to face an insurgent Faragist force. As such, while the Brexit Party depressed the Conservatives\u2019 vote in a series of opposition-held constituencies, it did not do so in an election-defining way \u2014 not nearly. It is a difficult fact to come to terms with, but it means that Reform\u2019s vote will jump from 0 to around 18-20 per cent in around 300 constituencies this election, (assuming the party outperforms its polling, even slightly, in Tory heartland areas). It is a fact that makes the Liberal Democrats\u2019 task in the Blue Wall, in particular, far easier \u2014 and cabinet routings even more likely.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The bottom line is this: ahead of polling day, due to a multitude of factors, the Conservative Party<\/a>\u2019s doomsday clock may have already struck midnight.<\/p>\n

The return of Farage and the PM\u2019s D-Day debacle are likely to define an arduous month of campaigning for the Conservatives. After two weeks of campaigning and two TV debates, any kind of comeback has never looked less likely<\/p>\n

The meteor, in short, has hit. On 4th July, we are left to judge what remains of this cratered party.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on X\/Twitter <\/i>here<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Politics.co.uk is the UK\u2019s leading digital-only political website. Subscribe to our daily newsletter<\/i><\/a> for all the latest election news and analysis.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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