What would a rout do to the Tories?
The votes had not all been counted by the time Sir John Major resigned as prime minister and retreated to the Oval to watch Surrey play cricket. Already, on that bright morning of May 2nd 1997, it was obvious that the Tories had been skittled. Nearly a third of the cabinet had been swept away overnight. It would turn out to be their worst performance in the modern democratic era; the party’s total of 165 seats was the lowest since it had split over free trade in 1906.
The Conservatives may get an even bigger battering on July 4th. The Economist’s prediction model currently has them holding onto 187 seats—half the number they won in 2019. As predictions go, that is among the more generous. The party is set to be abandoned by somewhere between 7m and 9m of the 14m voters who backed it last time. Other pollsters say that could mean as few as 66 seats, in which case the Liberal Democrats could be nipping at Tory heels for second place. Apocalyptically minded Tories fret about a “Canada-style” wipeout, a reference to the election in 1993 in which their sister party won two seats.
A rout is not far-fetched. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, was already in a hole when he called the election. He has kept digging, running a dire campaign whose standout moments include a grovelling apology to D-Day veterans. The Economist’s first constituency poll of the campaign shows the Tories picking up just 10% of the vote in Hartlepool, a seat it won at a by-election in 2021. Tory MPs—panicked by the return of Nigel Farage as leader of Reform UK—could turn mutinous. And Britain’s winner-takes-all electoral system offers little in the way of a “floor” when a major party suffers an ignominious collapse. Pollsters say there is a tipping-point, at around 25% of the vote, below which scores of usually safe seats are at risk.
To see what a rout would look like, head to Hitchin, a wealthy market town in Hertfordshire, just north of London. The seat ought to be solidly Tory (high-street tenants include such upmarket names as The White Company and JoJo Maman Bébé). But for all the affluence, people are not happy. Outside Marks & Spencer, Debbie, a retiree, says it’s “about time” for an election to “kick out the Tories”. Another voter rails against the Conservatives for soiling “our precious chalk-stream rivers”.
As things stand the election is a coin-toss between two bright sitting MPs: Bim Afolami, the Eton-educated Tory incumbent, and Labour’s Alistair Strathern, who won a by-election in neighbouring Mid Bedfordshire in October (part of his seat was incorporated into Hitchin following boundary changes). If Mr Afolami loses, our model suggests the Tory defeat would be worse than that suffered by Sir John.
That would jeopardise the Tories’ proud claims to being the “national party” and the “natural party of government”. After defeat in the election of 1945, one historian predicted the party’s future would be “the rule of the home counties”. Following the thumping in 1997, another wrote that the party had been reduced to a “narrow band of English south-easterners”. A similar shrinkage is looming. Swathes of the north of England and the Midlands, as well as Wales and Scotland, look set to turn away from the party.
The precise scale of any defeat would shape the party that emerges. Most obviously there is the question of which MPs would survive: almost a third of the cabinet are under threat, according to our model (see chart). Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, who often polls best among Tory party members, looks pretty safe. But several would-be leadership contenders, including Penny Mordaunt on the left and Robert Jenrick on the right, are at risk.
A humbling result could force the party to move to the centre ground. It probably won’t. Stage one for a spurned party is usually denial. Especially in defeat, they are better understood less as rational organisations than as inchoate groups of people—politicians, activists, members, donors—with unusually strong beliefs. It is easier to blame the messenger or to think the message simply lacked purity. As David Frum, a commentator on American politics, put it, when voters say “no” to ham and eggs a party’s first instinct is often to ask: “How about double ham and double eggs?”
After 1997 the Tories “headed for the ideological hills”, says Tim Bale of Queen Mary, University of London. Successive leaders were too weak to change the party or too myopic to try. They banged on about Europe, immigration and crime, pleasing their members while alienating most voters. It took eight years and two more defeats to change the message.
If the Tories are given a hiding on July 4th there will, once again, be a fight over who writes the post-mortem. Mr Afolami, a moderate, wants the party to rebuild its reputation with business and appeal to the young who cannot afford housing. Others on the right of the party lay blame on “the wets” for failing to control immigration and surrendering to “woke stormtroopers”.
Lord Cooper, a former pollster, points out that the party has much more data than it did in 1997. In theory that should make it easier to grasp why voters deserted them in the event of a big defeat. Yet several factors will impede change. According to our analysis of data provided by David Jeffery of the University of Liverpool, if the Tories suffer a landslide defeat the remaining rump of MPs in Parliament will be more Oxbridge-educated and more NIMBY but no less Brexit-y. By pushing the party back to its heartlands, a battering would move it away from the median voter. Any would-be successor to Mr Sunak would have to win over party members, who are old and right-wing. Just as Sir Keir Starmer had to promise a wave of nationalisations to win the Labour leadership in 2020, Tory hopefuls may have to pledge to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
And then there is Mr Farage. Suella Braverman, a former home secretary who espouses national conservatism, wants to “unite the right” by allowing him to join the party. Fully 27% of Tory members say they would like him to be their next leader—an outcome moderates would bitterly oppose. Whatever happens, the right is likely to remain divided and fractious. And if Mr Sunak, another cricket enthusiast, wants to get away from it all? Surrey are playing Middlesex on July 5th. ■
Correction (June 21st 2024): David Frum is a commentator on politics, not a pollster as we originally wrote.
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