This article was first published in the Mail on Sunday
The Tories will gather in Birmingham today for their first conference since July’s election disaster in a much more cheerful mood than anyone could have expected.
Labour’s plunging approval ratings – following the grasping hypocrisy of “freebiegate” and a string of unpopular decisions, from scrapping the winter fuel allowance to the early release of criminals – follow a grim start for a government which, at least in terms of popularity, was never on a very firm footing to begin with. Its huge majority is built on the lowest vote share ever achieved by a winning party. In the survey I conducted last month, voters being keen to see a Labour government with Keir Starmer as PM was regarded as the least convincing in a long list of possible explanations for the result. I also found people were willing to give the new regime only a limited time to prove itself before deciding whether or not it is doing a good job – and it hasn’t exactly been a stellar start.
Many Conservatives will find this all very encouraging. But they shouldn’t – for two big reasons.
First, as the next leader will soon find, it is extremely hard to get attention for anything you say or do in opposition. People have heard quite enough of the Tories for the time being, and the party won’t be able to get people to look at it again until they are ready. But when they do look, the Tories will have to be ready too. That could be sooner than anyone could have thought as the scale of their defeat emerged in the early hours of 5 July. This in turn means that time is short. However unpopular Labour has become after four or five years of Starmerite gloom, the Conservatives will only benefit if they have completely transformed their reputation.
The other reason is that Labour’s tribulations could distract the Tories from the soul searching needed before such a transformation can take place. Some of them might even believe the voters will decide they have made a terrible mistake. That is never going to happen: whatever this government brings, the country is not going to regret kicking the Tories out.
Before they face the voters again, the Conservatives will need to understand and accept why they were not just beaten but given the trouncing of a lifetime. One of the reasons the party took so long to recover after the 1997 Blair landslide was that this process took years. With an insurgent competitor in the shape of Reform UK poised to extend their reach into what the Tories consider their territory, they do not have the luxury of time. My new research should help clarify why they lost not just the election but the reputation for competent government that was once the basis for their appeal.
Many will think the answers are so obvious as to be barely worth writing down. But it is human nature, not least among politicians, to learn only the lessons that suit you. Some have claimed that the Tories drifted too far to the right, others that they were not Conservative enough. But among voters who abandoned the Tories in 2024, the more common criticism of the government’s political direction is that it didn’t have one.
After so many years in power, winning again and holding together its extraordinary 2019 coalition – lifelong Labour voters, liberal remainers, Farage-supporting Brexiteers and mainstream Conservatives – was always going to be a tall order for the party. But the Tories didn’t so much play a difficult hand badly as drop all their cards on the floor.
In our research, Tory “defectors” complained at length about broken promises, the cost of living, failure to control immigration, the state of public services and much, much more. But just as damaging was what they came to see as the character of the government itself. In their eyes, partygate was not a one-off but the beginning of a pattern of behaviour that continued right up to the campaign and the election-date betting scandal. The succession of short-lived prime ministers and seemingly endless infighting were the antithesis of the stability people looked to the Conservatives to uphold. To despairing voters, senior Tories seemed to be playing out a soap opera for their own amusement, rather than tackling the country’s mounting problems. The resulting loss of trust was, in fact, the single biggest reason voters gave for the party’s downfall.
There is plenty of discussion in the party about how to rebuild, and especially on how to “unite the right”. True, it will be hard for the Tories to win a majority if Reform continues to entice their former supporters. But it is important not to misunderstand that task. As in 2015 and 2019, the Conservatives win majorities when they attract previous Labour and Lib Dem voters and others who have never considered themselves part of the right. We found switchers to Labour frustrated about the failure to tackle small boat crossings, just as many of those going to Reform were exasperated at NHS waiting times.
Whichever direction they had scattered, former Tories all over the country told us that at its best the party had stood for stable government, common sense, a realistic understanding of how the world works, and people who work and save and try to do the right thing. This was what has been lost: barely one in ten defectors said they thought the party was on the side of people like them.
Whoever emerges as the next leader will have to rediscover that formula. They will have the even harder task of winning back trust from voters who are not just disappointed but angry. Their first step is to understand exactly why that is how they feel.
Losing It: The Conservative Party and the 2024 general election is available from Biteback Publishing
