It is nearly twenty years since I published Smell the Coffee: A Wake-Up Call for the Conservative Party. Eight years after the 1997 landslide, my first foray into political polling aimed to show why the Tories kept losing elections. One of the most important findings was that the they had still not learned the lessons that should have followed their ejection from office.
The party now finds itself in the same – in fact, a considerably worse – position. Having lost half its vote and two thirds of its MPs, and facing not only a huge Labour majority but an insurgent competitor on what should be its own territory, it has nothing like another eight years to get to grips with what happened on 4 July. To approach any kind of recovery, Conservatives will need to understand and accept why they lost not just the election but the reputation for competent government that was once the fundamental basis of their appeal.
My new book, Losing It: The Conservative Party and the 2024 general election, sets out those reasons in uncompromising terms. Many might think the reasons for the defeat are so obvious as to be hardly worth writing down. But it is human nature to draw conclusions that fit with what you already thought and learn only the lessons that suit you – not least among politicians. My large-scale polling and data analysis, together with conversations around the country with voters who switched from the Tories to other parties, provide some pretty stark evidence of how the Conservative government came to be seen by those who had elected it: why a defeat turned into the trouncing of a lifetime. I would encourage anyone interested in the future of the Conservative Party to get hold of the book and absorb the detailed findings, which include many quotes from former Tories about how they saw things which put the case more powerfully than the numbers alone. Meanwhile, here are a few of the main points.
Reasons for the result
In a post-election survey in August, we offered people a long list of statements and asked which they thought were the best and worst explanations for the Conservative defeat. Least convincing of all was the idea that people were very keen to have a Labour government with Keir Starmer as prime minister; the suggestion that the media had given the Tories an unduly hard time cut similarly little ice.
By far the most convincing explanation was that “the Conservatives had lost people’s trust”, followed by “the Conservative government had not been competent” and “partygate and other scandals”. Failure to deliver on promises, the 2022 mini-Budget, no longer representing traditional Tory voters and too many leaders in recent years were further down the list, but all contributed to the overall lack of trust and perception of incompetence that constituted the main reasons for defeat.
These themes of trust, character and competence were much more important than the idea that the party had moved too far to the left or the right. This was echoed in our focus groups of 2019 Tories who switched to Labour, the Lib Dems or Reform in 2024, when we asked them to complete the sentence “By 2024, the Conservative Party had become too…”
In our poll we asked defectors why they had decided not to vote Conservative in 2024 having done so five years earlier. The top three reasons were that the party was “out of touch with people like me”, “didn’t deliver what they promised” and “are not competent” – with some variations in order between switchers to different parties.
In our focus groups, most of our defectors expanded on these themes, often saying the party had failed to deliver what it promised, or had lost direction because of infighting, complacency and refusal to listen.
The Reform factor
We also looked in detail at views of Reform UK. More than half of 2024 Conservatives had a positive view of the party, including more than one in five who said they would consider voting for it at future elections.
However, this did not extend to the idea of a merger between the Conservatives and their new rivals. Only a small minority of voters, including fewer than three in ten Tory-Reform switchers, said they would like to see this happen.
A quarter of 2024 Tories and just under half of Tory-Reform switchers said they would like to see the Conservatives become more like Reform in terms of their policies and priorities, but not merge. At the same time, large majorities of those switching from the Tories to Labour or the Lib Dems said they would not like to see the Conservatives become more like Nigel Farage’s party, and often said in our groups that this would close the door on their returning to the Tories at the next election.
The defector dashboard
Here we can see how switchers to different parties compare on some of the questions in our survey. While defectors to Reform put themselves to the right of the Tories, switchers to Labour and the Lib Dems think the party is to the right of them. Only a minority of all defectors considered voting Conservative in 2024, but the most likely to do so were those who ended up not voting at all. While (only) just over half of Tory loyalists agree that the party is on the side of people like them, only around one in ten of those who switched to other parties agree.
The Opposition conundrum
Conservative voters and different kinds of defector also had sharply different views on how the Tories should respond to some of the policies being enacted by the Labour government. For example, just under half of loyalists (who voted Conservative in 2019 and 2024) and defectors to Reform said they wanted VAT on school fees scrapped, compared to just over one in ten switchers to Labour; 61% of Tory-Reform switchers would want to reverse laws making ‘Islamophobia’ a crime, compared to 18% of those switching to Labour or the Lib Dems; and loyalists and defectors to Reform were more than twice as likely as switchers to Labour to want to abolish laws overriding local objections to housebuilding.
Will they come back?
Just under half of those who voted Conservative in 2019 but not in 2024 agreed that the party did not deserve to win in July “but now they have a chance to get their act together and I might vote Conservative again at the next election”. Agreement was highest among those who had voted Lib Dem or stayed at home. Those switching to Labour were the most likely to say they might vote Tory again but not at the next election, or that they could never see themselves voting for the party in the future.
In our groups, defectors said the single biggest factor would be the Labour’s performance in office, and most were prepared to give the new government at least some time to prove itself. They would then see where the Conservatives stood in terms of leadership, competence and policy positions – but often added that they would first need to get over their anger towards the party and, especially, loss of trust.
