How the Tories Might Win Again

I read Rachel Cunliffe's review of two books about the general election with interest. The article's title, 'How Labour won - and how they could lose in 2029' is an obvious attractor to someone who spends too much time thinking about the Tories. Unfortunately, there was little here beyond the banal observation that Labour's majority is historically thin.

As long time readers know, I've been banging on about the long-term decline of the Tories for a while. They are not reproducing their electoral coalition, and this process hasn't stopped just because they've suffered a cataclysmic defeat. What is sure to compound the Tories' problems is the inability or unwillingness of their leadership contenders to acknowledge them. But in politics nothing is neat. When a party, a movement, or a politician is ascending the path to winning is rarely smooth. There are setbacks, reverses, and temporary troughs. Decline is no different. False dawns break that promise revival, there are flashes of strength show up here and there, portents and omens of good fortune are seized upon. There is no linear descent. The spiral downward is mistaken for forward motion. A couple of exhibits from the recent past: the huge vote won by Theresa May in 2017, and the absolute maxxing out of this approach under Boris Johnson in 2019. Neither of which changed the Tories' declinist course, as argued here at the time.

This means that the fact of decline does not rule the Tories out of contention for 28/29. What makes and election win difficult is the politics. It's doubtful many Liberal Democrat or Labour voters will ever again tick the Tory box in the polling booth. People have memories, after all. And as Cunliffe notes in her piece, only 30% of Reform voters would have supported the Tories had Nigel Farage's "party" not stood, with 26% abstaining. But a very narrow Tory victory is conceivable for a few reasons.

For one, there is a marked tendency for governments to lose support. The Tory performances in 2017 and 2019 were anomalous because of Brexit, Corbynism, soft polarisation, and the successful reinvention of the Tories under new leaders. In five years' time, Keir Starmer will probably remain Labour's leader with all the baggage of incumbency that entails. Secondly, apart from against the Labour left the Labour right don't have a theory of political struggle. Rather than challenge established prejudices or offer political leadership, their default mode is to tail the (media confected) public opinion and hope a record of delivery will convince enough punters to give them another try. A managerial conception of politics that leaves a lot of hostages to fortune because initiative is ceded to their opponents. Say what you like about Kemi Badenoch (there's no use pretending any more), she undoubtedly will exploit the hypocrisy of Starmer's "Mr Rules" briefcase technocracy and might win a few converts. Last of all is a fraying of Labour's vote. This is not structural in the way Tory decline is but is a consequence of Starmer's politics and Morgan McSweeney's galaxy brain strategising. By demobilising and decomposing the Labour vote, it is being scattered to the four winds. This was evident before the election, can be seen in the result itself, and has continued apace afterwards. This leaves the government vulnerable.

It's not difficult therefore to see how the Tories could find a route back. Not because they're popular - Kemi-mania is most unlikely. But because Labour has hitched its project to key performance indicators that won't matter to most people unless they experience a shift for the better in prices, wages, housing, and public services. Discontent is less likely to drift to the Tories, but head in the direction of the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and the left (if it can get its act together). If Badenoch's rightist platform stems the bleed to Reform and attracts some back, there is an outside chance the Tories could become the largest party simply because their opponents' votes are spread even thinner. Whether they could form a government is another matter.

Labour could avoid this fate, but it has done the "grown up" thing and bent its knee to capital. The Tories are not in with a shout of winning again because they have a clever strategy that can arrest the declining coalition. Its fate is entirely in the hands of the Labour leadership. By dispersing the party's base, Starmer is offering the Tories a sporting chance.

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