In politics as in war, an ambush can be a devastatingly effective tactic. Catching your opponent off-guard and out of position has often seen underdogs overcome mightier opponents and reverse the direst of fortunes.
This seems to have been the logic – such as there was – of Rishi Sunak’s decision to call the general election for 4 July. But it increasingly looks as though it will prove a self-inflicted wound of historic proportions.
Conservative party headquarters’ attempt to set the pace in the first week, with the big announcement on national service, did not shift the dial; Nigel Farage, who by autumn might have been safely ensconced in a lucrative contract covering the US election, had time to be guilted into standing.
But perhaps most important, a surprise attack only works if you take the other side by surprise. The prime minister’s decision was such a well-guarded secret (or made in such a hurry) that when he announced it in Downing Street, he sprang a trap on his own party – and the result has been devastating for already-shaky Tory morale.
With candidates not even selected in well over 100 constituencies when the election was called, a desperate scramble to get people selected has left would-be candidates and local associations bruised and bitter; the use of novel procedures to impose Richard Holden, the party chairman, on a safe seat is widely seen as emblematic of CCHQ’s high-handed approach.
Speaking to Conservative candidates and activists out in the country, it is hard to find one with a good word to say about the central campaign. Policies such as national service have been pulled out of thin air, with campaigners left to explain on the doorstep what many have only read about in the same newspapers as the curious voter. Gaffes such as Rishi Sunak leaving D-day commemorations early dominate media coverage for days, and drown out efforts to make a case for a local candidate or MP.
Just as important, candidates report feeling undersupported on the logistical side, too. One, fighting a crucial “blue wall” marginal, told me a couple of weeks ago that he feared the party would not get his official mailing out before postal ballots started arriving – a crucial inflection point in the campaign, especially for the Conservatives with their typically older electorate.
In the opening weeks, Rishi Sunak was fortunate that most Conservatives were determined to show more collective loyalty to the party than many felt their leader had, and concentrate their fire on the enemy. But with nearly every section of the party now thoroughly alienated from the leadership, and no sign of any improvement in the Tories’ dire polling, that fragile peace is starting to crack. While most have not yet reached the point of openly turning on the prime minister, on the ground any sense of a coherent national campaign is starting to disintegrate.
Last week, Andrea Jenkyns caught national media attention with what has been described as a flagrantly dishonest piece of election literature. The rightwing MP is seeking re-election as a Conservative, but her leaflet made no mention of her own party. Instead, it sported not one but two pictures of Farage, and no picture of her leader, Sunak; her own name was even printed in what looks suspiciously close to Reform UK’s turquoise.
Perhaps few of her colleagues will be quite so shameless. But other candidates, not on the right of the party, have also told me that they are so tired of CCHQ’s command-and-control tendencies gumming up their campaign that they might start ignoring its insistence that all literature be centrally approved.
Most activists on the ground – with little enthusiasm for the leadership, and with even ministers such as Grant Shapps now apparently giving up on the idea that there might be a Conservative government – are pinning their hopes on persuading voters to back a good local candidate. It would thus not be a surprise if the election devolved, on the Tory side at least, into hundreds of separate, hyperlocal campaigns in which commands issued from party headquarters play little part. The increasingly energetic lobbying by those angling to replace Sunak as leader only heightens the fin-de-siècle mood.
Aspiring leaders will, however, have to tread carefully. Whatever their views on individual issues or people, Tory members are loyal to the party and expect the same from their politicians. Our most recent ConservativeHome survey found a plurality in favour of keeping the national campaign focused on Labour and the Liberal Democrats, even though a majority favoured a deal with Reform UK.
The closer we get to polling day, the stronger the temptation will be for each candidate and faction to start getting their licks in early to start framing the defeat in their preferred terms. But anyone seen to be jostling for advancement at the expense of the election effort risks a bitter rebuke from the people who are giving up their summer to deliver leaflets, knock on doors and try to persuade a weary and angry electorate to return, if not a Conservative government, at least their local Conservative candidate.
The old cliche about lions being led by donkeys might have been a slander on Lord Kitchener, but it seems like a fair description of the 2024 Tory campaign. Afterward the election, the future of the party – and the ambitious men and women who wish to lead it – will rest in the hands of its troops. They would be wise not to forget it.
Henry Hill is deputy editor of ConservativeHome
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