What does the prospect of losing power mean for a party that feels it was born to rule? That question has been haunting the Conservatives for almost two years, ever since Boris Johnson’s administration started to unravel with the Owen Paterson and Partygate scandals in late 2021 – the period when a probably decisive proportion of voters began to conclude that they had had enough of Tory government for now.
These have been frantic years for the party, full of policy U-turns, the emergence of new factions, leadership contests, cabinet reshuffles, changes of political strategy and increasingly desperate promises to voters – such as Rishi Sunak’s this week to end “30 years” of “broken” politics and “fundamentally change our country”.
