Judging by the polls and by May’s local elections, things aren’t looking too clever for the Conservatives. No surprise, then, that talk is already turning to what will happen to them should they go down to nationwide defeat in 2024, with speculation centred on who might take over from Rishi Sunak.
But the direction the party will take if it loses next year, and who it will pick to lead it in opposition, is ultimately going to depend on just how many Tory MPs hang on to their seats in the wake of such a defeat – and who they are. And that, in turn, might depend on quite how heavy that defeat turns out to be.
To try to get at all this, Liverpool University’s David Jeffery and I decided to model three scenarios – a Labour landslide; a relatively comfortable Labour overall majority; and a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party.
The biggest change that defeat would bring would be the exodus from the Commons of most of those Tory MPs representing constituencies in the north of England. A Labour landslide might leave just one or two northern Tories sitting at Westminster, while only about 10 to 15 would survive in the event of a comfortable Labour victory or a hung parliament. Even then, that would represent only a third of those Conservatives currently holding a northern seat.
If that does come to pass, then the party’s increasingly desperate attempt to hold on to the “red wall” by upping the ante on small boats and its anti-woke agenda – an effort that may well cost it seats in the southern “blue wall” – will have been in vain.
Defeat would also bring about demographic change. In all three scenarios women would probably make up a greater proportion of the parliamentary Conservative party, although the impact would be slightly greater in the event of a Labour landslide, with women then making up almost a third of all Tory MPs. And because many of the party’s ethnic minority incumbents sit in some of its safest seats, a really bad defeat would also see them make up a greater proportion of Conservatives in the Commons. The same incidentally goes for Oxbridge-educated Tory MPs and for current ministers.
Depressingly for pro-European progressives, Brexit true-believers would make up the majority in all three scenarios, and while the proportion of MPs associated with the anti-woke Common Sense Group would fall, the fall wouldn’t be that significant. As for the nimbys – backbenchers dedicated to opposing measures to encourage housebuilding – their strength would increase slightly, especially if there were a landslide.
On a brighter note, there is no evidence that a post-defeat parliamentary Conservative party would turn again to Boris Johnson. Indeed, the share of MPs who publicly backed him in last year’s second, abortive, leadership contest falls from nearly one in five now to nearer one in 10 in a Labour landslide and isn’t much more significant even in a hung parliament. In any case, unless he finds himself a safer seat fairly soon, Johnson’s relatively small majority means he might not be there to take up the reins again anyway.
That said, Penny Mordaunt would be in an even weaker position to snatch the crown, even if it’s a sword rather than a dagger she decides to wield. Using public declarations in last year’s leadership contest as a baseline, her support at Westminster would fall a very long way short of what she would need to make it into the final two. And she would lose her seat in a landslide defeat in any case.
Culture warrior Kemi Badenoch, on the other hand, sitting as she does for rock-solid Saffron Walden, would still be around, and so in with a shout. The same goes for Sunak himself. Indeed, his supporters would, in our landslide scenario, comprise about half of the parliamentary party. Whether that might tempt him to stay on rather than skedaddle straight to Santa Monica, who knows?
Whoever is in charge, though, our modelling suggests that, in defeat, the Tories – no less Brexity, as well as more southern, more nimbyish, more Oxbridge than they already are – will find it more difficult than ever to argue that they truly are a one-nation party.
Tim Bale is professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London and author of The Conservative Party after Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation.
