Disaster. Record-breakingly bad. Irrecoverable. Historic. To be frank, Rishi Sunak may as well put everyone out of their misery and go to see the King to hand the seals of office in. Why, really, prolong the agony? The longer they hang around, the more the public will punish them.
That, by the by, is why holding a general election in January 2025 (the last possible moment) is madness.
The bizarre “candidate for change” reset at the Tory conference; ditching the Net Zero targets; the core vote strategy; the meat tax; the post-Uxbridge “fight back”; the supposedly vote-winning HS2 announcement: all turned to dust in semi-rural middle England. If the Tories poll at the next general election at the levels they’re at in the opinion polls now, it will be their worst showing since the Great Reform Act of 1832. Even the core vote is crumbling. It’s that bad.
Before the close of polls in the Mid Bedfordshire and the Tamworth by-elections, Keir Starmer said winning both of them would be like a “moonshot”. Well, disingenuous or not, the son of a toolmaker and a nurse from the pebble-dashed semi in Oxted is in orbit today. If these results were replicated at a general election (it’s a bit of fun) they’d leave about 50 Tories in the House of Commons and place Sir John Hayes in pole position to be next Tory leader.
That might not happen (could it?) but the swings - 23.9 per cent in Tamworth and 20.5 percentage points in Bedfordshire - confirm the wider picture in the opinion polls, the trend across the last dozen or so comparable by-elections, and the encouraging showing in the local elections earlier this year. No party has ever overturned as large a numerical majority of 23,664, the one Nadine Dorries won in Mid Beds last time round; and demolishing the 42.6 percentage majority the disgraced Chris Pincher took for granted in Tamworth is also of historic proportions.
Labour hasn’t won two by-elections off the Tories on one day since November 1962. A Labour government followed less than two years after. For a little more recent benchmark, let’s just note the echo, psephologically and geographically, of Labour’s gain at the South Staffordshire (including Tamworth) by-election in 1996, secured under Tony Blair with a 22 per cent swing. A celebrated landslide followed…
The “narrow path” to victory that was still just about visible to Tory optimists has just been swept away. Indeed, to adapt a well-known political anthem, “things can only get worse” for the Tories, because results as dramatic as these create some momentum of their own. There is an increasing feeling, surely, that not only have the Tories outstayed their welcome, but they are making themselves even less popular by dragging out their remaining time in office. Like Mr Micawber, Sunak hopes that “something will turn up”. It won’t. Inflation is coming down and the premier may be able to get the small boats traffic down a bit. But the voters have stopped listening.
The Tories argue that there’s no great enthusiasm for Keir Starmer out there. Fine. Their problem is that the mood to get the Tories out is running so strongly that Starmer’s bollard-like stolidity is of no consequence. He’s not popular, but Sunak’s ratings are even worse.
Just for a change, Labour is also getting lucky. All of a sudden the Conservatives and the SNP are simultaneously unpopular. The fears about the Tories benefiting from a divided anti-Tory vote also look misplaced.
Split opposition? Far from it. Geographically and socially the Liberal Democrats are the Heineken of politics - they can reach sections of the electorate that Labour cannot reach. Thus, in Mid Bedfordshire their story that they hoovered up votes from disaffected Tories who’d never vote Labour, and thus let Labour in looks perfectly plausible. In the West Country and the “blue wall” in southern England the Liberal Democrats can capture territory in areas Labour is traditionally, and still is, weak in. The voters are obviously voting tactically to GTTO (get the Tories out) - see the collapse of the admittedly modest Lib Dem vote in Tamworth, similar to what happened in by-elections in Uxbridge, Rutherglen and Old Bexley. See also Labour lost deposits in Somerton and before that Tiverton that helped propel Lib Dems to stunning victories.
Reform UK, though a marginal force will nibble away at any remaining Tory votes to the right of the strident Sunak-Braverman “offer”. The 5.4 per cent that their candidate scored in Tamworth, some 1,374 votes, actually exceeded the narrow Labour majority of 1,316. Much the same is true of Mid Beds too; something for Nigel Farage and Richard Tice to think about. Would they consider standing aside in certain Tory seats? Would the rump of Ukip do the same?
How did it come to this? Books will be written, but the shorthand would be: Austerity; Brexit; Partygate/Sleaze, and Trussonomics/cost of living/the economy - the four horses of a Tory apocalypse. It’s Sunak’s bad luck to come in at the fag end of an exhausted administration, but he’s made his own errors too. He’s a rational, highly intelligent man, and he must realise the game’s up, even if his colleagues haven’t. He should cut his losses; but prime ministers staring at defeat tend not to be in a hurry.
