The loss of Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton has shaken the Conservative party. But governments like Thatcher’s and Cameron’s have suffered mid-term blues before and bounced back to win elections. Is there anything really that different about what is happening now that will stop Boris Johnson making a similar recovery?
In my view, the answer is yes. The situation now facing the party is different, and not simply a mid-term grumble.
The first difference is that people of both places voted the way they did not because of a general discontent with the government or its policies, but because of a focused fury with the Conservative leader. The top argument chosen in a J.L. Partners poll of Wakefield for voting Labour was ‘Boris Johnson tried to cover up partygate, and lied to the public’. The second was ‘Boris Johnson is not in touch with working-class people’.
Mention Johnson in a focus group of swing voters and one is no longer met with laughter or praise, but with disgust. The word most commonly associated with the Prime Minister is ‘liar’. A focus group I ran in Tiverton with Conservative 2019 voters found most saying they could not vote for the party again while he was leader.
There is only one way to recover from their mid-term woes: the Conservative party must remove Boris Johnson
I could go on. The point is that Thatcher and Cameron may have polarised opinion at times, but they never received such targeted opprobrium from their own voters. Whether voters stayed at home, switched to Labour or the Lib Dems, or voted tactically, they had Johnson at the top of their mind when they did so.
This tainted brand also means no relaunch will work. Whether the Conservatives spend another £100 billion on the cost of living, or announce a popular immigration policy, voters know that Boris Johnson’s name is on the tin – and they therefore doubt whether the policy will even happen and the motivations behind it.
Of course, by-elections tend to exaggerate opinion. It is an easy vote to cast and requires less thought than at a general election when other considerations are on the table. On this basis, some voters will come back to the Tories. But at a general election, Johnson would be even more central to the ballot. And the waverers – the 2019 Tories who say they do not know how they would vote in polls – have almost as negative a view of Johnson (a net rating of -33) as do voters overall (-38). Voters think Keir Starmer is dull, but prefer him to Johnson, making it easier for them to shift to other parties if not Labour itself. With Johnson on the ballot, Opinium has found that voters even prefer a Labour-Lib Dem-SNP coalition. A shift from a nominally local to an actually national contest is not going to spell good news for the party.
Then there is the tactical voting. This will be less acute at a general election as national messages take over. But it is much easier to vote Lib Dem now than it was ten years ago. For a decade, Labour voters did not want to back the Lib Dems because of their joining the Tory coalition. Now that is barely mentioned. The same has happened with Brexit – many leavers did not back the Lib Dems in 2019 because they were very explicitly the ‘Stop Brexit’ party, something which barely resonates now.
In fact, very few can name what the Lib Dems stand for at all. But that suits Ed Davey just fine. In a little under three years, he has made the Lib Dems the nothing party. But far from being a disadvantage, this allows it to welcome people from across Brexit and party lines who oppose Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. With six in ten wanting the prime minister to resign, that is a large pool to fish in. It will spell serious trouble in Lib Dem targets in the south as well as Conservative-Labour marginals elsewhere, should even a fraction of what we saw last week be replicated at a general election.
Is there really no escape route? Thatcher and Cameron were able to come through their mid-term woes with a vision. An explanation, backed up by action, as to why they had to make tough decisions then, on the inflation and the deficit respectively, to guarantee the future now.
But the vision is nowhere to be seen. Neither the public nor Conservative backbenchers can find it, and the Prime Minister cannot articulate it. Even if the content were there but had the wrong focus for the 2020s – like trying to reheat Brexit or culture wars – there is no message discipline. Downing Street is not even saying the wrong things right.
But even armed with the best vision, Boris Johnson cannot recover with those who voted for him for the first time three years ago. For them he was the strongman who could get things done; they now view him as weak. He was the man who might actually deliver some improvements to the local area; he is now viewed as fundamentally untrustworthy. He was the rare politician these voters felt they could have a laugh with; they now say he is laughing at them.
The public made up their minds about all this in mid-January. It did not go away with the invasion of Ukraine and neither will it now. There is no path for the great bounce-backer to do so this time.
Conservative MPs still have a chance to save their party. The PM may be irrevocably tainted, the party is not. There is no clear front-runner to succeed him, but the status quo is a one-way road to defeat.
The longer they delay, the more that MPs and Tory commentators make excuses, the harder it will be to mend the party’s reputation. There is only one way to recover from their mid-term woes: the Conservative party must remove Boris Johnson.
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