Can the next Tory leader avoid John Major’s fate?

The wheels are coming off the Conservative party. In recent days, in the polls, the party averaged just 31 per cent of the national vote. This is John Major in 1997 territory, or William Hague in 2001, both of whom were humiliated at the ballot box. Britain’s governing party is now in the fast lane toward electoral wipeout.

In fact, remarkably, half the people who voted for the party only 989 days ago have now abandoned it. This has given Keir Starmer and the Labour party a commanding 11-point lead. Meanwhile, the share of voters who think the next election will deliver another Conservative majority has collapsed to just 19 per cent.

And they are right to think this way. Were the numbers in the polls replicated at the next general election then the result would be a commanding Labour majority: the party’s first for nearly two decades.

Look under the bonnet and it is not hard to see why this is happening.