Could a 1997-style wipeout spell the end of the Tories?

There is not a crumb of comfort for the Conservatives in the YouGov poll splashed across the front of this morning’s Daily Telegraph. It forecasts that the Tories will lose 196 seats in the coming general election, a bigger slump than the party suffered in 1997, 1945 or 1929. This would represent the second-worst defeat in the party’s history, after Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s Liberal landslide in 1906. Sir Keir Starmer would be looking at a majority of around 120.

The poll suggests election night, whenever it comes, will serve up a steady stream of Portillo moments, with Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, and Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt all set to lose their seats. Unfortunately for the Tories, it appears to be a robust piece of research that uses multi-level regression and post-stratification, the method that accurately predicted the 2017 and 2019 election results.

Writing over at ConservativeHome, Paul Goodman notes that the poll was commissioned by an outfit calling itself the Conservative Britain Alliance, which is ‘working with Lord Frost’. Goodman thinks it’s an attempt by the right to bounce Number 10 into toughening up the Rwanda Bill, which will have its third reading this week. That may well be the case but the tactical use to which the research is being put does not invalidate the research itself.

And it purports to show 96 Tory-held seats which will be lost on account of Reform’s presence on the ballot. The Thatcherite party, led by Richard Tice, has been talking up its challenge to the Conservatives on immigration. Remove Reform from the equation and the Tories win enough seats to deny Labour an overall majority. Reform, in its previous guise as the Brexit Party, cut deals in 2019 to stand aside in seats where the Tory incumbent was pro-Brexit. This time they say there will be no deals with anyone.

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The Conservatives don’t yet know whether this will be the extent of the damage Reform inflicts on them. There is another scenario, in which Nigel Farage returns to frontline politics and contests a Commons seat, such as Clacton, which he has hinted at. That would be the worst-case scenario for Rishi Sunak, as the YouGov poll shows him haemorrhaging Leave voters. Were Farage to become the face of Reform, it would not only give those Leave voters an alternative, it could tempt away others currently minded to hold their nose and vote Tory. In this case, the Conservatives could face an even more comprehensive defeat, perhaps even something akin to an extinction-level event.

There isn’t anywhere for Sunak to go. As Goodman points out, if he gives his right flank what they want on Rwanda, his left flank will refuse to vote for the bill, sinking it altogether. These same considerations exist among the electorate at large. Save for the issue of Brexit, the Conservatives have spent more than a decade in power studiously ignoring their right-wing and pursuing policies the right considers scarcely different to those of a centrist Labour government. Yet if Sunak tries lurching rightwards at this late stage, he might drive more affluent blue-wall Tories into the arms of the Lib Dems.

For their part, backbenchers could put their letters in and elect a new leader but cracking open a fresh tin of Tory chaos would do nothing for their electoral chances. Besides, there is the risk that the right lands itself with another Boris Johnson, who dislodged Theresa May with right-wing votes but once in Number 10 governed from the left of the party.

There are no good options at this point. The Tories have lost the floating voters who put them in power in 2010 and kept them there in 2015 and 2017. They’ve lost the Red Wall voters who gave them the 80-seat majority with which they have done almost nothing. Now they face the prospect of losing their core supporters, who feel frustrated that right-wing votes only ever seem to produce centrist outcomes.

Everyone is ranged against the Conservatives now: the left, the right and the centre; the Red Wall and the Blue Wall; the Remainers and the Leavers. An electoral asteroid is heading in their direction and the only question is whether they will survive the impact.