Why tactical voting is so dangerous for the Tories

Boris Johnson has always been a celebrity politician. It is one of the reasons why the normal rules of politics have so often not applied to him. This status has given him political reach and put him on first-name terms with the public. It makes it easier for him to command media attention than other politicians: a fact that he turned to his advantage in 2016 and 2019. But this strength is now becoming a weakness.

Johnson’s ability to dominate politics means that the country is now polarising into pro- and anti-Boris camps. The worry for him is that he has more opponents than supporters. Last week’s by-elections suggest people are prepared to vote tactically to give him a kicking. ‘His celebrity is working against him,’ laments one secretary of state.

One traditional advantage of the Tories has been that they dominate the right of politics while Labour has more competition on the left. But it leaves them vulnerable to tactical voting. It cost them 30 seats in 1997, turning a bad defeat into a catastrophic one.

At the last election, top-down attempts to encourage tactical voting by Remain supporters had little effect. There were several reasons for this, most notably that many Liberal Democrat-inclined voters were more scared of Jeremy Corbyn than of Brexit. Labour supporters, meanwhile, had not forgiven the Liberal Democrats for going into coalition with the Tories in 2010. But with Keir Starmer as Labour leader, who could be described as many things but not scary, and the Liberal Democrats shifting left, the conditions for tactical voting are more fertile.

Tactical voting is particularly dangerous for the Tories at the moment because the anti-Tory bloc in British politics – Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens – is polling at around 60 per cent.