Conventional wisdom has long held that the Conservatives win elections from the centre ground – including territory just to the right of centre – but lose them if they become ‘right wing’.
John Major set out this theory explicitly in a press conference, and most of those in attendance nodded sagely along. For many years, election results appeared consistent with this assessment. Major won in 1992, turning round a Labour opinion poll lead by dumping the poll tax and tacking towards the centre.
Margaret Thatcher’s earlier wins from the right could be put down to the opponents she faced – an exhausted James Callaghan regime in 1979 and unelectable leftists in Michael Foot in 1983 and the 1987 version of Neil Kinnock, when he was still committed to ideas such as unilateral disarmament.
Tony Blair’s landslide win in 1997 could meanwhile be read as a reward for him occupying the centre ground better than did the Tories, given the success of Eurosceptic ‘bastards’ in dragging the Major administration to the right.
The sheer array of issues on which Sunak has left his base unsecured is striking
In 2001, William Hague’s immigration-sceptic and anti-Brussels offer flopped, leading to a second Blair landslide.
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