Conservative party

MPs are back in Parliament today after the Christmas recess, and for some of them, this is the first real week of work after spending their first few days in the Commons reeling after winning their seats. New MPs are still waiting to be given offices, and are starting to hire new staff so they can start up with constituency work and trying to understand what’s happening next on the parliamentary agenda. All new members go through a period of trying to work out what sort of MP they’re going to be, but it’s a particularly interesting question for the Conservative MPs who won former Labour ‘red wall’ seats in

All election campaigns see politicians exaggerate, stretch the truth and make promises they can’t keep. But if a report issued in early December is anything to go by, the 2019 general election campaign was a particularly dishonest affair – and one party was particularly guilty. On 10 December, Metro reported: Similarly, the Independent reported: Websites which make no attempt to be impartial were more vociferous. Under the headline, The Tory war on truth – and how to fight back, Open Democracy reported: Independent fact checkers have found that 88% of Tory Facebook adverts contain lies, while 0% of Labour’s do. After the election, the (admittedly risible) Canary asserted that: The 2019 election was won on the back of lies

The 2019 general election will be remembered as one of the most consequential elections in Britain’s recent history. Aside from rejecting a more economically radical Labour Party, the British people used the election to provide what their elected representatives had been unable to provide: an answer to Brexit. For Boris Johnson and the Conservative party, the election was a triumph. They won their largest majority since 1987 and the largest majority for any party since New Labour’s second landslide in 2001. Remarkably, and despite older arguments about the ‘costs of ruling’, a Conservative Party that had been in power for nearly a decade attracted nearly 44 per cent of the vote; this was not

What’s the point of political leaflets, anyway? Many voters in target seats will be asking that very question on an almost daily basis, as they shovel the latest snowdrifts of election literature into their recycling bin. We have social media, party election broadcasts and phone banks to reach voters. Who needs leaflets? There is a (I believe only half-serious) ‘test’ that some Liberal Democrat campaigners apply to the amount of information they think it is possible for a voter to absorb from a leaflet they’re carrying from the letterbox to the bin. Given the parties keep sending them, particularly in those marginal seats where it’s just not clear where the

In 72 hours time, voting will be well underway. We will be talking about turnout being ‘brisk’. Right now, the polls are indicating that a Tory majority is the most likely result. But it is not certain and a combination of three things could still stop it. First, mass Remainer tactical voting. The margins in this election are fine and if Remainers starting backing whoever was most likely to defeat the Tories in their seat, that could put a Tory majority at risk very quickly. There will be lots of calls for tactical voting in the coming days. But it is worth remembering that in 1997, when there was widespread

The decline of the Liberal Democrats continues to give Labour a boost and rattle Tory nerves. Middle class Remainers who dislike Jeremy Corbyn are nonetheless deciding that he is their last best chance to thwart Brexit. Electing an anti-Semitic government so you don’t need to show a passport at Paris Charles de Gaulle is quite the ethical choice but there you go. It’s also a pretty big gamble. We know that Corbyn is a Brexiteer who believes freedom of movement drives down workers’ wages because he has told us as much. Voting for him to stop a hard Brexit isn’t so much holding your nose as poking your own eye, but

Stump speeches and battle bus stop-offs are a staple of political campaigning. And while much of the battle for votes now happens online, as Katy Balls points out in this week’s Spectator, the constituency fly-by remains a central element of any party’s election schedule. So what can we learn about the Conservative strategy from Boris Johnson’s tour across the country? It could reveal that the Tories are starting to panic. The Prime Minister’s campaign machine has shifted into a surprisingly defensive gear over the last week or so. Rather than descending on top target seats, Johnson is now focusing on Conservative held marginals. While his personal campaign tour has been interrupted by both