What will happen to politics after a Tory defeat?

Four scenarios for the post-election world

A Labour poster from 1910. Labour’s rise in the early twentieth century was the last time British politics realigned around a new party (though it didn’t break into the top two until 1922).

Every now and then the Conservatives, after a long stint in power, get absolutely thwacked. It happened in 1906, 1945, 1997 and will almost certainly happen again this year.

These landslide elections are always followed by speculation about the future of the Tory party. In 1906 it seemed under a long-term threat due to the growing social and economic demands of recently enfranchised (male) voters and the burgeoning trade union movement. In 1945 they appeared unable to grasp the demand for a more powerful and protective postwar welfare state.

In 1997 the party looked tired and old, hopelessly split over Europe, and totally outmanoeuvred by the modern politics of Blair and Brown. When William Hague was unable to make a dent in Labour’s majority in 2001, the view that it could be all over became commonplace.

And yet they have always recovered, eventually making the necessary adjustments to return to power, helped by an electoral system that makes it extremely difficult for insurgent parties. Only once has a major party been forced out of the top two – the liberals over 100 years ago.  

In his 2005 book, The Strange Death of Tory England, Geoffrey Wheatcroft wondered if the Conservatives would go the same way, but when Gordon Brown stumbled the Tories were there, ready to take advantage. There was no equivalent of the Labour party in the 1920s, who had been building up their position for several decades, boosted by a transformation in electoral demographics.

So, surely, even if the Tories do get hammered worse than ever this year, even if they are reduced to fewer than 100 seats, the same will happen? Well, not necessarily. There are three important differences this time:

1. The age divide is much wider than ever before. In 1997 the Tories won 28% of the vote of those under 44, and 36% of the over-65s. In a recent YouGov poll they are on just 11% amongst under-50s and 34% for over-65s. This poll is not an outlier. Their position is under a more existential threat than in previous occasions, unless they can find a way to win back younger voters.

2. They are institutionally much weaker. Membership has roughly halved since 2001 to around 150-170k, though exact figures aren’t published. Many members are elderly and most live in the South. Plenty of associations are effectively moribund, with a handful of activists left to pick the election candidate. The party is very dependent on a few donors, like the duo of Frank Hester and Mohamed Mansour. The talent pool of new candidates is not empty but it is shallower than ever before.

3. For the first time in the aftermath of a Tory defeat, there will be an alternative party of the right in Reform with a substantial vote. Of course Reform have plenty of their own challenges, as demonstrated by their painful inability to find a full slate of sane (or even living) candidates. They have little infrastructure, an odd financial set-up, and are highly dependent on Nigel Farage’s contact book. But they also have a lot of appeal to Tory members and voters. That YouGov poll has 23% of 2019 Tory voters saying they’ll vote Reform, and just 33% sticking with the Conservatives. (I’ve looked at whether these figures are plausible in a previous post.)

Part of the problem in trying to assess how this could all play out is the lack of recent historical examples from the UK. So I’ve constructed four scenarios based on shifts over the past few years that have happened in other countries – specifically Canada, Australia, France and Portugal, acknowledging, of course, the importance differences between political systems and cultures.