What next for the Conservatives?
An identity crisis amongst the leftovers
Ahead of Thursday’s polling day, we wanted to share our speculative view of what comes next for the Conservatives and Labour following the predicted election result. We have assumed that the polls are accurate and that Labour will win a large majority, while the Conservatives will lose around half of their current MPs. Today we have focused on the Conservatives and tomorrow we will do the same for Labour, with a view towards their first 100 days in power. Thank you for reading and please get in touch with any queries or comments.
Our view:
The Conservatives are on course to lose a historic number of seats at the 4 July general election. Although polls differ as to the scale of the Conservatives’ likely losses, the polls do not disagree that the Conservatives will most likely leave government, potentially not even winning enough seats to become the main opposition party i.e. the second largest party in Parliament by the number of seats.
The Conservative MPs with the largest majorities i.e. those most likely to retain their seats, tend to share many of the same political objectives and beliefs as the Reform Party, the anti-immigration party fronted by Nigel Farage. Many of those Conservative MPs will likely form the remainder of whatever is left of the Conservative Party after the election, spelling trouble for the party’s post-election identity as it seeks to differentiate itself from Reform, while also needing to appeal to more centrist voters to win back power.
Many moderate Conservative MPs’ constituencies have stronger local support for Reform or the centrist Liberal Democrats, squeezing moderate Conservatives’ potential vote share from both sides and adding to their already considerably short odds of holding their seat. In a three way contest for Conservative seats between the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, and Reform, the main beneficiary will be the Labour Party, which is predicted to win a historically large number of seats and majority.
The next Conservative leader will have to appeal to the remaining Conservative MPs with Reform values to become leader. This will make it harder for the next Conservative leader to tack to the centre ground where elections are won.
Prolonged Conservative aimlessness will make it easier for Labour to enact its policy platform.
State of the polls
Source: The Economist
Our broader views:
The Conservative Party have moved against PM Sunak. He will be blamed for losing the election he called.
Sunak has been beset by campaign gaffes and scandals, severely hurting the Conservatives’ electoral chances. Sunak has struggled to get “cut through” on his preferred topics, such as potential tax rises under a Labour government, with the media instead focusing on his campaign’s blunders. Most polls predict the Conservatives losing between 150 and 250 of their MPs, including a third of the Cabinet, a historic high and severely limiting any potential momentum the Conservatives need to reverse their consistent twenty-point polling deficit. Sunak’s campaign has also struggled with credibility and likeability. Many of Sunak’s fear-based arguments i.e. tax rises under Labour, lack credibility after he himself raised taxes to a post-war high, while each week seemed to begin with a new scandal, including the most recent revelation that several senior campaign officials may have illegally placed bets on the month of the election based on privileged information.
If the Conservatives lose, currently the most likely outcome, PM Sunak will resign as party leader, triggering a leadership contest; he may even resign as an MP, triggering an early by-election. Once the election results are in and the scale of the Conservatives’ losses are official, Sunak will almost certainly and immediately resign as leader of the party, triggering a leadership contest. The first stage of the post-Sunak leadership contest will see the remaining Conservative MPs whittle down a list of contenders to two, which party members will then select, assuming one contestant does not back out. Both voting stages make it more likely that the next party leader will be considerably more right-wing than Sunak, given the MPs most likely to hold their seats i.e., those with the highest majorities, tend to be on the right of the party and the median Conservative party member is significantly to the right of the average voter.
The process to choose the next leader will also make it more difficult for the Conservative party to compete for future votes. The Conservatives will likely end up with a leader who must appeal to Reform voters to become leader but needs the votes of Liberal Democrat supporters to end the Conservatives’ spell in opposition. Reform, who have positioned themselves to the absolutist extreme of the Conservatives’ right, and the Liberal Democrats, who have positioned themselves to the right of the Labour Party and in the moderate camp of the Conservatives, will squeeze the Conservatives’ scope of possible policy platforms, limiting their ability to appeal to the wider electorate. A future leader’s ability to pivot to the wider electorate will also be constrained by the likelihood that the Conservatives’ remaining MPs will be to the right of the pre-election party and concerned about the electoral appeal of Reform UK, meaning any future leader that attempts to moderate the party will lack a offsetting base of moderate MPs and therefore face quick defenestration, keeping the Conservative party more right wing for longer.
The length of the Conservatives’ time in opposition will depend on the durability of Reform UK and the number of Liberal Democrat MPs
Reform UK MPs’ non-politically correct views will absorb post-election media attention, hurting the Conservatives’ ability to carve out space for their issues and end their spell in opposition. For much of the past twenty years, right wing parties such as the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the Brexit Party have been minimally represented in Parliament due to the UK’s “first past the post” voting system, which favours larger, more established parties. This has limited far right parties’ ability to spread their political messages and get traction with voters. That is set to change, as most polls predict Reform UK, the successor to these political parties, will win above ten parliamentary seats at the election, including the media savvy and politically opportunistic minor celebrity, Nigel Farage. With Farage and his Reform MPs more or less guaranteed media attention, the parameters of acceptable centre-right political messages will shift to the right and hurt the Conservatives’ ability to regroup to rebuild their identity and appeal to the UK’s more liberally-minded centrist voters after PM Sunak.
More Liberal Democrat MPs will also hurt the Conservatives’ ability to rebuild their post-Sunak identity with centrist voters. Few policy beliefs separate Liberal Democrat from moderate Conservative politicians, but those that do, namely Brexit and immigration policy, are likely to be totemically defined and enforced in the post-Sunak Conservative party. That asymmetry is unlikely to help the Conservatives rebuild, especially because the Conservatives will garner less media attention and favour while in opposition. Any attempt to carve out policy positions among Liberal Democrat voters will likely only help Reform and Labour, while also damaging any individual Conservative MP attempting to make the case for change, adding further hurdles for the Conservatives to eventually tack to the centre after Sunak.