The British right has never been more divided. As recently as 2019, the Conservatives won 43.6 per cent of the vote – their highest share since Margaret Thatcher’s first victory in 1979. Now what was the “Boris coalition” has been smashed. Further losses to Reform and the Liberal Democrats have left the Tories on a mere 16 per cent.
“I’m slightly obsessed by those Conservatives who feel politically homeless; I meet so many of them,” Ed Davey tells me of his new Blue Wall base in this week’s magazine. “We are literally the only party who can persuade those voters.”
In normal times you’d expect the schism on the right to benefit Labour – and in 2024 it did. But two big things have changed since then: first, the traditional Tory vote has begun to consolidate around Reform (Nigel Farage has won 32 per cent of those who backed Rishi Sunak). Second, the left has fragmented: the latest YouGov poll shows that 13 per cent of 2024 Labour voters have defected to the Lib Dems – who have outflanked the government on Gaza and Donald Trump – while 11 per cent now back Zack Polanski’s “eco-populist” Greens.
There are plenty in Labour who derive pleasure from the decline of the Conservatives, whose extraordinary descent mirrors that of Manchester United. But it has made life far harder for Starmer. After the 2024 election, Labour fought relentlessly to pin blame on the Tories – “the guilty men” – for the country’s woes. The strategy, devised by Morgan McSweeney, was designed to mirror that adopted by David Cameron and George Osborne who repeatedly accused Labour of “crashing the car” after the 2010 election. This not only helped the Tories justify their austerity programme, it entrenched their political advantage.
But in Reform, Labour now faces an opponent without a record (though a wave of Tory defections may help). Focus groups by the Starmerite think tank Labour Together shows that there is little recall of anything Reform has said or done. Instead, voters who feel let down by Labour see them as the default alternative. Criticism of Farage is dismissed with versions of “well, that’s what you get with him” or “it’s not about the specific things he says he’ll do”.
Where does this leave Labour? Strategists reject claims that they intend to deploy a “Macron strategy” against Reform: using the spectre of Farage to corral progressive voters into a “republican front”. Instead, they say, they want to take on Reform’s charge that the country is in “permanent decline” and prove there is a positive alternative. For Starmer, the test of Labour’s conference will be whether he can make hope credible once more.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Labour is on track to lose Wales]
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