The Conservatives traditionally pride themselves on being the “natural party of government”. Their opponents now speak of them as a natural candidate for extinction.
In the aftermath of the local elections – at which the Tories endured their worst-ever result – Nigel Farage declared that we were witnessing the “beginning of the end” of the party. During a visit to Salisbury, where he struck John Major-like cricket poses, Ed Davey described the Conservatives as on their “last innings”. At yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Keir Starmer offered more macabre imagery, suggesting that the Tories were “sliding into brain-dead oblivion”.
Rumours of the Conservatives’ demise have, of course, been exaggerated before. In 2005, Geoffrey Wheatcroft published The Strange Death of Tory England on the “likely extinction of what was the most successful political species in Britain”. But though the party duly lost a third consecutive general election, reinvention would soon follow under David Cameron.
The question is whether this time is different. In moments of peril, the Tories, like Labour, have always been able to rely on the pendulum swing of British politics. As an unpopular government declines, a respectable opposition will eventually rise. Pretenders to the crown are marginalised by the remorseless logic of first-past-thhome-post.
But this dynamic – which has defined British politics for more than a century – has ended. A disliked Labour administration that has targeted pensioners, farmers and small businesses would normally have had a predictable consequence: a Conservative poll lead. Instead, the Tories find themselves languishing on 18 per cent (down from 43.6 per cent in 2019), squeezed from the right by Reform and from the centre by the Liberal Democrats. Though still the opposition in parliament, the Conservatives are no longer the opposition in the country.
Here is why talk of extinction fills the air at Westminster. Back in the mid-2010s, as European social democrats declined, the centre left was said by some to be enduring “Pasokification” (in reference to Greece’s Pasok, reduced from 160 seats in 2009 to just 13 in 2015). But as Jeremy Cliffe identified in a 2023 New Statesman cover story, there is a centre-right equivalent: “Pécressification”. At the 2022 French presidential election, Republican candidate Valérie Pécresse was humiliated when she finished fifth with 4.8 per cent of the vote.
The party of Winston Churchill now risks faring little better than the party of Charles de Gaulle. Like the Tories today, the Republicans found themselves assailed from the right by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and from the centre by Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance. Such dynamics are self-reinforcing: once a party loses much of its support, its hold on the minority that remain is weakened. Even in 2024, Labour strategists spoke of the Conservatives with the respect due to an opponent who usually wins. Now they accuse the Tories of lacking any explanation for their woes or any plan for recovery.
Can the party of “magisterial pragmatism” defy such judgements? William Hague likes to say that the Conservatives are “an absolute monarchy moderated by regicide”. Such ruthlessness has served the Tories well: Margaret Thatcher’s replacement by Major saw the party win the highest number of votes in British electoral history (14.1 million). Theresa May’s succession by Boris Johnson enabled its best result since 1987.
This muscle memory is why – just six months after Kemi Badenoch’s election as leader – the Tories already find themselves debating her replacement. A declining party cannot afford a figurehead who exacerbates rather than diminishes its unpopularity. Johnson, who polls suggest is the only Conservative leader who could beat Reform, may eventually be summoned. But the risk is that another iron law may be broken: even regicide might not save the Tories.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: The dangerous relationship]
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