Tory wipeout or comeback?

Jun 21, 2024 | Bylines, News

Apparently, all the Conservatives need to turn this around is an opportunity to make their arguments – and some policies – and a magician! Bremain Chair Sue Wilson writes for Yorkshire Bylines. 

I doubt it will have escaped your notice but there’s an election happening soon in the UK. If the polls are to be believed – and the results across multiple sites would suggest they can – then the Conservatives are about to suffer an almost complete wipeout. Or in the words of polling guru, Professor John Curtice, the results would be the worst ever “by a country mile”.

Polls apart

In a new poll by Savanta and Electoral Calculus for The Telegraph, Labour are predicted to win 516 seats and a massive 382-seat majority, with the Conservatives and LibDems neck-and-neck on 53 and 50 seats respectively. If that weren’t bad enough, Rishi Sunak is predicted to lose his own seat – a feat never before accomplished by any prime minister at a general election, and quite the personal legacy. Other big names are also at risk of losing their seats, including Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and numerous cabinet ministers.

Two other polls released on the same day – by More in Common and YouGov – have the Conservatives on 155 and 108 seats. Better, but not by much. And whichever way you look at it, a disaster for the government on a monumental and historic scale.

The collapse in popularity of the government could be down to any number of factors: the pain and damage of austerity; changing public attitudes to a mis-sold Brexit; cronyism and chronic waste of public money; mishandling of, well, just about everything they’ve touched, or directly down to Sunak and his colleagues. The list is a long one, and it’s still growing.

 

There’s still time…

But, all is not yet lost, it seems.

While the public, the media, and quite probably most of parliament can see the writing on the Conservative wall, Levelling Up Minister Michael Gove has other ideas. According to him, there is still time to stage a comeback and to pull a rabbit out of the hat in extra time. All that’s needed, apparently, is “an opportunity to make these arguments” before “the final whistle”. And some policies. And a magician.

Gove’s arguments, it seems, amount only to warning voters of Labour’s “tax dangers” and their “plans for the future”. In that respect, he would appear to be on the same page as Sunak and many government ministers, in that their election campaign is all about Labour’s plans, not their own. Not to mention the fact that much of the public seem to quite like what Labour are selling.

Former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost, however, does not share Gove’s optimism. The Conservative Party, says Frost, is “hurtling towards a terrible defeat” because the party is not “doing Conservative things”. Frost also warned that Labour would drag Britain back into the “orbit” of Brussels by renegotiating what Keir Starmer described as Boris Johnson and Frost’s “botched” deal. Again, no sign of any ideas or policies of their own, just more criticism of the opposition.

What Gove, Frost, Sunak et al fail to understand is that hardly anyone trusts them, or believes a word they say anymore. As for suggesting that Labour will increase taxes for the less well off, that’s more than a bit rich coming from the “biggest tax-raising parliament on record” and a bunch of out-of-touch millionaires to boot.

Whether you believe the Conservatives are heading for a wipeout or a comeback, Frost and Gove have something in common – a strong tendency towards delusional thinking that came to a head with Brexit and shows no signs of fading.

The Oxford English definition of ‘delusion’ is “a false belief or judgment about external reality, held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary”. There’s plenty of incontrovertible evidence that the Conservatives are going to lose, and lose badly. Those within the party that believe otherwise deserve to be nowhere near positions of power. Thankfully, in two weeks’ time it looks like they won’t be.