February 16, 2024 - 7:15am
So, 1997 it is then. That, at least, is one conclusion that’s hard to avoid after another catastrophic set of results for the Conservative Party overnight. In the Wellingborough and Kingswood by-elections, Labour overturned Tory majorities of more than 18,000 and over 11,000 respectively.
There can be little doubt now about the scale of Rishi Sunak’s challenge ahead of the general election. His party is more than 20 points behind Labour in the polls, the economy is in recession and a sizeable number of his MPs are in open revolt. To make matters worse, the Tories now have a genuine threat on their Right in the shape of Reform. In both by-elections last night the party founded by Nigel Farage finished third, with 13% of the vote in Wellingborough and 10% in Kingswood — a result that would not be enough to win it any seats, but would be enough to severely damage the Conservative Party’s electoral prospects. In Kingswood, the votes that went to Reform would have won the Tories the by-election.
As Professor John Curtice has pointed out, a pattern has now formed in these by-elections whose closest parallel is the collapse in support for the Conservative Party in successive by-elections between 1992-1997 following the calamity of Black Wednesday and Parliamentary civil war over Maastricht.
In his autobiography Major writes about one particularly “calamitous” result in 1993, when the party lost to the surging Liberal Democrats. “The constituencies were in despair,” he wrote. “Dispute after dispute hit the Parliamentary party […] It was a miserable period.” As the defeats mounted, party discipline broke down, sapping further energy from the battle. “Fighting one’s political opponents is the very stuff of politics,” Major later reflected. “It quickens the blood. But fighting one’s colleagues was immensely painful. It deadened the appetite.” One can’t help but feel something similar is at play today as the Tory Party turns inwards, unsure what options it has to save itself from the mess it has created.
The lessons of history, though, are not always clear. The 1993 by-election Major reflected upon is notable less for the result itself — victory for the Liberal Democrats — than for the emergence of a lonely Eurosceptic protest party called the Anti-Federalist League. The Newbury by-election that year was the first time Alan Sked’s new party had stood for Parliament. It received a paltry 600 votes, yet within a year it would transform itself into Ukip — or “The U.K.I.P.” as it was then known. Helping Sked that day in Newbury was a young activist called Nigel Farage, whose job was to chauffeur the aging Enoch Powell down from London to help the campaign.
Despite Sked’s poor showing in 1993, the Anti-Federalist League’s very existence held a mirror to the fractious political mood of the country at the time, which had been stirred up by the Maastricht rebellions. By the time 1997 came around, it would not be Sked’s Ukip that was the main torchbearer of this rebellious flame, but instead Jimmy Goldsmith’s now largely forgotten Referendum Party, which was then doing to the Tories what Reform is threatening to do today.
The Referendum Party finished with just 2.6% of the vote in 1997, and yet it changed British politics forever. Amid similarly dire polls to those facing Sunak today, Major moved to neuter Goldsmith’s appeal by offering a referendum on the euro which was then matched by Tony Blair — a commitment which, in hindsight, all but ended the prospect of British membership of the single currency. The story of Britain’s eventual exit from the European Union travels through Newbury.
Today, if anything, the situation is far worse for the Conservatives. Just as before, the party is riven following an economic crisis of its own causing — only this time fresher in the mind and far more consequential for people’s actual living standards. This is once again translating into a similar cycle of by-election drubbings eating away at the Government’s ability to function and the emergence of a new party to the Tories’ Right, forcing demands for concessions.
The Tory vote collapsed from 41.9% in 1992 to just 30.7% in 1997, a loss of more than four million votes and 178 MPs. Major handed over a party with a rump of just 165 MPs. Right now, some of the Tory MPs I’ve spoken to would take this as a good result.
is UnHerd’s Political Editor. He is the author of Betting The House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election.
TomMcTague
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SubscribeSince the Tories seem destined to lose anyway, they ought to abruptly transform their messaging into straight down the line conservatism, no playing around with stupid gender stuff, DEI, grovelling to pro immigration lobbies or loony climate rubbish, just campaign on strident mainstream conservatism — including selling off the BBC. No tax cuts for the rich or cutting welfare though, that’d be suicide. See what happens. Nothing to lose at this point.
Sunak’s last, best chance of doing that was by backing Suella Braverman. Too late now. Sacking her, and parachuting Cameron in, showed that Sunak had given up even on losing the election well, and was entirely focused on opportunities for himself after the election.
That the same Braverman who signed off the 690k work and student visa’s resulting in the biggest legal net migration number ever? And the Home Office has to sign them off.
Suella Braverman was Home Secretary for 14 months. She could hardly have been more vigorous in her endeavours to persuade the Prime Minister to reform the student visa regime. She cannot be blamed for the failures of a scheme radically liberalised in 2019 by Gavin Williamson and Jo Johnson. But she needed Sunak’s support to change that and other visa rules.
Could have resigned the moment she felt pressured to have her civil servants sign off so many legal visas. Didn’t because it’s not about solving the problem but rather using the problem to climb the greasy pole.
This is to suppose that they were signed off by her personally. It is quite apparent that she was sabotaged by the Blob as was Priti Patel Civil Servants are neither Civil or prepared to serve other than their own selfinterests. Interestingly, Liebour are experiencing the jackboot of Sue Gray, makes for an interesting scenario when Liebour assume control of the levers of State.
She was in charge. They knew the numbers. She decided to stay. All a political calculus.
The problem is that most Tory MPs believe in all the loony rubbish.
The Tories are not alone, the current political establishment all subscribe to the same lunacy.
The fact that they haven’t just reinforces the view that they genuinely subscribe to the nut zero/DEI/high tax/government knows best/mass immigration ECHR is good worldview.I suspect its in their DNA now!
Perfect response!!
It’s incredible that they don’t. I don’t think more than 20% of the MPs are actually conservative. There is simply no vision there, no intellectual depth, no bravery….no reading, no history, no real debate, no substance….and nothing worth defending.
Now is the time.
Compared to the last general election, the actual number of votes cast for Labour was static in Wellingborough, and fell by one third in Kingswood. By-election turnouts are typically lower of course, but no sign of any real enthusiasm for Starmer’s Labour Party, or for Reform to be fair. If only the Conservatives had lent in to their 2019 mandate, rather than being apparently embarrassed by its uncouth nature.
Wishful thinking
When Labour were making by-election gains from the Tories in the lead up to the 1997 election they were generally adding thousands of votes to their 1992 level, and won well over 20,000 votes on each occasion. And that was against a higher benchmark, as the turnout in the 1992 election was high, and Labour’s performance then was better than in 2019.
Well said. If these by-elections are anything to go by then a small ray of hope for the Conservatives is that they haven’t actually lost voters to Labour. Consequently, they don’t need to focus on winning back votes but rather on just getting those that voted in 2019 back out again. Given how immensely disappointing (and unconservative) they have been in the last 14 years that will prove very, very difficult, but might be easier than having to actually win voters back. Only a fool will put money on anything other than a Labour GE victory, but I do think that when the GE comes round (and when Labour MPs are forced to actually make media appearances and come up with actual policies) many of these apathetic voters will hold their noses and vote Conservative. I’m certainly one of those apathetic voters. I would love to vote (or not) in such a way that will send a message to the Tory Party that they’ve let us down miserably and need to radically change in the direction of, you know, conservatism, but I’m under no illusion that a Labour government (even a one term one) will be a catastrophe for the nation and, yes, even worse than what we’ve endured in the last 14 years.
The real story behind these results is a general mallaise for politics, with poor turn out and swings dependent on protest votes.
Beyond that however is a genuine problem for the Conservatives, because Sunak has such low appeal it seems people who would usually vote for them will probably just not vote at all, paving the way for Kneel Starmer.
The problem with Sunak is that he really isn’t a politician or a campaigner. He needs to be far less polished and start scrapping. Show he believes in something – whatever it is and however much it upsets some people. Too much of a fence sitter.
He also seems to lack any natural authority. You don’t get the feeling that his colleagues are actually scared of him.
He’s not a leader. But then, neither is Starmer. First whiff of grapeshot and they’ll both fold.
Well put, sir. Both cardboard cutouts of the ‘policy by numbers’ school of Westminster focus groups, a little whiff of this and a zest of that, not too much of the other, don’t offend anybody…..and not a trace of a coherent vision in sight.
If you asked them what they stand for they’d probably say the national anthem.
When William Hague was elevated to the peerage he vacated a very safe Tory seat; Richmond in N. Yorkshire.
This plum seat was gifted to Rishi Sunak, who seems to have no political history at all. He’s not been a councillor or activist. He’s never fought an unwinnable seat to test his mettle. He was banking away in the States, with his green card so he could achieve US citizenship one day, and then…flash.
He joined the party, dropped into a safe seat and soon became the Chancellor. How did he do it, and why? The salary is trivial compared to running a hedge fund.
The Right getting itself into this position has had a sense of inevitability for some years stemming from the inherent contradictions within it’s thinking, within its ranks and the crude reliance on one slogan after another that lacked real thought and substance.
It’s not actually good for the UK though even if a touch of schadenfreude unavoidable. We do actually need a Right wing party that’s properly grappled and reflected on what is wrong with UK capitalism and how it can be that such an asset as the City does not translate into more economic inward investment in job creating industries.
Labour is not winning the next election, the Right is losing it. We all know that. But result looks like being the same whatever one thinks on this.
There is no “Right” in the Conservative party. What is this “Right” of which you speak?
I read yesterday there are now 7 clear ‘named’ Groupings/factions in the Tory party, and at least 3 within Reform. They all market themselves as ‘Right’. That’s thus 10 on the standard Right in UK politics. Thus difficult to know quite where to start in answering your question.
‘By-election results show a complete loss in faith in the UK political system’ would be a better headline. Labour will hold those seats with 1 in 6 votes, ~16% of the constituency.
Conservatives are going to be abstained into oblivion. I’m still not convinced their supporters are persuaded to try other parties. But they’re fed up with what they’ve got – poor quality corporate managers who pay no heed to what their customers ask for.
The electorate made up its mind ages ago that the Conservatives are going to be punished for their venal incompetence. Nothing is going to change that at this stage in the electoral cycle, short of the Martians landing and Rishi Sunak personally leading the worldwide resistance.
“Today, if anything, the situation is far worse for the Conservatives. Just as before, the party is riven following an economic crisis of its own causing”.
Really ?
The economic situation we’re in is the result of over 25 years of largely unchanged policy. Keep interest rates artificially low to inflate house and asset prices. Throw cheap money at the economy to kick recessions down the road (just pushing a bigger crisis off until later). Import cheap labour to keep inflation low, but not do anything serious to improve skills and productivity – the pursuit of “fake growth” my bragging about net GDP whilst ignoring GDP per capita. Piling up costs and inefficiencies in the economy by ever more regulation and insistence on wealth-reducing nonsense like DEI. Insane energy policies putting up the cost of living for evferyone. Destruction of private pensions and grwoth of parasitic buy-to-let investment in its place. And so on.
These are the policies of all the major parties. Not just the Conservatives. And there’s no sign that Labour even recognises these are mistaken and need to change.
When the real crisis hits, perhaps more people will wake up to what the actual causes are. And for that reason – bring it on.
Agree. Unfortunately there will have to be considerable pain before any meaningful reform can happen. And when this hits it will be the poor, low waged, in poor health and the already depressed parts of the country who suffer most.
I would not be remotely surprised if the *real crisis* hits in autumn this year.
Spot on Peter B. Unfortunately I’ve given up on getting people to pay attention. People will just get angry rather than have to actually make their brain think about such things. Heads are well and truly in the sand.
The crisis should have hit in 2008. It’s been kicked down the road for 15 years and when it does hit it will be order of magnitudes worse.
Allowing ‘too big to fail’ banks to fail and flushing out the misallocation of capital in the system would have been extremely painful in the short term. But within three years the economy would have been reset on a far healthier course. Labour would still have been voted out of power in 2010, but the Conservatives might actually have been able to make a go of ‘austerity’ (aka living within your means), instead of being burdened with unsustainable debt and endless QE.
I hope you’re right but I really struggle to imagine a world in which the political/media/cultural establishment has given up on all those things you speak of. Just can’t see it happening. Pointless virtue signalling is a powerful drug.
The Conservatives continue to surprise us daily, with their stupendous skill in unerringly doing exactly the most worst thing. Every time, without fail.
How can they top this? What will they mess up next?
Reform are the recipients of protest voting (including potentially mine, although probably not, I’ll very likely just abstain), but the truth is, their offer is far too thin and not remotely serious. The problem is not so much the reheated Thatcherism which Tice for example seems to be offering, it’s the fact that they have given no indication whatsoever that they have anything in their armoury, on how to not just survive, but thrive in the 21st century – not on geopolitics, not on industrial policy, not on technology, not on biotech, not on AI. The quality of people they are putting up that I have seen (apart from a few in the leadership) is even poorer than not just the Tories, but even Labour, and that’s saying something.
Reform needed root and branch reform, of themselves and their offer, if they are serious about wanting to govern as opposed to just being disruptors.
You bother to comment here, but you don’t bother enough to vote?
I don’t view voting and commenting as activities in lockstep.
And when this great reckoning befalls the conservatives, what then? Will a new era of rainbows and unicorns dawn across the UK? This isn’t a sporting event; it’s people’s lives. I prefer a smaller, less powerful central govt but that ship sailed generations ago.
It seems that you folks, like us in the US, are not governed but ruled, and ruled by people who are incredibly disconnected from real life. If that was not so, serious action would have already begun re: immigration; same with crime and with basic economics.
Next time you look at the predictably lousy outcome of some policy idea, consider that the result was intentional rather than due to incompetence. These are not stupid people and it is virtually impossible to be that wrong that often. From Covid to the money supply to ignoring things that play out in public view, none of this is accidental.
To continue the sporting metaphor, it’s the mother of all ‘Hospital passes’ Tories will hand to Labour and some adolescents on the Right will be sniggering a bit at that.
There are of course no quick and easy solutions, but a sense of competence at least will do many of us for now.
I think you are wrong to place the emphasis on ‘intentional’ to degree you may. It’s a rare politician who deliberately wants to make things worse (although some will be malign in how they weaponise immigration tension they could in fact resolve). No the failure is more accidental and thus important we reflect on how and why Policy mistakes were made in as bi-partisan a way as possible. Building some consensus on solutions vital. Just one example from UK – social care – we can’t sort this without some bi-partisanship and that is the test Labour must prepare for whatever it’s scale of victory. It’s but one of the key Policy issues we must face.
‘Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system.’ – Douglas Hubbard
Seek out the British television show “The Thick Of It” for a pretty spot-on depiction of how near impossible it is for policy outcomes to be anything other than predictably lousy.
John Curtice is full of it. Turnout is a footnote in his BBC analysis. This is not a ringing endorsement of Labour.
Labour gained Wellingborough with a 19.4% swing, but they only got 107 votes more than last time. Overall turnout down over 26%.
Labour gained Kingswood with an 11.5% swing, but they got 5,316 fewer votes than last time. Overall turnout down over 34%.
I’m not defending the Tories but again, like the last round of by-elections, their voters stayed away. The real story should be voter apathy / disenfranchisement. I doubt more than a third of the country (that bother to go to the polls) would vote CON/LAB if the system made it worthwhile voting for their actual first choice.
I believe the real ‘wake-up’ call will arrive when people start to see a more sectarian political movement emerging. Currently, Islam is gaining a political voice and, whether it is correct or not, appears to sense that it can steer the Labour Party, at least at the membership, rank and file level. Anti-semitism is very much alive and well in the core of Labour and there appears to be a growing sense of impunity amongst those who openly voice it throughout our institutions, private and public.
The reaction to this may shift the UK political landscape to resemble the days of The Troubles in NI. Heaven help us (no pun intended)!
That depends on what Starmer does next. If he holds the line on supporting Israel he risks the muslims vote detaching itself and going to an overtly sectarian new party.
If Starmer condemns Israel he betrays his wife and daughters, and reinforces his reputation as a hopeless flip-flop.
Interesting.
Ah, mindless optimism in the face of overwhelming facts! Very good!
Starmer will be the prime minister at some point later this year and these manufactured issues may excite the swivel eyed loons over at GB news or the Torygraph but nobody in the real world cares, as we saw in the two by election catastrophes for the Tories.
Not interesting at all really. The results are set in stone by now. Sorry!
If you are left/liberal you are supposed to believe in a set of good things; equality for women, tolerance for gays, religious pluralism, free speech.
Do you think these are available in Islamic countries? Do you think they’ll last in this country?
Will you welcome a bit of competition from an emergent Islamist party?
There is no islamist party in Britain. You are trying to create a strawman but it isn’t working, bub. Scotland is led by an Islamic man and is one of the most progressive and liberal societies in the world. The mullahs aren’t coming for you – just relax…
CS is right here DG. You are using fear-mongering there with a racial component not a million miles from the ‘rivers of blood’ stuff of 55years ago – and that didn’t happen did it..
There will be some nut-jobs driven by their religion, but they are v marginal and our values and societal bonds can handle them if we don’t drive division.
Starmer shown some mettle here (even if we can criticise him on other matters). Previous leader kicked out of the Party for anti-semitism. That’s unprecedented. The withdrawal of support from 2 MPs regardless of the electoral calculus another. Sense is he’s being clear – on anti-semitism no tolerance. Let’s see if the Right or other malign actors decide to use this against him. He seems to have drawn his battle line v clearly and credit to him.
The Tories have been dead in the water for a long time. Watching them tear themselves apart after their historic election defeat should be highly amusing!
Apart from coming third, advertising GB News, and working to make Nigel Farage Leader of the Conservative Party in time for the General Election of 2029, a party that he would by then have left 36 years earlier, what does Reform UK stand for? Drug legalisation, and the abolition of the monarchy, since Richard Tice has told the BBC three times to date that Farage ought to be President when Donald Trump was again. Is that your party? Could it be, say, Peter Hitchens’s?
As the favourite “colourful” uncles of broadcasters who were in public school uniforms less than a decade ago, Reform UK are proclaimed “the real winners” simply for having turned up. They make such good television that they have a station almost to themselves. But they are all over the others as well. It is not hard to see why.
Yet Reform’s candidate at Kingswood managed only 77 more votes than Labour’s margin of victory, while its much higher profile candidate at Wellingborough, its Deputy Leader and a mainstay of its channel, did not even manage that, with Labour winning by 2,517 more votes than Reform had received. There used to be Buy the Daily Sport candidates at byelections, and the perennial Watch GB News candidates should be treated in the same way.
Where, exactly, might Reform be the First Past the Post? But it openly does not want to win seats. It wants only to deprive the Conservatives of them, so that Farage could be their Leader in 2029. If any Reform MP were accidentally to be returned, then he would function as a Conservative for most or all purposes in the division lobbies.
Economic collapse of their doing. They had a hand but there were also a lot of winds in their face like Covid.