As the Labour party’s lead reaches 27 per cent or more, it would be easy to place the entirety of the blame on Liz Truss. That doesn’t mean it would be fair; the effort to alienate all but the most hardline tribal Conservative supporters has been a joint effort across 12 years and multiple prime ministers.
Markets hated the mini-Budget; cutting taxes while making massive spending pledges to subsidise energy demand during a critical shortage was not a winning formula. Apparently, blackouts are not looked on kindly; who could have guessed? Voters, meanwhile, hated it because it offered more to those who are better off. In particular, the 45p tax cut – while economically one of the least significant measures – alienated large chunks of the population who felt that it was unfair, particularly when combined with the scrapping of the bonus cap; the Conservative party was back to its old tricks, looking out for its rich mates.
They’re the party of the economically inactive pensioner, for whom government exists to pump up asset prices
Taken in isolation, it would be easy to say that this, and this alone, has driven the sudden nosedive in the polls. And at a proximate level, it has. Dig a little deeper, however, and the problems start to pile up. Who exactly is both voting for the Conservative party, and also upset at the idea that top income tax rates might be lowered? Why is economic growth over redistribution such a hard sell to its electorate?
One option would be to simply blame the public. Britain may not be a communist country, but it probably would be if you left it to the voters; we are, after all, talking about a country where 23 per cent of the population would nationalise travel agents if you let them. Trying to deliver growth-boosting deregulation alongside tax cuts in such an environment is a bit like smoking in a fireworks factory; at the very least, your colleagues are going to ask you politely to stop.
But generally speaking, blaming the electorate is a sign that you’ve got your politics wrong. Back in 2020, researchers at More in Common argued you could divide Britain into a set of political ‘tribes’. ‘Backbone Conservatives’ – think ‘patriotic Brexiteer, reads his newspaper in print’ – made up about 15 per cent of the population. The Conservatives are currently sitting at a little over 20 per cent in the polls; they’ve got their backbone support, and a smattering of others, and that’s about it.
Everyone else has been thoroughly alienated. Only 6 per cent of those aged 18-24 would vote for the Tories, a figure that doesn’t improve much among those aged 25-49. And why would they? The Conservatives have spent 12 years making it extremely clear that they don’t care about young people in the slightest; they’re the party of the economically inactive pensioner, for whom government exists to pump up asset prices and redistribute income from those unfortunate enough to be young enough to work. Between soaring house prices, soaring tuition fees, stagnant wages, and constant fiscal bungs to the elderly, the Conservatives can forget about anyone under 50 voting for them anytime soon.
Perhaps, then, they can turn to the professional classes, who benefit from these tax cuts? Well, no. The ABC1s of British society are now less likely to vote Conservative than the C2DEs. In plain English, Cameron’s referendum drove a wedge between the party and its base, which the pro-European parties were all too happy to benefit from.
What the Conservatives now have is the hangover of Boris Johnson’s successful realignment of British politics, which came at a substantial – though less discussed – cost: when your voting base, in economic terms, becomes more traditionally Labour, they’re not going to like it when you do traditionally Conservative things. And when your parliamentary party, shaped by Cameron and his successors, is as socially liberal as the average Labour voter, they won’t let you offer the socially conservative red meat that might have kept your old electorate onside.
Now Liz Truss has managed to alienate this new base, without bringing the old one back. That she was voted in by the members to do this is part of the problem; the membership doesn’t reflect the voters and neither do the socially-left-economically-right MPs. So where do the Conservatives go from here? Well, to opposition, of course.
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