Tory voters are no longer scared of Labour

Amid all the discussion in Tory circles about whether the next election will have more in common with the narrow victory of 1992 or the landslide defeat of 1997, nobody has ever made the case for 1993. But after the Conservatives’ shattering loss of two of their nominally ‘safest’ seats to Labour in by-elections in Tamworth and Mid-Bedfordshire last night, it is time for that year to be given a podium in the debate.

The election which took place in 1993 in Canada was a near-extinction level event for its Conservative party, which went from an outright majority in the House of Commons in Ottawa to just two seats. While it would be surprising to see the British Tory party plumb quite those depths, the idea of a landslide defeat significantly worse than the one which occurred in 1997, which left it with 165 seats, has suddenly become quite feasible.

The sheer scale of the opinion shifts which powered Labour to victory in two Tory heartlands last night is hard to digest. In Mid-Beds, a previous Tory majority of almost 25,000 was turned into a Labour one of 1,200. In Tamworth, a Tory majority of almost 20,000 became a Labour one of 1,300. In the former seat, Labour even took a strong showing by the Liberal Democrats, who won almost a quarter of the vote, in its stride, making its victory all the more remarkable.

It is, of course, possible for Conservative MPs to comfort themselves with the notion that their habitual voters did not in the main switch to Labour but simply stayed at home, hence the relatively low turnouts. But who says they will come back for the general election? It would seem that many feel more hostile towards the party than any other group of voters does. 

Coming just a few days before the first anniversary of Rishi Sunak taking the reins at Downing Street, next Tuesday, these are predominantly the Prime Minister’s defeats, too. Yes, one can say that in each case the outgoing MPs, Nadine Dorries and Christopher Pincher, made a particular contribution to the Conservative brand becoming reviled. But these are damning public verdicts on Sunak’s nerdy and underpowered style of leadership. A premier who has won no popularity contest other than among parliamentary colleagues is bombing with the British electorate.

Just as all of his five key pledges, made in January, are currently being missed – stopping the boats and cutting NHS queues particularly grievously – so his conference season offerings have also fallen flat. It turns out that proposing to reform A-levels over two parliamentary terms and raising the legal smoking age by a year every year were not the game-changing ideas that the PM and his tight-knit circle imagined them to be. Perhaps the best that can be said is that a fag end prime minister might as well end fags.

His dumping on the record of every prior Conservative leader this century, as he sought to convince the electorate that he represented an overdue change to ‘long-term thinking’, isn’t looking like the brightest of ideas either. The trouble is that voters appear to have believed the bit about his predecessors being rubbish, but not the bit about him being any good.

And even the great pivot on HS2, which was a big enough policy switch to make voters sit up and take notice, was bungled thanks to Sunak keeping Transport Secretary Mark Harper out of the loop for so long that the details of a proposed new ‘Network North’ were not properly nailed down and started to fall apart as soon as they were unveiled. 

All the signs are that two corrosive factors for the Conservatives are now well-established. First, habitual Tory-leaning voters are no longer scared of Labour. Sir Keir Starmer’s marginalisation of the Left has paid dividends and his leadership of his party has at last acquired a sense of solidity. His clear approach to the Israel-Gaza crisis has reinforced that impression. This is a significant achievement on his part, removing from the Tory locker their one real superpower: the basic unelectability of the alternative.

It has left space for the second factor: that millions of people no longer feel they have to hold their noses and keep voting Tory, but can instead punish every broken pledge, let down and act of vanity to their hearts’ content.

‘Winning in these Tory strongholds shows that people overwhelmingly want change and they’re ready to put their faith in our changed Labour party to deliver it,’ Starmer said early today in typically unlyrical and matter-of-fact tones. Perhaps someone will come up with a compelling case for disputing such an interpretation. I certainly can’t think of one.