AFTER THE UK'S 2024 GENERAL ELECTION: 'WITHER THE TORIES. WHITHER THE TORIES?'

What a difference an ‘h’ makes. And a day. That day being July 4th 2024. The heavy defeat of the Conservative Party at the recent general election and the landslide Labour victory is of historic proportions. As one reflects on it, one recalls other landslide victories over the past century (and a bit): 1906, 1931, 1945, 1983, 1997 and 2001. What insights might UK history provide us with, as we assess the extraordinary events of July 2024 and the possible future(s) of the defeated Conservative Party??

THE LIBERAL LANDSLIDE…

In 1906, there occurred a 5.4% swing from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Party. It was the largest in modern times to that date, and (comparing seats contested in both 1900 and 1906), the overall Conservative vote fell by 11.6%. The Liberals won 397 seats, Conservatives 156, the Labour Representation Committee (soon named just ‘Labour’) 29, Irish nationalists 81. A rudimentary Welfare State was promised by the Liberals to a nation in which recently enfranchised working people (1867 for many urban workers, 1884 for many rural workers) increasingly demanded more from a nation in which at least one third lived below the, newly-coined, ‘poverty line’ and in which trade union rights were threatened by Conservative legislation.

The Liberals would remain in power until the catastrophe of WWI was added to the pre-war threat of civil war in Ireland, massive industrial conflict (the forerunner of the 1926 General Strike) and bitter parliamentary battles as the Tories sought to use their inbuilt majority in the House of Lords to thwart Liberal legislation. When the smoke of war cleared in 1918, the Liberal Party was a broken force and the future would be contested by the Conservative and Labour parties.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION…

In 1931, the National Government alliance won 516 seats (of which 470 were Tories, 33 were Liberals, 13 were so-called ‘National Labour’), Labour took 52 seats. In the wake of the Wall Street Crash (1929), the previous Labour government had collapsed and the parliamentary party had splintered. Its old leader and PM, MacDonald, had taken some of the party into the new ‘National Government,’ while those Labour MPs who refused to join this government, with its Conservative-led austerity policies (claimed as the correct way to respond to the deepening Depression of the 1930s), went into opposition. It was almost a decade before a united Labour Party reemerged with a role in (wartime coalition) government, 1940-1945.

THE BIRTH OF THE WELFARE STATE...

In 1945, Labour won 393 seats, Conservatives 197, Liberals 12, National Liberals 11. The old Liberal party had broken apart. The age of the Welfare State had dawned. And it would be ushered in by the Labour Party led by Attlee. Although highly respected as a victorious war leader, Churchill had been decisively rejected by a national electorate (including huge numbers of armed forces voters) who enthusiastically bought into the Labour promise of a new nation that would protect its citizens ‘from the cradle to the grave.’ The Tories were too closely associated with the old world of the 1930s.

THE FALKLANDS FACTOR…

In 1983, the Conservatives won 397 seats, Labour 209, Liberal-SDP Alliance 23, others 21. It gave the Tories (after the Falklands War victory), under Thatcher, the most decisive election victory since Labour in 1945 (with a majority of 144 seats). This was the first of two consecutive Tory landslide victories. Labour faced wilderness years, as the party had lurched to the left under Foot between 1980 and 1983 with disastrous results at the polls (a movement eventually resisted by Kinnock, 1983-1992). After a decade of mounting industrial strife and economic decline in the 1970s, the newly energised Thatcher government launched the ‘Thatcherite’ revolution, designed to roll back the state, privatise large areas of the (nationalised) economy, and curb (many would say ‘break’) the power of the trade unions. This would soon culminate in the violent confrontation of the Miners’ Strike. It was a massive change from the post-war consensus of a mixed economy.

THE TRIUMPH OF ‘NEW LABOUR’…

In 1997, Labour took 419 seats, Conservatives 165, Liberal Democrats 46, SNP 6, Plaid Cymru 4, others 19. Major was defeated by Labour under Blair, with Labour having a 179-seat majority and its total of 419 seats being the highest ever won by the Labour Party to that date. It was the first decisive Labour victory over the Tories since 1966 and it ended 18 years of Tory rule (the longest continuous rule by any party in modern British history). Labour replaced a Tory Party that was deeply divided over the future (if there was one) of the Thatcherite movement (the ‘Iron Lady’ having been overthrown in 1990 in a Tory power struggle, as the party faced mounting opposition and internal conflicts) and was tearing itself apart in an internal ideological civil war over EU membership.

AND AGAIN…

In 2001, there was another Labour landslide victory, with Labour taking 413 seats, Conservatives 166, LibDems 52. But other trends were continuing to stir: SNP 5, Plaid Cymru 4, and UKIP beginning to nibble at (primarily) the Tory vote (UKIP would surge upwards in 2015). The eventual transition from PM Blair to PM Brown finally led to the latter’s resignation in 2010 (having failed to secure LibDem support following that year’s general election), in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, bitter national divisions over Blair’s support for the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the 2010 general election which had cost Brown his parliamentary majority.

What followed was the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government, 2010–2015 and the eventual (solely)Tory government that lasted from 2015 to 2024. It was a decade marked by a nation deeply divided by Brexit (2016) and its ensuing turbulence, as reflected in a bewildering cavalcade of Tory PMs: May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak. And in the middle was the upheaval of the global Covid pandemic, lockdown(s), and the dysfunctional Johnson government, a brief interlude of ‘Trussonomics’ and, finally, the Sunak premiership, which ended in an electoral defeat of historic proportions in July 2024. The hubris following the decisive 2019 Tory victory in the ‘Red Wall’ (as Labour floundered under the leadership of Corbyn and the influence of ‘Momentum’) has led to nemesis in less than 5 years. As this occurred, the Tory party shifted further to the right, as both a consequence of the kind of party it had become after Brexit and as the threat of ‘UKIP 2.0’ reappeared in the form of Reform, a kind of ‘Ghost of Brexit Past’ reimagined as the ‘Ghost of the Fear of Immigration Present.’ And, possibly, we may yet see it morph into the ‘Ghost of Right-wing Populism Yet to Come.’

CHANGE…

July 4th 2024 has brought a staggering change, after 14 years of Tory (and briefly Tory-dominated coalition) governments. The numbers tell that tale: Labour 412 seats, Conservatives 121, Lib Dems 72, SNP 9, Reform 5, Green 4, Plaid Cymru 4, others 23.

A worrying feature is the continued downward trajectory of voter turnout. When the Liberals gained their historic 1906 landslide, they did so on a huge turnout of 83.2% of the electorate. The landslide of 2024 was on a turnout that did not quite reach 60% (59.9%). Now, that massive contrast is, of course, based on two very different franchise arrangements but it is still astonishing. More relevant is the fact that more recent landslides reveal a modern downward movement on the basis of the same franchise. The turnout in 2024 was down from the turnout in 2019 of 67.3%. That was below the turnout in 1997 of 71.4%. The pattern is clear. This declining engagement of the modern electorate with the political process is a matter of very real concern.

With 650 MPs being elected, Labour needed 326 seats to achieve an overall majority (ie have more MPs than all the other parties combined). As the results show, it has massively exceeded this number in a landslide victory. In doing so, it has reversed its worst post-war election result which occurred in 2019.?

The Lib Dems have done very well indeed, with their best result in a century. Reform has gained a noteworthy parliamentary presence (they will hope it’s a beachhead for further advances) and did very great damage to the Tories in many places. This achievement is masked by the fact that they only gained 5 MPs, despite getting 14.3% of the national vote. In contrast, the LibDems gained 71 MPs with 12.2% of the vote. Such are the anomalies of the UK’s first past the post electoral system. The SNP have been battered and the political landscape in Scotland has been dramatically changed as a consequence. And the Greens must be very pleased and will use their increased parliamentary representation to push the environmental issues harder. Sinn Fein is now the largest Northern Irish party and this will have significant effects on the power-politics there.

But for the Conservative Party, a campaign that started badly has ended in disaster, even if not the total wipe-out that some polls had predicted. It is their worst general election result since 1906, when they got just 156 seats. All in all, history has been made.

What is particularly striking is how the Tory victory in 2019 (which was a significant ‘little landslide’) has fizzled out in just four and a half years. At that point the capture of the ‘Red Wall’ appeared to offer the prospect of an election-winning ‘One-Nation Toryism’ emerging, reminiscent of Disraeli’s achievement in the late 19th century. Unfortunately for the Tories, this extraordinary political experiment was overseen by politicians as unsuited for the responsibilities of high office as Johnson and Truss. And was largely in the hands of a group of Tory MPs who, arguably, only became so influential in the aftermath of centrist Tories exiting politics post Brexit. The relationship of the party to centrism is a key part of the story. Encouraged by the electoral results (in 2019) of the slogan ‘Getting Brexit done,’ they tacked more and more to the right, assuming this to be the lesson learned from that ‘Red Wall’ victory, as well as being in line with their own personal views. It was also a strategy designed to avoid being outflanked on the right; a pressing concern as Reform emerged. However, the matter is complex because, as they moved further right, they became increasingly detached from more moderate ‘Blue Wall’ Tory voters of the centre-right (though not from the party membership) and from a more centrist nation. At the same time, many 2019 northern Tory voters realised that ‘levelling up’ was a slogan not a serious policy. This did for the ‘One-Nation’ experiment. The rest, as they say, is history.

WHAT NEXT?

The wheel of fortune has turned, with giddying speed.

A survey by Helm-Deltapoll, before the 2024 election, revealed that among 2019 Tory voters a striking 43% thought that, if the Tories lost in 2024, they should move further right and adopt policies like those of Reform. On the other hand, 41% felt that the party should return to the centre. It also found no consensus as to who should replace Sunak as the Tories entered the troubled waters following a defeat. In conclusion, the analysts considered that the poll represented ‘by far the biggest fracturing of support for either main party in the last 80 years.’

So, what next for the Conservative Party as a consequence of this? And how might a century of UK election landslides act as pointers to what could ensue for the defeated party? Where on the political spectrum will the Tories eventually land, once the dust has settled: ‘centre-right,’ ‘right,’ ‘far right’? Or maybe the party is over for the Conservative Party? Whither the Tories?

Scenario 1. A BROKEN BRAND?

The Tories are badly damaged. As the Tory Disraeli said of Gladstone’s Liberal cabinet in 1872: ‘Behold a range of exhausted volcanoes.’ Like the Liberal Party in 1931 (despite their past landslide in 1906), yesterday’s triumph has become today’s collapse. Split over Brexit in 2016, torn by ideological divisions since then (when historically the Tories used to do pragmatism and be flexible on ideology), they will remain as a much-reduced party of the ‘right’, fighting with a rising Reform over the future of right-wing ideology in the UK. Not wiped-out, as some polls had predicted, but very badly damaged.

Scenario 2. TORIES REVAMPED?

Like Labour, after its heavy defeats in 1983 and 2019, there will be a Tory civil war, but the party will eventually reset to its historic position (established pre-Thatcher and revived after 1997 under Cameron) as a party of the centre-right. After 1945, the party reluctantly recognised reality and accepted the kind of world (at least in part) brought into being by Labour’s 1945 landslide victory. It became the centre-right party of the 1960s and 1970s (pre-Thatcher). It could do that again.

Or it may abandon the centre ground, but in a measured and calculated way, as it did in the lead up to its 1983 triumph under Thatcher. In which case, it may yet return as the right-wing option (maybe in 10 years time).

Scenario 3. BACK TO THE FUTURE?

Just as Labour lurched more to the left after 1983 (during the age of Militant), and again briefly under Corbyn in the ‘age of austerity’ and Momentum, so the Tory shift to the right (so apparent since 2016) will accelerate. The centre ground will be left to others, as the march rightward occurs. This third scenario has echoes of the 1930s. With far-right ‘populism’ (aka illiberal, nativist, anti-immigrant authoritarianism) ascendant across Europe, and accompanying the victory of ‘Trump 2.0’ in the USA, they will reinvent themselves as a party of the ‘hard right,’ merging with Reform and expressing its character as a culture-wars party, tapping into the anxieties of the electorate. Maybe it will even become a hybrid ‘Tory-Faragism.’ The last possibility being dependent on whether Farage can continue to get increasing traction from his anti-immigration stance, to make up for his highly unpopular positivity towards Trump and Putin.

Which scenario will it be?

Wither the Tories. Whither the Tories?

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