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How could the Tories win?

How could the Tories win?

Nothing in politics is impossible. So what would the Tories need to do to change their fortunes?

Emma Burnell's avatar
Emma Burnell
Aug 23, 2023
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How could the Tories win?
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The Chancellor Rishi Sunak signing the devolution deal for… | Flickr

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A recent poll from Deltapoll has Labour 25 points ahead of the Tories.

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The same poll has Stamer’s approval rating at 27 points above Sunak’s.

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These are really the three areas that you need to look at when considering how a country is likely to vote at the next election. Do voters currently want to vote for them, do they prefer their leader to the opposition and do they think they will help with their ability to live a decent life?

These gaps would be pretty historic if it weren’t for Liz Truss whose popularity plunged to an astonishing -80

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In many ways, Truss helps Sunak in that he can’t help but look better by comparison. However, the general narrative the Tories were trying to drive before the local elections that Sunak was narrowing the gap has been proved - thus far - laughably false.

Sometimes in politics, the weather just changes. Voters get sick and tired and there is little that an incumbent party can do to change that. But some parties do claw their way back from such levels of unpopularity. So here I ask what can the Tories do to turn this around.

For any election to be won, a party needs to do two things: Maximise their own vote in the most efficient way and depress the vote of the likely alternative as much as possible - again doing so efficiently.

So what are the areas the Tories could use to do these things and how might they go about it? Below I will look at the following things that I think will be essential to minimising Tory losses. I don’t think they’ll be enough as things stand, but I think it’s important to see what the Tories should prioritise and for Labour to make sure they are prepared to counter them.

These largely fall into four main categories which I have ranked by how easy or otherwise they might find them to do.

  1. Managing their electoral coalition and breaking up the coalition against them.

  2. Hammering Labour on supposed policy impact.

  3. Closing their image gap with voters.

  4. Having a fresh offer for the electorate.

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