The not so very strange death of Tory England

Is it existential now for the Tories?

So the counting is done and the results are in. It wasn’t a great night for Labour. They lost councillors, which is always painful. They lost a byelection less than one year into a return to government.

If four people had voted a different way in Runcorn and Helsby, Labour would have hung on there despite the worst possibly conditions for a byelection. Which is little comfort.

Those four votes set a lot of the narrative that followed about Labour. Listening to response after response talking about how long it took Blair to lose a byelection vs Starmer (while at the same time talking about how politics is now in a fractured multi-party system) was frustrating as both a Labour partisan, but also as someone who would like better political reporting.

But I worry that Labour are going to react in all the wrong ways to this and will write more about that in weeks to come. But Labour are not the story of this election.

The Tories are in a world of pain this week. And I don’t think they have the first clue what to do about it. If Labour are likely to respond badly to these results, the Tories are certain to - because I don’t think there is a good response they can offer. The ‘world’s most successful political party TM’ have basically forgotten how to win elections. They have utterly failed to reckon with what the electorate rejected about them last year and seem determined to blindly stagger to their right trying to win in the most contested pool of voters (working class, socially conservative, live in towns and could vote for Labour, Tories or Reform) without having either a differentiation strategy that appeals or a strategic message that works.

Until now, the Tories were rather relying on ‘vote for us to keep out/get rid of Labour’. And with Labour weak in the polls and the government pretty unpopular, that would make sense, but for the fact that a. It’s what they tried at the last election and the voters didn’t hate Labour more than them and b. Voters can now see that if they want to vote right to get rid of Labour, it is Reform who now look like they could actually win.

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems have been given a free field to appeal to the voters the Tories seem determined to repel and Labour uninterested in appealing to. That’s quite a big field for them. One that - if it continues to stay clear and they keep focused on not attacking Labour from the left more than on one or two strategic areas - could see them increase their vote share and possibly their seat count.

Of course, the story of these elections is not one of the left defeating the Tories but of the right eating itself. The existential tussle for the Tories is with Reform who now look like they could seriously supplant them as the main party of the right. Nigel Farage is not a man who seems allergic to hubris, but on this occasion he has earned his right to crow somewhat.

However… This is Farage we’re talking about. The man who led UKIP to a national win in the European elections 11 years and two parties ago. Nigel doesn’t play well with other children. And he’s never had anything to actually be in charge of anything before. Technically, he’s not in charge of anything now. But Reform are in charge of 10 councils. That’s 10 social care departments. 10 Lots of bin collections. 10 lots of council tax and business rate payers to contend with. Every example of flytipping in Kent will be reported on in Facebook groups and local papers. Every missed bin collection in Lincolnshire will reverberate nationally (just ask the good people of Birmingham how that feels).

They will be expected to deliver, and quickly. With no experience of delivery and a history of other Farage parties failing to do the day job preferring noisy protest to the grind of politics (I was thinking about UKIP in the EU Parliament here, but it’s also totally true of Reform in Parliament whose 4/5 MPs frequently fail to attend debates even on topics they constantly bang on about on social media).

Farage has his loyal supporters who will follow him from party to party, but on the whole, Reform are the beneficiary of being new kids on an old and tired block. They will be scrutinised in this new role of responsibility in ways they have never been before. They will inevitably get some things wrong. If their electorate are those already primed to think that politics doesn’t work at all - and who are innured to changing party, there is plenty of reason to wonder if they will still be voting Reform in 2029.

Farage has made it clear that he thinks one of his best weapons at the moment is Kemi Badenoch and he’s probably right.

Badenoch has been worse than even I thought she would be. Yes, the Tories are a party in a deep mess. But she is utterly hopeless. I thought she would make a better leader of the opposition than a potential PM, but she’s done neither. But the Tories can’t keep changing leader. And I don’t think that Robert Jenrick is the answer for them either. So they are either stuck with Badenoch or stuck looking like deeply unserious, regicidal manaics.

Nothing is certain in politics and predictions are for fools. So let me say, foolishly, that I simply do not think that Badenoch is going to be the next Prime Minister.

I am less sure on this, but I also cannot see the Tory Party as it currently stands winning the next election, however badly Labour are doing. It may be that there could be an electoral pact or coalition with Reform that takes them into power (possibly in a Reform-led government), but whether either party desires or that could be made to work electorally or logistically without either party imploding is far from clear.

The question is whether this realignment on the right, away from the Tories towards Farage, has genuine longevity.

That, I think, is a lot murkier. Look at the sentence above. The construction is deliberate.

Reform are a one man band. Sure, they have a few other operatives such as Zia Yusuf and high-profile supporters like Tim Montgomerie. But this is the Nigel show. And Nigel won’t be around forever. For a political party to last, it has to get beyond a single politician. It has to build not just a base of support but a bench of high-profile, popular (enough) talent. And at the moment, Reform show no signs of offering that.

Tice was crap when he was in charge. Lowe is gone (and frankly, beyond a few political weirdoes, no one but his mum could pick him out of a line-up). There is no one ready, willing or able to take over from Farage - which, like his idol Trump, is just how he likes it and works for him - it just doesn’t work for any party in the long term.

So it may be that the Tories are down but not out. Waiting out the end of Reform when Nigel retires for real this time (or, you know, dies which happens to all of us eventually) and reuniting the right when that happens.

This is all possible. Some of it might even be inevitable. But if that is the best the Conservative Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has to comfort themselves with right now, it is cold comfort indeed.

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