What if the Tories really are destroyed?

What will a Labour government be like against a tiny opposition Tory Party? Or even against an opposition that isn't Conservative?

Could this be the next leader of the opposition?

Two interesting pieces have been written lately that will have Tory-loathers absolutely salivating. This by Jonn Elledge in the New Statesman and this by William Atkinson in - of all places - Conservative Home.

Then, last night, came an MRP poll (i.e. one of those ones that does seat-by-seat analysis rather than just percentage polling) from Survation on behalf of Best for Britain showing the Tories on fewer than 100 seats.

This poll does not, as far as I can tell, take into account anti-Tory tactical voting. Which (as @sharonodea pointed out on Twitter) makes the tight margins in both Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt’s seats particularly interesting. Factor that in and those 100 seats might even start to look optimistic.

We have long described the Tories as ‘the natural party of government’ and this affects thinking in Labour circles even when the Tories are vastly behind in the polls or even in opposition. There is just a sense that the world will naturally revert to ‘normal’ and the Tories will bounce back ready to lead and govern and the country will let them.

This has been proven by history. The Tories have been mighty. They have been the most successful electoral party in the whole world. So, of course, it’s hard to see that changing. But let’s refer to the words of Shelley for why we might want to:

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Everything has a natural cycle. And perhaps the damage inflicted by David Cameron’s austerity, Theresa May’s fallibility, Boris Johnson’s mendacity, Liz Truss’s insanity and Rishi Sunak’s inability have finally brought down Ozymandias.

Of course, this does not feel likely. But - and whisper it - it does feel possible. So building on the interesting questions posed by Jonn and William, I want to look beyond the question of ‘Could it happen?’ to one of ‘What would it be like if it happened?”

Some time ago, before Liz Truss was formally elected as Leader, I wrote about the relationship between Labour and the Lib Dems and their electoral interdependence. The polls now probably make that interdependence less likely. But, I believe, my analysis of who the Lib Dems are likely to be after the election holds.

The Lib Dems are fully pursuing a Blue Wall strategy. That has meant they are choosing candidates who appeal to those have voted Tory previously but are now absolutely fed up of the Party and its behaviour in government. It was this group of voters that Sunak was supposed to appeal to when he was anointed, but his focus on managing an unmanageable party has seen him make several decisions that push these voters ever further into the arms of the waiting Lib Dems. Surrey Tories don’t like Lee Anderson or Suella Braverman. They aren’t the electoral target the Rwanda scheme is devised to appeal to. They wanted a decisive break with Johnson and Truss and instead got a managerial fudge that lacked managerial clout.

If these polls are right, adding in the factor of tactical voting and assuming that Labour take a number of seats in Scotland (though the Survation poll has Labour winning fewer seats in Scotland than other projections have shown), reducing the SNP haul, we could see the Tories and Lib Dems vying to be the second-largest party in a parliament utterly dominated by Labour. What would that mean for the pressures put on Labour as they navigate what will be a tricky period of governing if not of winning?

Let’s look first at the external opposition to the party. Even if the Tories are the second largest party - they are almost certainly going to go through a period of vast internal strife, calamity and navel-gazing which will mean their eyes are taken significantly off the Labour ball.

Labour did this from 2010 and more so from 2015 and it was that lack of external pressure that allowed the Tories to also turn inwards and become the living embodiment of their Id. Boris Johnson became the face of David Cameron’s referendum. David Cameron held that referendum because his biggest political headache was coming not from the opposition but from the right wing of his own party.

In this vein, while Labour will want to govern untroubled in terms of passing legislation, they should not hope to do so unscrutinised. That way a certain amount of madness lies. So it might well be that - second placed or not - the Lib Dems step into the vacuum created by Tory collapse and/or infighting.

Looking at the Lib Dems website, their news stories are dominated by stories about public sector failures. The public sector is traditional Labour territory and pressure on Wes Streeting in Health and Bridget Phillipson in Education will be particularly high as these are the areas where voters, Labour activists and Lib Dems are most in agreement that huge changes are needed and needed immediately. If the Lib Dems are those leading the opposition, formally or informally, pressure to increase investment in these areas will be higher than if it is the Tories hammering Labour and not themselves.

Lib Dems are very good single-issue campaigners. They have dominated the narrative on water pollution, for example. If Davey is leader of the opposition, and if he were to use that position well, he could focus on a few key areas such as the state of the privatised water industry, Child Mental Health Services or Local Government funding to put pressure on Labour to go further than they are currently suggesting they will on areas such as the renationalisation of failing companies such as Thames Water, investing in CAHMS or revitalising councils. They will have supporters on the Labour benches - and not just from the hard left.

I am not sure that Labour has properly factored into their thinking what an opposition from the populist-sounding left would have. Their small ‘c’ conservative caution about what can be said and done is seen entirely through the lens of their opposition being from the right. To be fair, a lot of it will be as it will come not in formal politics but from the right-leaning press. But that the Lib Dems might push them to go harder than they are prepared for, and make gains where their activists do face Labour in local government, is currently underrated in our political conversations.

Of course, the Lib Dems could be blown off course too. They might take to simply outflanking Labour on popular policies like water and rail privitisation, but their urban opposition to Labour may leave their rural opposition to the Conservatives behind in an embrace of the wilder end of identity politics - putting those Davey-lite MPs in a harder position when facing their constituents. That will need close managing from Davey, which is hard in a party more beholden to its activists than even Labour or the Tories. This is what did for Clegg’s reputation in the end. He couldn’t square what his party wanted with what his party actually did in government. The gap became a vast chasm down which a lot of their votes fell.

So the Lib Dems might find themselves victims of their own success leading to infighting about what it truly means to be a Lib Dem. Leaving Labour even more unscrutinised by anyone…

Except, let’s face it, the absolute masters of the infighting game are the Labour Party.

In a world where Labour have a 30-seat or lower majority, the hard-left Socialist Campaign Group would have quite a lot of power. They currently have 35 members but that includes many who have lost the whip some of whom - such as Claudia Webbe - will never get it back. 31 are sitting Labour MPs and under this kind of result will be expected to retain their seats.

This is, incidentally, one of the reasons I find it a bit odd that some on the left are choosing this moment to flounce dramatically or self-expel themselves, from the party. (some of whom I will miss more than others who are no loss at all) No one really cares in terms of where the party is currently and it’s a surefire way to lose any influence you might have had when the party inevitably faces problems when governing. But if Labour’s majority is smaller than anticipated, or shrinks at a following general election, the left of the Party could hold a lot of power - were they ever, ever to learn how to use it well.

However, in the case that a Labour majority is comfortable, the left will be quite isolated. Selections under Starmer have been - and let’s use charitable language here - tightly controlled. Katy Balls at the Spectator coined the term ‘Starmtroopers’ for the incoming PLP, all of whom are expected to be pretty loyal to the leadership. And for at least the first five years, that is likely to be publicly true.

But it isn’t how politics really works. Let’s not forget that pre-2015, the biggest and longest-running psychodrama in the Labour Party was not between two people with vast ideological differences, but between the two architects of New Labour - Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Politicians are an unusually ambitious group of people all of whom will, at some point or another, have dreamed about becoming Prime Minister. God, I even did myself once, long ago when I still thought about becoming an MP (something I have long since changed my mind on!).

Starmer’s position as Leader of the Labour Party will be safe for some time to come if, as expected, Labour win the election. But he will not be leader forever. He’s not immortal and all politicians have a shelf life - it’s just that few of us know how many years - or lettuces - that is going to be. So it is in that knowledge, that ambitious fellow travellers will still find ways to differentiate themselves with the Starmer project that align themselves with the membership. Not often and not always overtly but steadily over time, building up their cred for the moment that a contest finally does arrive. So they can point at such moments and say that while they have, on the whole, been loyal they are also their own man/woman.

In both the small majority scenario and the Tory wipeout scenario, the pressure on a Labour government could come from its left as much as it’s right. Starmer and Reeves will have to be aware of this and calibrate accordingly.

As mentioned earlier, one thing that won’t change is the pressure on them from the right by the right wing press. However, if that press is also comprehensively proved to be out of touch with the electorate - and therefore their readership and potential readership - it could be that one of the most important long-term outcomes of this election moment will be the long-awaited loosening of the stranglehold that press has had on British politics and the way it is reported in the media. I do hope the BBC will take note.

We could still be months from the election and a lot could happen between now and then. There could even be a Tory revival though it is hard to see how that happens, though as this is Easter, I am sure that more than one Tory MP has spent the day meditating on miracles.

Still, the wipeout scenario above is not likely. But (whisper it again) it is possible. And Labour should be putting thought into what that means and how to manage a very different politics from the one they were expecting.

Happy Easter.

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