The Conservatives are going to lose the next election.
- We have had conference season but that changed nothing. There were headlines (remember HS2? Suella Braverman's speech?), but none that will linger in the memory or sway the undecided.
- Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire have fallen.
- Starmer has declared that "a woman is an adult female, so let’s clear that one up", without the heavens falling in, so either the Culture Wars have been won or, more likely, the combatants on the Left have agreed a tactical ceasefire until after Starmer's victory.
- Gaza has attacked Israel and the streets of England have become alive with people chanting "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", but we all know that Starmer is sound on anti-Semitism. Moreover, to the extent that his party is less than wholly secure in its belief in Israel's right to defend itself (which it is, definitely), it is, I suspect, closer to the median voter than, say, the Conservative Friends of Israel are.
- The biggest issues - the economy, immigration - continue to trend in unexciting directions that will not rescue an unexciting Prime Minister.
Do I hear you say that Starmer's Labour is an empty vessel that stands for nothing in particular, that his policies are unconvincing and his solutions inadequate? It matters not. The voters are tired of the full-to-brim-and-overflowing vessels that the Conservatives have presented to them since 2010, each filled with a beverage of an entirely different flavour, and they've decided that it's time for a change. It is nothing to do with Sir Keir that his Labour Party was so far behind the Conservatives in the long-forgotten days of mid-2021, nor it is anything to do him that it is so far ahead in late-2023: the Conservatives have simply lost the Mandate of Heaven.
In short, absent some extraordinary and unforeseeable event, that nice Mr Sunak is going to follow that nice Mr Major's example and lose a General Election to a North London lawyer.
So far, so obvious. But what's next?
Predicting the future is a famously a tricky business. I suspect that we can do little better than look at the fundamentals. Major famously left a golden economic legacy to a highly-talented politician; by contrast, Sunak leaves a decent economic legacy to a competent politician. That means that there is a fair chance that the Conservatives will only lose the next one or two General Elections, rather than their previous record of losing three in a row with only a win on points on the fourth. But even if a week is not that long a time in politics, 10 years certainly is: in 2013, the UK was in the EU, Starmer was the DPP and Sunak was working for his father-in-law.
There is, however, one certainty in life: the Conservatives will come back wanting to fight the last war.
- "Fourteenth earl" and "elegant anachronism" Alec Douglas-Home lost to impeccably meritocratic go-ahead, modern Harold Wilson; so the Tories turned to impeccably meritocratic, go-ahead, modern Ted Heath to win next time.
- Ted Heath was destroyed by the unions; the Tories hunkered in their bunker and came back with Thatcher and a steely determination to destroy the unions.
- John Major was destroyed by Europe; the Tories obsessed about Europe for years, finally decided not to "bang on" about it, then as soon as they won a majority they decided to put the quietus to Europe once and for all.
The pattern is a fixed one: the defining feature of each Conservative administration is the attempt to revenge themselves on the Big Thing that ended the previous one.
So, what is the Big Thing that is ending this period of Conservative rule? It is not as obvious as it has been for previous governments. For one thing, it's not Brexit: the Conservatives won two elections since the Brexit vote and the 2019 election - the real Brexit one - was a convincing victory.
I think there two plausible Big Things that are bringing down this Government, one a matter of style and one a matter of substance. The Conservatives have a choice as to which one they consider important. My sincere hope is that they choose the issue of substance.
But first, style. Polite opinion has turned against the Conservatives because of "cake". Not just "cakeism" and "ambushed by cake" but the whole apparent absence of "grown-ups in the room", "steady hand at the tiller", "boring competence" and all of those kinds of thing. Dominic Cummings, on this view, is part of the problem just as much as Liz Truss: too many misfits and weirdos, not enough grey men (and women) in grey suits.
Appearances certainly count, and I don't doubt that part of Starmer's appeal is that he offers the appearance of steadiness. But I don't think this gets to the real heart of the issue. After all, Sunak offers pretty much all the steadiness, neat hair and conventional acceptability that Johnson and Truss lacked (although I accept that Truss' hair is not open to criticism), yet he has not been noticeably rewarded for it in the opinion polls.
No, I think the real problem, the real dragon that the Tories should prepare to slay while biding their time in opposition, is a problem of substance. The "Boosters" will tell you that it's a lack of growth. I think they overdo the pessimism (and I've said so, repeatedly), but they are directionally right: this country could do with improving its citizens' standard of living. If the Tories did nothing during their sabbaticals other than plan how to improve the growth rate then they would not have wasted their time .
But it goes deeper than that. The country is not actually becoming poor or breaking down - yet it feels that way to a lot of people. There is a pervasive malaise that needs addressing. Why is that?
I think there is a feeling that the Goverment can’t do anything. It can’t build anything (the cancellation of HS2, even if sensible in itself, felt like a capitulation), it can’t enforce the borders, it can’t stop Just Stop Oil making a nuisance of themselves. It can’t even control the public sector: we have had 13 years of Conservative government yet the stories of newly-hire public sector personnel and continuing practices are ever-shocking.
Quite what causes this governmental incapacity is unclear. It may be some combination of the 'Blob', judicial review, human rights law, the prevailing 'woke' mores of young graduates and sheer institutional inertia. But this thing - whatever it is - seems to me like the kind of thing that a future Conservative government would want to revenge itself on, as once it revenged itself on the trade unions and Britain's place in the EU.
On this view, the likes of Liz Truss and Dominic Cummings are not embarrassments to be hidden away and forgotten about as offences against the rules of style and sensible centrism, but rather they are pointers to a different way of doing things, to be considered on their merits. Perhaps things need to be done rather differently and the different suggestions that those two individuals have come up with - and note that they do not at all agree on those suggestions - might be worth a second look.
We shall see. The Conservative Party is not famous for loving ideas. But it does like to win.
