This article was originally published on Simon Nixon’s Substack, ‘The Wealth of Nations’
Nothing has demeaned this wretched Conservative Party than the manner of its departure.
Rishi Sunak has campaigned for the last six weeks in the same the way that his party has governed for the last 14 years: with an unedifying mixture of lies, insults, and outrageous distortions that have further undermined standards in public life.
His claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is hoping for a Labour victory was a new low, even by his own debased standards. No wonder that, the more the public have seen of Sunak, the less they like him.
At the start of the election campaign, pollsters were warning that Labour would need a record swing of 12% simply to achieve a majority of one. Now, every pollster has Labour on course for a majority of at least 200 seats based on a swing of 20%.
The poll released on 2 July puts Labour on course for a majority of 318, with the Conservatives winning only 63 seats, just three ahead of the Liberal Democrats.
The Conservatives only have themselves to blame. No party can expect to inflict five prime ministers, seven chancellors, and 10 business secretaries on the public and expect to get away with it.
It is hard to think of a single positive achievement over those past 14 years.
Through a mixture of political cynicism, strategic naivety, and a childish attachment to cod-Thatcherism, they wrecked the economy.
They got Brexit done, but the country can now see this for what it was: a reckless act of national self-harm driven by ideologues who had no idea what they were doing.
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Unable to acknowledge reality, the Conservatives instead declared war on officials, institutions, allies, the rule of law, and anyone else who dared confront them with inconvenient truths. They had become a danger to anything that a Conservative Party might be expected to conserve.
Sunak had one chance to emerge from the past two years, if not with electoral success, then at least with his dignity in tact.
Conservative support may have collapsed in the wake of the Boris Johnson scandals and Liz Truss debacle, falling below 30% for the first time in the party’s history, but Sunak still had a poll lead over Starmer for economic competence right up until his party conference last October.
That was when he chose to junk his reputation as a technocrat and instead embrace Truss-style populism, scrapping the HS2 high speed trainline, junking net zero policies, and banging on about patently unaffordable tax cuts.
In attempting to neutralise the radical-right, he inevitably emboldened it – while further alienating liberal voters.
Unchecked Power?
Labour thus finds itself the beneficiary of what political scientists call ‘negative cohesion’. It will owe its victory to an overwhelming desire to kick the Conservatives out, rather than enthusiasm for its own agenda.
But that does not diminish the remarkable achievement of Keir Starmer in making his party electable again, less than five years after it was decisively rejected by voters who considered it unfit to govern.
He has worked assiduously to reassure voters that Labour can be trusted on national security and the economy. He has cloaked himself in the mantle of patriotism, rarely photographed without a Union Jack nearby, while issuing stern warnings about the need for fiscal responsibility.
His reward is that Labour is now more trusted on these issue