It’s a pitiful sight: a prime minister reduced to arguing that he is only going to lose by a little bit, rather than a lot. But that is the message that Rishi Sunak has settled on after his mortifying Old Testament drubbing in the local elections.
It began with vote projections on Friday. All of a sudden, the bloodbath of the night before looked like a tolerable stream – a more subtle, more survivable event. A projection by Professor Michael Thrasher for Sky News suggested Labour would be the largest party in a general election but fall 32 seats short of a majority.
Thrasher’s projection was seized on by many broadcast journalists. They face an election which seems to have already been decided months ahead of time, followed by a long period of workmanlike no-drama Labour government under an unflashy and sober prime minister. It’s a disaster for political journalism, which has come to rely on the daily churn of political chaos for readers’ attention.
It also suited Sunak, who used the projection to try and replay the 2015 Tory election campaign in which the Conservatives portrayed then-SNP leader Alex Salmond with Labour leader Ed Miliband in his pocket. “These results suggest we are heading for a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party,” the Prime Minister told The Times. “Keir Starmer propped up in Downing Street by the SNP, Liberal Democrats and the Greens would be a disaster for Britain.”
Today, Tory MPs will listen to Sunak, campaign chief Isaac Levido and party chair Richard Holden at an election presentation in which they claim that the gap between the Tories and Labour is lower than it appears in most polls. The message is clear: it’s not over yet. Things are tighter than they appear. It’s still all to play for.
Journalists and politicians alike are perfectly within their rights to seize on the projection. Thrasher is a highly respected figure with a long record in this area. All sorts of things could yet happen which might lead to a hung parliament. Public opinion can change. Polls can narrow. But on the basis of the data we have right now, we are not heading for a hung parliament. Things are not tighter than they appear. It’s not all to play for.
Look at the trends underneath the numbers.
Elections in Britain are not really about counting the votes. They are about achieving the most efficient geographical distribution of your vote. Political parties want to avoid piling up votes uselessly in constituencies which have already been won, as Labour has done in urban centres in recent elections, then watching as they’re narrowly defeated in marginal seats across the board.
This is precisely what Starmer seems to be achieving. He is performing best in Leave-voting seats, building support in the areas he needs in order to flip a marginal red. This is the result of a concerted political strategy which has seen the party partly distance itself from liberal progressive voters, who are overwhelmingly congregated in cities, and appeal to a broader range of voters in towns and even rural areas.
We’re also seeing sustained signs of anti-Tory tactical voting. In wards where Labour started off in second place against ruling Conservatives, their support increased by nearly nine points and the Liberal Democrats barely moved at all. But in wards where the Liberal Democrats were in second place, their vote was up nearly six points and Labour’s only two. These parties are effectively operating a united front – not because of an explicit pact by their leaders, but because voters are willing to opt for whoever has the best chance of defeating the Conservatives in their area.
Now look at the third party vote. Coming out of the local elections, the Thrasher projection put parties other than the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems on 22 per cent. This reflected the fact that many independent candidates did very well and the Greens in particular ate into Labour’s vote in the cities as part of the anguish over Gaza. But in a general election, we would expect many of these voters to come back to Labour. This is generally what people do: protest at a local election, come back during a general. Many might not. Some certainly will.
The dynamic for the Tories is slightly different. The Reform party, which is causing considerable trouble on the Conservative’s right flank, hardly appeared in any of the wards contested in the local election, but leader Richard Tice has said that he intends to put up a candidate in every constituency. The potential damage that could inflict on the Tories was demonstrated by the Blackpool South by-election, which saw the party come within a few votes of overtaking the Tories. In short, last week’s vote is likely to have overrepresented the immediate Green threat to Labour on the left while underrepresenting the immediate Reform threat to the Tories on their right.
It also did not include Scotland, because there were no elections held there. As Thrasher said: “This figure assumes also that votes for the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales, places where no local elections took place, are unchanged from the previous election.” That is a rather heroic assumption. The SNP is in serious trouble. Labour is recovering north of the border. It’s unlikely to be a tidal wave, but polling suggests the party could pick up over 20 MPs in Scotland.
These elements paint a picture of utter despair for the Conservatives. Labour’s vote is efficiently distributed, there is strong evidence of anti-Tory tactical voting, third parties present more of a threat to the Conservatives than Labour, and Scotland will likely bring additional Labour seats into the final tally.
Wherever you look, from whatever angle, the Tories are under assault. In combination, it is devastating. It’s the dynamic we have seen in opinion polling. It’s the dynamic we have seen in countless by-elections, including last week’s. It’s the reason why the overwhelming majority of polling experts do not believe there is going to be a hung parliament, but instead expect a Labour landslide.
But even if none of this were true, Sunak’s tactic would still not be effective. David Cameron could run his “coalition of chaos” message in 2015 because, for all their faults, the Conservatives had run a stable government with the Liberal Democrats during the preceding years.
That is no longer the case. The Tories have cycled through multiple leaders, each one seemingly more inept than the one who came before them. They have presided over the decay of our public services and a comatose economy. Each morning, a new figure on the Tory right attacks Sunak in the press, as former immigration minister Robert Jenrick is doing today.
The Tory party is the coalition of chaos. And once you’ve adopted that role, it becomes rather harder to use it as a warning about someone else.