Crosshairs #1: Conservative Base Under Threat
How the first week of the campaign reflects the reality of the polls - the Tories are in trouble, and Labour hold a commanding position
So, it’s been about a week since Rishi Sunak called the election. What’s happened? Of course, the first days were a bit of a charade for the government, from the rain-soaked announcement that was impossible to hear over the dulcet tones of D:Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ to a campaign event at the dock the Titanic sailed from, the first few days of the campaign were a chaotic mess.
Since then, however, in two policy announcements, the Conservatives have, seemingly, regained their balance, seizing centre-stage for their agenda with two headline-grabbing policies: the promise to reintroduce national service for 18 year olds, and now a pledged ‘triple lock plus’ on pensions. But, somewhat counter-intuitively, these policies are a bad sign for the government, evidence of an increasingly shaky electoral base and, perhaps, a party that doesn’t truly expect to be in office come July 5.
Shaken Foundations
National service and a further increase to the pension lock are clear policy offers to the socially conservative voters the Conservatives have relied on over the past ten years, especially those over 65. As
has highlighted, the over 65s are the only age group that support mandatory national service as laid out by Sunak on May 26 and, of course, they are the ones to benefit from yet more money being funnelled into state pensions, already costing £124 billion in 2024 according to the Department for Work and Pensions. This large voting block was decisive in granting the Tories election victory in 2015, 2017, and 2019 - so far, so good. Except every age group apart from over 70s is now more likely to vote for Labour, making the middle-aged vote a crucial battleground if the Tories want to keep their majority. In addition, over 1.3 million Tory voters have died since 2019, mostly concentrated in the over 65 group. The Tories strategy so far, then, to offer a platform of stripping freedoms from middle-aged people’s children and of funnelling yet more of their tax into the sole age group that has benefited financially from their government, seems wrong-headed.
Importantly, however, these policies are designed to appeal to potential Reform voters. As UKIP threatened David Cameron in 2015, forcing him to pledge a referendum on Brexit, so Reform UK’s anti-immigration, right-wing critique of a Conservative party has forced Sunak to respond, with as many as a hundred seats potentially under threat. This is especially the case in the North and Midlands, those key electoral battlegrounds of 2019 that carried Boris Johnson to victory. The Tories’ voter coalition is being squeezed from both sides, therefore, with Reform to the right and, of course, Labour to the left. Sunak is having to pivot toward the Tory base, at the cost of wider appeal, in an early warning sign of the difficulties the party faces in pursuit of re-election.
Of course, this won’t be all the government has to offer. While manifestos are yet to be released, expect more explosive policies designed to capture the narrative and appeal to a hyper-Conservative core. One such policy is a pledge to abolish national insurance. First trailed in April by Hunt, it has not always been clear how serious the government was in their ‘ambition’ to abolish a tax that raised £70bn in the last financial year. But governments and parties in trouble like to promise radical change - as we have already seen this campaign. So if the Conservatives remain 20 points behind in the polls, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a more serious commitment to this policy. The price tag is enough to demonstrate its questionable feasibility - but that may not matter if the Conservative base continues to be squeezed, and Labour’s massive polling lead proves sustainable.
Disregarding the Base, Pursuing the Centre
Labour’s caution in the last two years has been the subject of numerous articles on TPI and elsewhere, and so doesn’t need a great deal of explanation. Suffice to say, the party is in a strong-enough position to be regarded as a government-in-waiting, and wants to protect its lead by not scaring swing voters away with radical policies. While this strategy has angered those on the left of the party, and may prove a headache in cities like Bristol and Brighton considering the calls for the disaffected to vote for the Greens, this has continued in the first week of the campaign. In contrast to the Conservatives, the party has gone quiet on new bold policies and continued to signal its moderation on taxation and finance.
As I say, it remains to be seen what the two manifestos will hold but, despite the Conservative attack line that Labour ‘don’t have a plan’, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have been fairly clear in what they intend to do on education, healthcare, housing and energy – relatively small-scale policies that, they believe, they can deliver in the first year or two of government to help the economy and public services along the way while they wait for the ever-elusive panacea of economic growth. One can debate if these plans meet the scale of the problems at hand for the UK, but the policy signs are certainly there that the party expects to be in government, focused on relatively small-scale acts they believe can be delivered in a potential first term of many. And it knows it can only do so if it wins that key election battleground the Conservatives are so concerned about.
From policy – a promised 2.5% of GDP spent on defence by 2030, matching the Conservatives, and accepting Brexit – to the image of Starmer in military fatigues in Estonia on a visit to soldiers there and even the simple act of including the Union Jack in every bit of party material and election broadcast, the approach is to drastically contrast the Corbyn-led party of 2015-2019. And it is not just in the ‘Red Wall’. Only three weeks ago, Labour accepted the Dover MP Natalie Elphicke into the party and announced its plan to treat people-smugglers on the English Channel as terrorists in its pitch to those worried about immigration across the country, from those northern and midland seats it lost in 2019 to the south coast, where they are hopeful of picking up more than a few seats in the Conservatives’ back yard. Defence, patriotism, and moderate intervention in the economy has constituted Labour’s offer thus far, and this is only likely to continue in the coming weeks, evidence of a party concentrating on short-term delivery and key swing voters.
Conclusion
A week in, then, and there are worrying signs for the Tories. As many predicted, the key swing group are those traditional Labour voters who voted for Brexit in 2016, and switched to the Conservatives either in 2017 or 2019. But, importantly, this key area of the Conservative majority is threatened by Reform. Without the Reform-Tory non-aggression pact agreed in 2019 the government is being squeezed from both sides. Plus, more than this battle over the swing vote, the policies of both parties have reflected the reality of the Tories’ dire polling position, with the Tories scrambling to secure their base of support among over 65s - while Labour can afford to do just the opposite, focusing on the swing vote even to the point of disregarding the left of the party.
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