In a conversation with his advisor, Bernard Donoughue, before the 1979 General Election, the then Prime Minister Jim Callaghan summed up the political mood of the country when he confided:
"You know there are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of. I suspect there is now a sea change – and it is for Margaret Thatcher."
He was of course correct, with Labour losing the election, spending the next 18 years in opposition. 45 years on, we have witnessed another sea change in our politics. Notwithstanding the disastrous campaign he ran, whatever Rishi Sunak could have said or done differently, would not have altered the course of this election. The British people have punished 14 years of drab incompetence, handing the Conservatives their worst election result ever.
There are 3 key issues, sometimes dubbed the ‘Tebbit trinity’, which have ultimately condemned the Tories to the opposition benches for the foreseeable future – Tax, Immigration and Europe.
Whilst this term has escaped the Westminster lexicon, during the Tories’ wilderness years of the late-90s to mid-noughties the ‘Tebbit trinity’ referred to broadly Thatcherite policies. A reheated Thatcherism, if you will. Named of course after one of her favoured attack-dogs, Norman Tebbit, it is a prescient warning to mark what will surely come of the incoming civil war for the soul of the Conservative Party, pitting moderate MPs against the ideological purists.
Prophesying who will win is presently a fools game. What we can be sure of, is that if the membership back those who seek to attack the government from the right (purists) over contesting the centre ground (moderates), it won’t get them anywhere near Downing Street. History tells us as much.
After the humiliation of 1997, the Tories churned out leaders who espoused the ‘Tebbit trinity’ as gospel, to the excitement of few beyond their largely pro-Thatcherite membership. William Hague fought the 2001 election over fears that Tony Blair would further European integration by adopting the euro, famously putting up a countdown board to the coming election with the slogan ‘LAST CHANCE TO SAVE THE POUND’. He ended up gaining one seat. Michael Howard fought the 2005 election on tougher immigration rules, deploying the slogan ‘IT’S NOT RACIST TO IMPOSE LIMITS ON IMMIGRATION’. He failed to break the 200 seat mark. And of course, the forgettable Iain Duncan Smith, whose brief stint as leader was defined by prioritising tax cuts over matching Labour’s spending plans, to appease his members. He barely made it past the 2-year mark as leader.
Their fortunes would finally change when David Cameron led and maintained a modernising agenda as leader, promising to match Labour’s spending plans, ditch the Eurosceptic rhetoric and embrace the new multicultural Britain. The Tories took No. 10 at the 2010 election, precisely because they distanced themselves from the doctrinal trap that is the ‘Tebbit trinity’.
Similarly in 2019, the Tories’ roaring success was achieved through a new electoral coalition off the backs of disillusioned Labour voters from their ‘red wall’ seats in the north, who were inspired by the promise of ‘levelling-up’ in their communities. The Tories of today have moved on remarkably quickly. Levelling-up promises have faded whilst the ‘Tebbit trinity’ has reasserted itself. They have only themselves to blame for being abandoned by all but true blue voters at the 2024 General Election.
Even if the ‘Tebbit trinity’ were a panacea for electoral woes, the Conservative record on tax, immigration, and Europe is hardly sparkling.
The tax burden as a percentage of GDP was running at its highest level ever in the year 2022/23. Net migration was also at its highest level ever in 2023, at an astounding 685,000. And Brexit… well, let's just say you’d have to go back to the poll tax to find anything as universally regarded as political harakiri.
The new voter base captured in 2019, stretching from the north down to the Midlands, has not seen much ‘Levelling-up’. No doubt the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have had a big hand in its fruitlessness. But whilst voters were willing to give Boris Johnson the benefit of the doubt at the start of the pandemic, his aides, ministers and he himself, partied the nights away in flagrant violation of their own lockdown rules, thereby evaporating their poll lead. Promises to make amends through rehashing the ‘Tebbit trinity’ fell upon deaf ears, their new base booted them out with tactical voting of a rare ruthlessness.
If the ‘natural party of government’ is ever going to see the inside of 10 Downing Street again, they will have to learn from Labour’s impressive turnaround from the depths plumbed by Corbyn. They will also have to escape the long shadows of Thatcherism. Much like the voters of a particular generation that will never vote for the Labour Party because their bins weren’t collected throughout the 1978 ‘Winter of Discontent’, many voters of today may never mark an X next to a Tory candidate, as a result of Liz Truss’s ‘Paleolibertarian’ agenda that sent their mortgage payments through the roof.
The new leader will instead need to focus on policies that can effectively tackle problems caused by several predecessors. Credibility on NHS waiting lists, young people being priced out of the housing market, rising poverty, and crumbling infrastructure must be reasserted if the Conservative Party is to reconnect with the voters.
Image: Office of the US Embassy in United Kingdom
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