“Extinction-level territory.” That was the assessment of one Tory insider on the shock poll by YouGov, which puts the Conservatives down in fourth place, behind even the Liberal Democrats. Conducted 18-19 May, the voting intention survey puts Reform top on 29 per cent, with Labour on 22 per cent, the Liberal Democrats on 17 per cent, and the Tories down to 16 per cent.
The poll reinforces the findings of one from Find Out Now earlier in May, which put Reform as high as 33 per cent. Professor John Curtice suggested Reform would get 30 per cent of the national vote share, given its successes in the local elections. The electorate is fracturing: the Greens are now the fifth party to poll at 10 per cent or more, and the combined support for Labour and the Conservatives has fallen below 40 per cent. None of this looks like a two-party system anymore.
But it is the Tories feeling existential angst, or dread. This is a historic low for the party – worse than the nadir after the 1997 election, worse even than June 2019, when it slipped into fourth place below the (then-named) Brexit Party. Theresa May stood down. And there was hope – justified, if only temporarily so – of a revival under Boris Johnson. Is there any hope now?
Recent events – the poll, the locals – have generated renewed speculation about Kemi Badenoch’s longevity. “It’s game over for her,” was one MP’s bleak assessment. Perhaps. The number of Conservative MPs clinging to their faith in Badenoch (“she is doing as well as can be expected… she just needs time to turn things around…”) is dwindling. But there is reticence too: will another change of leader, so soon into the parliament, help? One Tory strategist close to a former prime minister warned that, while polls like this are enough to derail the party and “fuel a constant nervous breakdown”, it was hard to see how things would improve under a different leader.
The most talked-about contender to replace Badenoch remains leadership runner-up Robert Jenrick, who has continued from the shadow cabinet to push for the Tories to move towards a tougher stance on immigration to win over Reform supporters. “I want to put Reform out of business. I want to send Nigel back to retirement,” was Jenrick’s message last week – interpreted by some as an attempt to make the Reform leader seem tired and outdated, positioning himself as essentially Farage’s successor.
But beyond Jenrick’s closest supporters, who are agitating for a change as soon as possible, there is doubt that a “Reform lite” approach will help the Tories much. “Why vote for us when you could have the full-fat version?” continues to be a major concern.
On the other side of the party, some MPs still harbour hopes that a figure like James Cleverly could shift the Tories to the centre, making them more competitive against the Lib Dems, hammering home the message that they are more “grown-up” and “serious” than Reform. But there is less enthusiasm for this now than there was when Cleverly was running to be leader. Talk of him being a better media performer than Badenoch (whose speeches and PMQs sessions are becoming increasingly irrelevant) continues, but there is growing consensus that this is unlikely to be enough to turn the party’s fortune’s around.
And, for all the frustration of Conservative MPs, despondent at Badenoch’s failure to make any kind of start on rebuilding the party, there is sympathy too. Sympathy, if not for her personally, than at least for the position she is in: no mainstream party has ever had to try to recover in opposition while squeezed by a government with such a huge majority and an insurgent party cannibalising its base.
Ironically, the failures of Labour government since entering office in July may actually be harming the Conservatives. It is too soon for people who furiously abandoned them ten months ago to even consider returning to the Tories, but with Labour’s sharp fall in popularity, disenchanted voters are casting around for alternatives. (The Liberal Democrats are also benefiting from this trend.) “It has let a huge number of grumpy voters out into the wild long before they are prepared to look at the Tories again,” one party insider warned. It would in fact be preferable for Keir Starmer to have had a strong first year, giving the Conservatives a chance to rebuild before trying to win swing voters back from Labour, without the panic of being replaced as the de facto opposition by Reform.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson is still bobbing around, stealing the limelight from Badenoch with his colourful language (see his response to Starmer’s EU reset deal) and fanning the rumours about a potential comeback just enough to be a distraction. But there is doubt that even the Tory hero who revived the party’s fortunes in 2019 against the threat of Farage could do so in the present climate. Johnson’s brand has been irreversibly damaged – by Covid, and by the changes to the immigration system that saw over a million people come to the UK under his “points-based” rules in 2023. Farage chose to have the Brexit Party stand aside in Tory-held seats to help Johnson win his majority in 2019. No one in the party harbours any illusions the Reform leader would do so again now. Not with polls like this.
“This is the price of 14 years of croc-feeding,” one former Tory strategist told me despairingly, alluding to Norman Tebbit’s reflection that politics is about shooting the crocodile nearest the boat. But far from shooting the crocodile, they have been indulging it by moving their positions closer to Farage on Brexit, immigration – “chucking it meat now and then… and now look how big it has grown! And it is on the boat.”
[See more: Are the Blairites still the future?]
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