A Future Out of Government?
by Will Holloway
“To be, or not to be, that is the question”. It’s a question that is as relevant today as it was when Shakespeare wrote it over 420 years ago. After the next General Election, if Labour maintains its poll lead, it’s likely the Conservative Party will reflect on its own future: left, right, or unity?
Current polls suggest that if a General Election were held tomorrow, the polls didn’t change and undecided voters didn’t vote, the Conservative Party would be left with less than 200 MPs and Keir Starmer would be Prime Minister with the largest Parliamentary Labour Party since 2005.
In the UK, the last decade has seen a period of massive political uncertainty. In that time, there have been three General Elections, two UK-wide referendums, and numerous local and mayoral elections. Some have returned outcomes that have supported the status quo and others have favoured change. All have reinforced the fact that electoral alliances and dynamics are shifting.
At the 2019 General Election, 365 Conservative MPs were elected to Westminster. Boris Johnson was Prime Minister. Jeremy Corbyn had just resigned as Leader of the Labour Party. The Conservative Government enjoyed the largest parliamentary majority since Margaret Thatcher walked back into Downing Street in 1987. However, one thing that went broadly unnoticed at the time were the margins of victory. Of the 365 conservative MPs in 2019, over a third (128) had majorities under 10,000. Of those races, Labour were ranked second in 98 constituencies but the Liberal Democrats still came second in a further 22.
That leaves 237 Conservative MPs that were elected in 2019 with majorities over 10,000. Margins of error and landslides aside, these are the constituencies the Conservatives have the best chance of holding at the next election.
The common perception in Westminster is that the Conservative Party, if returned to opposition, will swing to the right. And that the duration of its wilderness years will depend on the scale of the defeat.
Looking at the voting records of the 237 MPs most likely to form the next Conservative Parliamentary Party, is it possible to forecast now what these MPs might do in the future? And to judge whether this view will prove correct?
Recent rebellions against the government include: 18 of the 237 voting against the decision to delay the switch to zero emissions vehicles, 13 of the 237 voting to support the cross-party amendment on contaminated blood, while 23 of 237 rebelled against the Government whip to abstain on the Rwanda Bill.
Separately, nearly 40% of the 237 are members of the Conservative Environment Network caucus. At the same time, after analysing data from Royal Holloway and Survation on the outlook of each current Conservative MP on a left-right spectrum on the economy, researchers from the centre right think tank Onward found no correlation between the size of an MP’s majority and their reported position on the economic spectrum.
Taken together, this evidence suggests that however many Conservative MPs are unseated at the next General Election, there may not be a meaningful change in the average position of the remaining Conservative Parliamentary Party.
As a result, in a future leadership contest, what seems most likely is that there will be two parallel primaries: One to select a candidate from the centre right and one to select a candidate from the right. This last happened in 2005 when the party members then chose David Cameron as leader of the Party – the centre-right candidate, beating David Davis MP representing MPs on the right of the party.
It’s easy to believe that party members will always chose the candidate that positions themselves furthest to the right. And it's easy to get swept up with the media circus around the "five families", and think these rebel Tory factions will define the party's future. But what's also true is that Conservative Party members often understand the mood of the country and what it takes to win. If they can tap into this instinct again, the leadership contest may be less one-dimensional than it is often portrayed.
Whatever the end result, it’s clear that we can already identify the MPs who will be influential within the next Conservative Parliamentary party. They include Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt and Tom Tugendhat. All will matter. And one may even be leader before the end of 2024.
Will Holloway is a Director at 5654 & Company, and formerly a special adviser at Departments for business, trade, transport and international development.