By Bertie Summers
For decades, it seemed as though the Conservative Party was indestructible and that it could weather any storm thrown its way. If we look back on our political history as a country, then it seems clear that the Tories have served as Britain’s ‘natural governing party’.
Historical Conservatives
Throughout the last seventy-five years, they have been serving in government for forty-nine years. This means that in almost one lifetime, the Tory Party has been Britain’s ruling party for two-thirds of the time. As such, they have developed quite a reputation for being the dominant force in British politics.
On the morning of May 2, 1997, John Major addressed the Conservative Party headquarters after he had just led them into one of their worst election defeats in living memory, at that time. Despite the scale of such a heavy loss weighing on everyone’s minds, Major struck an optimistic tone in his speech, crediting his party for its impressive accomplishments in the decades prior.
He said this, to rapturous cheering and applause: “Now, we have been in being as a party for longer than any other democratic party in Western Europe. We’ve won more elections, lost a few on the route, but we’ve won more elections, and we have perhaps served in government for longer, more often, and better in the interests of our country. And we will do so again.”
It would appear, then, as if the mood was upbeat. Despite being removed from office after eighteen years in government, there was still a sense of hope amongst the Tories that they would just work towards securing a feasible path back into government in the future. This mindset was cemented with Major’s assertion in that same speech that “we have always come back”.
I suppose it’s fair to say that they had good enough reason to be positive in the late 1990s, because they were propelled back to being the largest party at Westminster after the 2010 UK General Election. However, things have changed considerably in the last few years.
For starters, the Tories spent eighteen years in government throughout the 1980s and 1990s, whilst the people of Great Britain lived under two of this country’s longest-serving prime ministers in our history, Margaret Thatcher and John Major. They also managed to win four back-to-back majorities.
This is in stark contrast to the chaotic fourteen years of Tory rule that we have just experienced, during which we have seen five separate prime ministers and four election wins, only two of which saw Conservative majorities. It is also worth noting that the Tories were defeated much more severely in 2024 than they were in 1997, even though the Labour Party secured a slightly smaller majority in 2024 than it did in 1997.
Furthermore, I should point out that the Conservative Party has always been either in first place or second place in national opinion polls for the last eighty years. This has been consistent with every single period between each general election since before 1945. Since 1900, the Tories have either been the party in government or the official opposition.
Recent politics
It has only been in the past year that Reform UK has soared in the polls and overtaken both Labour and the Conservatives. With this latest development, Britain’s oldest political party is now confronting a new reality where it may not be the largest or the second largest party in the House of Commons.
This seems to be increasingly likely, as their poll numbers continue to decline. They received a score of 17 per cent in the latest YouGov poll, down from over 24 per cent in the previous election.
This represents a huge change from just a few years ago, when a YouGov poll from April 2020 put the Tories on 52 per cent, a 24-point lead over Labour. And every single one of the last six MRP polls has predicted that the Tories would win fewer than 100 seats if there were an election now.
So, it seems that things are currently incredibly dire for this two-hundred-year-old political party? But why has all of this happened, and so rapidly? Well, you might say that the Conservative Party is no longer conservative and moving too far to the left has caused them to lose votes to Reform UK. But that is something I would strongly disagree with. I think that they have moved much further to the right.
Earlier this year, Jamie Greene MSP defected from the Scottish Conservatives to the Scottish Liberal Democrats. He fiercely claimed that his former party had adopted a “Reform-Esque agenda” and “Trump-Esque narrative” under the leadership of Kemi Badenoch and Russell Findlay. Plus, a TLDR YouTube video from two years ago argues that Rishi Sunak was the most right-wing PM since Margaret Thatcher.
2025 Conservative Party Conference
This article follows the diabolically unpopular 2025 Conservative Party Conference in Manchester. Not only is it the case that half of all their party members do not want Mrs Badenoch leading them into the next general election, but the man who is seen as being the favourite to replace her is already in hot water.
Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has just doubled down on his atrocious assertion that the diverse neighbourhood of Handsworth in Birmingham was “not the kind of country I want to live in” because he “didn’t see another white face” in the ninety minutes that he spent filming there in March this year.
Because Badenoch defended these remarks, it should be clear that since being elected as the leader of the Tory Party, she has been determined to shift it even further to the right. Badenoch recently announced pledges to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights and abolish the cross-party target for the UK to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the latter of which was originally set under Theresa May, a former Tory Prime Minister.
Her autocratic decision to ask MPs to dismantle the different ideological factions within the Conservative Party should confirm that her leadership of the Tories has resulted in an end to the “broad church” Conservative Party that existed for so long. This is why I strongly believe that they are now finished as a dominant force in British politics.
After so many people have resigned from this once unbeatable political party, they cannot even call themselves the “Conservative Party” anymore. You can’t be a conservative when you have nothing to conserve.
Featured Image Credit: The Conservative Party.
