With the next General Election on the horizon (betting markets currently place the best odds on somewhere between October and December 2024), the attention of the media and much of the politically minded public has turned to the question: how do the Conservatives intend to fight a campaign that current polling and smart money say they’re almost guaranteed to lose? In the run-up to this week’s party conference, new government policy announcements have turned to two major fields that the Tories appear to intend to fight the next election on – immigration and climate change, or more specifically a complete reversal of recent policy on the two.
The question many in and out of the party, myself included, are thus left asking is the following. How sound a strategy can it be to completely U-turn on government policy of the last four years, let alone to fight an election on it?
Whilst one can sense the mystical hand of the great minds that brought you notable Conservative victories in 2015 and 2019 in this sudden reversal, the logic behind it is quite clear – the Conservatives know that they will not win new votes, but they also do not need to. Some electoral models suggest that even a lead of only 4% (38% to 34%, a substantial fall from 2019), would be enough to secure the Conservatives a majority. They therefore think that they have identified two policies they can use to mobilise the traditional Conservative bases of rural and semi-rural voters, and especially the elderly, as well as their important 2019 swing voters: those in formerly industrial constituencies, those without university degrees, and those who supported Brexit. These are the demographic groups that traditional wisdom have assumed to be the most sceptical of immigration and climate change policy. These policies are designed to prevent defections, especially to the Reform Party; both of the last YouGov VI polls place this defection rate at 16% of 2019 Conservative voters, compared to 13% and 12% defecting to Labour.
That being said, these groups are, if not comparatively then at least nominally, generally quite progressive of both issues anyway. The Home Secretary’s assertion last Tuesday that being discriminated against for being gay is not sufficient to claim asylum, is not likely to be well met by voters, even those traditionally sceptical of immigration. According to the World Values Survey, “low” acceptance of homosexuality in the UK stands at only about 19-20% of those with “low” incomes or “lower” education levels, whilst rates of high acceptance were consistently high regardless of age group. ONS data suggests people of all ages, levels of qualification, and income are consistently very concerned about climate change, and unified behind the commitment to net zero before 2050, or “even earlier”. The point being that the hills on which the government seem intent on dying on may not be as fertile ground as they had hoped.
So, what might be a better campaign strategy?
First, one has to accept that there is no policy the government can propose that will fix any of the problems the country faces today. Based on that assumption, on January 4th, the Prime Minister set out his five priorities for 2023 and asked the public to judge him on them. What was smart about them was that, with the exception of the fifth (stop the boats – a policy which is not necessarily opposed to immigration in the same way that the government have turned over the summer), they were all factors which were likely to improve regardless of government action – to halve inflation (at the time this stood at about 9%, just over 10% excluding housing), grow the economy, reduce debt, and cut NHS waiting lists. In the case of debt reduction and NHS waiting lists, both were likely to continue to improve as the country recovered from the effects of the pandemic, without the influence of the government (and public understanding of national debt is notoriously bad, meaning measures such as the debt-to-GDP ratio, and the current deficit rather than nominal debt were likely to distort this even further).
The beauty of this message however, lay in its first two points – to grow the economy, and to halve inflation, both being macroeconomic factors almost entirely beyond the influence of the government, and both of which are almost guaranteed to improve the globe over. As the world recovers from the dual inflationary shocks of the Russo-Ukrainian war (and its effects on food and energy prices), and the supply chaos of China in 2022, so too is the inflation rate virtually guaranteed to reach more manageable levels (with the 12-month rate already down to 6.7% CPI). Similarly, “growing the economy” – i.e having a GDP growth rate of more than 0%, or literally not being in recession – was not a particularly high bar to set. In short, by setting laughably achievable economic goals and hoping that the public (whose main electoral concern at the moment remains the economy), would lack the economic know-how to understand the complete lack of agency the Conservative government had in these positive trends, was a remarkably sound electoral strategy, or at least one which gave them the best chance at winning a tough battle. Besides having the added benefit of not tying the government to policies they may come to regret, confidence in throwing themselves at the mercy of macroeconomic trends should also be buoyed by current growth and inflation; the Bank of England forecasts that inflation should break 5% by the end of this year, and return to its 2% target in the first half of 2024, whilst the BCC estimated growth for 2023 to finish at 0.3% and 2024 at 0.4% (the OECD estimates are slightly higher), which is slow but importantly meets the target of growing.
And this economic chicanery can be applied elsewhere too. At the Liberal Democrat conference this week, Ed Davey scorned the Conservatives for sending interest rates soaring – of course interest rates are beyond the control of the Conservatives but this speaks to my point as a whole – a point on which it is laughably easy for the Conservatives to retort something about helping savers. Over the last year, the FTSE 100 is up only 1.46% and 4.72% over five years, whilst the FTSE 250 is down in both measures. This ultimately means that rising interest rates, whilst obviously punishing borrowers, means that traditional savings accounts are competitive investments for the first time in over a decade.
Overall the party appears to have spent much of the weekend working its current strategy with the more hard-line of the party claiming that multiculturalism has failed in Britain, and some even courting Nigel Farage as a possible member. That being said, I know which campaign I’d rather hitch my bandwagon to.
Image Credit: Sergeant Tom Robinson RLC/MOD/Open Government Licence version 1.0 via Wikimedia Commons
