This isn’t Torygeddon - people will quickly recognise Starmer as a vacillating bloviator, says acclaimed historian ANDREW ROBERTS
Winston Churchill woke up on July 26, 1945, with what he described as ‘a sharp stab of almost physical pain. A hitherto subconscious conviction that we were beaten broke forth and dominated my mind... The power to shape the future would be denied me.’
When the results of the General Election were announced later that day – Labour 393 seats to the Conservatives’ 213 – his wife Clementine said it might well be a blessing in disguise.
‘At the moment’, Churchill replied, ‘it seems quite effectively disguised.’
One could forgive Rishi Sunak if he has a similar feeling. But those who shrilly describe this as an existential moment for the Conservative party are no more correct than their counterparts were in 1945.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer walks up the staircase of his new residence, 10 Downing Street
This is not Torygeddon.
Labour’s vote share in this week’s election was only 34 per cent, in the lowest turnout for 20 years. Which means that more than 80 per cent of the electorate did not vote Labour (if you include those who didn’t vote at all).
With the size of the anti-Labour Islamist vote and the election of Reform and Green MPs, the election was very unusual – more like a gigantic by-election; all about protest voting rather than a choice of a plan for government, about which Labour stayed notoriously vague.
The prospect for a phoenix-like resurrection of Toryism is, therefore, excellent if led successfully.
The prospect for a phoenix-like resurrection of Toryism is, therefore, excellent if led successfully.
There is a phase of an election cycle when the public mood turns from objective to, frankly, sadistic. That has what has happened here. As Boris Johnson said of Tory MPs deserting him on the last day of his premiership: ‘When the herd moves, it moves.’
The electorate moved decisively against the Conservatives. But that does not mean that – given the right leaders, policies, principles and much more party unity than seen recently – the herd will not move back once they see what Labour in government really means.
The Prime Minister holds his first Cabinet meeting today, following Labour's landslide victory
Just as trees don’t grow to the sky, political parties don’t win five consecutive General Elections, and that is no bad thing for democracy. The other side has to bat occasionally, and it is well to look at the positive aspects of this Tory defeat, because they do exist.
First, we are fortunate that they lost to a centre-Left rather than a Corbynite Labour Party; however Starmer turns out, he will not be driven by Marxist-Leninist, anti-British and anti-Semitic ideology.
Second, the result in Scotland means the break-up of the Union inherent in a SNP victory has been averted, at least for now.
Third, proportional representation (PR) is on the back-burner since it is not in Labour’s interest, and the exposure during the campaign of the presence of extreme Islamists in the Green Party and neo-fascists in Reform UK will remind voters what a terrible idea PR is, for it could bring such individuals to positions of power.
History provides plenty of relief for the Tories, and shows they must not panic. After the 1906 Liberal landslide, there were two elections in 1910, in both of which the Tories and Liberals were neck and neck. In the election after 1945, Labour won 315 seats to the Conservatives’ 298 in 1950, yet Churchill was back in power the following year.
The volatility in British politics is only likely to grow, as social media, the erasure of class-based political loyalties, and the speed of the 24/7 news cycle increase. Politics has become more febrile, and swings are getting larger as the electorate’s attention span shortens. That will now work against Starmer in government as much as it has worked for him in Opposition.
For all Labour’s enormous majority, there is surprisingly little enthusiasm for its policies, and Starmer is unlikely to have a long honeymoon before the people recognise him for the vacillating, virtue-signalling bloviator that he is.
Lady Victoria wears a red dress with silver heels as she greets Labour supporters yesterday
If Wes Streeting’s much-heralded NHS reforms work, we will have a cheaper, better NHS. But if – as is far more likely – they are stymied by the health unions and Streeting waters them down, people will reach their own conclusions.
Starmer’s weasel-phrase ‘working people’, for whom Labour promised not to raise taxes, will start to infuriate countless Britons who work extremely hard but do not fit the new Prime Minister’s definition of the term as people without savings.
When it turns out that Labour’s new Border Security Command isn’t as impressive as its name, and underlying immigration has not fallen, Starmer’s scrapping of the Rwanda scheme will look like a dreadful mistake, especially as other European countries are adopting similar schemes.
Gaza will expose the fault-lines between those who think Israel has the right to exist, and thus defend itself, and the many in Labour who wish it didn’t.
The 1960s and 1970s provide endless examples of government schemes such as Labour’s new Great British Energy scheme turning into boondoggles. This multi-billion-pound attempt to spot winners in the green energy sector better than the free market can, will cost taxpayers huge amounts.
The first moment that millions are invested in a company runby or owned by or advised by Labour donors or ministers’ friends, there will be trouble.
And people will be reminded of the Wilson and Callaghan years’ industrial strategy of intervening in the private sector to prop up failing companies such as British Leyland, which was partly nationalised in 1975 – and why, for all its imperfections, the market can be trusted better than politicians to pick commercial winners.
Labour are similarly unlikely to be able to deal with the inexorable rise in power of lawyers, not least because so many of their MPs come from that profession.
Sir Keir Starmer speaks during a press conference after his first Cabinet meeting today
The Tory party did all too little to prevent the rule of law turning into the rule of lawyers – look at the legal challenges to expanding Heathrow and proposed routes for HS2, the Rwanda hold-ups, the £94 million and counting Covid Inquiry, and the £191 million Bloody Sunday Inquiry. But Labour is even less likely to tackle judicial overreach before it strangles democratically-supported initiatives.
Hundreds of Labour MPs will soon find that the sheer size of the majority means they’ll never get a job in government and are mere lobby-fodder. It leads to trouble, political scandals and happens to all governments with big majorities.
Once Labour begin building on the Green Belt, force children out of independent schools, and are held responsible for delays and cancellations in a re-nationalised train service, their lead over the Conservatives will melt away. Perhaps anticipating this, Labour plan to lower the voting age to 16 in the belief that the young are more likely to vote for the Left. But in France, America and Italy, the youth vote has swung more to the insurgent Right in recent times.
Without a stake in the country that home-ownership and steady jobs offer, teenagers are instinctively anti-Establishment – and as of now, Starmer will personify the Establishment. This time next year, Rishi Sunak will be recognised as the hard-working, ferociously intelligent and honourable PM he undoubtedly was.
What the Tory party must not do is panic, and assume that the way back to power is to embrace Reform as a party, as opposed to trying to win over its voters.
Nigel Farage is not out to convert the Tory party but to destroy it. He must be stopped by Conservatives who cleave to their basic principles, most of which were enunciated by Margaret Thatcher, and speak to the needs of the British people, who are small ‘c’ conservatives and who for 70 per cent of the past century have elected large ‘C’ Conservative governments.
The Prime Minister walks into 10 Downing Street with an arm around his wife Lady Victoria yesterday
These principles include low taxation, which it has proved impossible to deliver immediately after the greatest peacetime emergency in a century, when the taxpayer had to pay 80 per cent of the wages to 80 per cent of the workforce for almost two years.
Historians will be shocked at the way that this obvious, overwhelming fact explaining the present tax burden was almost waved away by an electorate determined to punish the Conservatives.
Labour always raise taxes. It’s in their DNA in the way that lowering them is in is the Tories’, except in the circumstances of a once-in-a-century global pandemic.
The odds on the same extraordinary set of circumstances and personalities that have destroyed Tory fortunes since 2019 recurring are so long that we must not learn the wrong lessons.
It will require an exceptionally skilful leader with a combination of guile and rock-solid principle to defeat Reform’s aspirations to destroy the Conservative Party.
With such a leader, the Tories’ belief in lower taxes and a smaller state, in deregulation, the protection of British sovereignty from creeping Europeanisation, in higher defence spending, common-sense values over the culture wars (where Kemi Badenoch will be particularly strong), in defence of the monarchy and Constitution and a love of the countryside, will then ensure that clear blue lines emerge in areas with the majority of the electorate on the Tories’ side.
The Tory party must also learn discipline. No future leader should put up with the constant sniping from its own backbenches seen in recent years. This could be enforced by raising the level at which leadership contests are triggered from 15 per cent to 33 per cent of MPs. It is also imperative that the choice of leader returns to MPs, who know and work with their colleagues, rather than letting it stay with the party membership.
The anti-Tory landslides of 1906, 1945, 1997 and now 2024 must not panic the Conservatives. Unless they analyse what has happened in a sober way, they will fail to come up with the correct solutions in time for the next election.
The party is the most successful election-winning machine in European political history, and will have its day in the sun again. Like the giant redwoods, where occasional wildfires that destroy some trees are nonetheless necessary for the regrowth of the forest, occasional electoral disasters can make political parties stronger. So it will be with the Conservative Party.
Andrew Roberts is the author of Churchill: Walking With Destiny.
Inside the incredible £250 MILLION Ambani nuptials, with a host of famous guests, world leaders and a boogeying Boris (but even billionaires can be upstaged by the Kardashians!)
