All Change

The twin by-election defeats in Mid-Bedfordshire and Tamworth have led to much chin-stroking about the parlous state of the Conservative Party. Can it adapt to the evident shift in public opinion in time for the general election? Does it have a future in the face of a potentially hegemonic New Labour 2.0? How bloody will the internecine struggle unleashed by Rishi Sunak's inevitable resignation as party leader be? A lot of this is just the froth of by-election coverage but there is a more serious aspect to it, and that is the media representation of the Conservative Party and its dynamics. In a nutshell, this boils down to two ideas. The first is that the Tories have a chameleon-like ability to change themselves in order to retain, or regain, power. The second is that the electorate appreciates this responsiveness and will reward it at the polls so long as the change is deemed credible and sincere. Before analysing what these ideas really mean - i.e. what are their ideological underpinnings - it's worth taking a look at the results from last night.

The first observation to make is that it's not easy to find the actual vote numbers in the media. Instead the focus is on the swing between the parties and the size of the Tory majority that has been overturned. Both were very large, and in both Tamworth and Mid-Bedfordshire, but this doesn't tell us all that much. Swings in by-elections are rarely useful pointers unless the swing is small in a tight contest, indicating a decisive shift that may be repeated at a general election, or the turnout is high, in which case a large swing may presage a landslide (not so much because of the size of the swing but because of the way it will be amplified due to the first-past-the-post voting system). Predictably, the turnout in both of the contests was low, which means the large swings will almost certainly be the result of differential turnout between the parties. In other words, this is about who stayed away from the polls and that was predominantly Conservative Party supporters. You can understand the hyperbole about "political earthquakes" and "redrawing the map", but if there is one constant in British political history it is that the significance of by-elections is exaggerated.

Labour managed to secure much the same number of votes in both constituencies that it did in 2019, supposedly it's worst result since the 1930s (in fact, its vote was slightly down in Mid-Bedfordshire). This suggests that it may be at or near to its maximum vote in those constituencies, which doesn't suggest that it will manage to retain either seat come the general election, particularly as it can't rely on the tactical voting that is nowadays a feature of by-elections. The party can expect a further boost in the general election with the prospect of booting out the government, but it can also expect some normally Conservative-voting electors, who wished to "send the government a message" yesterday by voting for the red team, to desert it and return to their usual allegiance. Labour's chief hope for the general election is that the pattern of disheartened Tory voters that has characterised by-elections in this parliament will be replicated on the national stage, as was the case in 1997 when turnout was down by over 6% and the Tory vote declined by 11% of the total.

The Conservative Party's chief hope for the general election is that the government can convince voters that it has changed sufficiently to be worthy of fresh consideration. The problem is that it clearly hasn't changed since Rishi Sunak took over as Prime Minister and there is no sign that he personally has a strategy for change. He is tied to the legacy of austerity, under-investment and graft, while the attempt to divert politics towards the trivialities of a "culture war" has failed abjectly, despite the best efforts of the Tory press. His elevation was all about putting the "adults back in charge", hence it was welcomed by centrists, but that in turn implied stabilisation and predictablity, not a radical new programme. Ironically, the Conservatives would probably have stood a better chance at the next election by sticking with Liz Truss, for all her faults, because she was credibly offering a departure from the preceding consensus. Her renewed vigour on display at the recent party conference was telling, not least because her argument for stimulatory tax cuts will be central to the inevitable post-mortem after a general election defeat.

The history of the Conservative Party's mutability is one of smoke and mirrors. The willingness to change, and the associated assumption of ruthless pragmatism, is more apparent than real. The Tories haven't significantly altered in their outlook since their embrace of empire under Disraeli, which reflected material changes in the value of land (the onset of the great depression in agriculture in the last quarter of the nineteenth century) and the consequent shift of aristocratic wealth to mature industries and the growing service economy. Even the oscillation between free trade and protectionism, of which Brexit is the latest turn, has been an expression of the persistent internal tensions arising from the material base rather than a "struggle over the party's soul". Margaret Thatcher is often presented as a radical departure, but she herself was always clear that she was simply reverting to traditional Tory values that had been marginalised by Butskellism. The marrying of classical liberal economics with traditional social conservatism had been pioneered a century before she entered Number 10.

The claims of Tory flexibility, which have been a feature of political discourse since the 1920s, invariably come from centrist commentators keen to discipline the Labour Party. The idea of Tory reinvention, along with the idea that their secret weapon is loyalty (obviously risible when you consider the last few years), is meant to paint Labour as politically regressive and fractious. Specifically, that it is wedded to a backward-looking class politics that has been superseded by liberal modernity (hence the influence of the trade unions must be reduced if not eliminated) and that it is impeded in becoming the natural party of government by an irresponsible and potentially traitorous left that elevates heart over head and cares more for foreigners than natives. One consequence of this is that the Tories' historic recklessness tends to be played down or transmuted into a debate about the state of the nation rather than the party's competence. Obvious examples are the return to the gold standard in 1925, the Suez debacle of 1956 and the monetarist experiment of the early-1980s. In contrast, Labour has an undeserved reputation for financial mismanagement that really reflects unlucky timing (1929, 1974, 2008) rather than profligacy.

The second idea, that the electorate appreciates change in response to its concerns is no less a myth. Indeed it only exists as a logical corollary of the first myth: if the Tories regularly change and regain power then this must be what the electorate wants. In fact, the dynamic is the other way round: public opinion changes over time and all the parties, not just the Conservatives, attempt to channel this in ways that support, or at least don't conflict with, their persistent interests. Thus the Tory volte-face on empire, reflected in Macmillan's famous "winds of change speech", came after public opinion had turned decisively against imperial delusions after Suez but also reflected British industry's desire to shift focus to the dynamic market of Europe. Similarly, the party's subsequent relationship with the European Union tracked public opinion, with the growth of euroscepticism from the late-80s onwards driven by newspaper owners rather than by politicians. Boris Johnson's ambivalence on the matter was emblematic of the party as whole, not just his own lack of principle. Likewise, the party's recent tacking on issues such as gender recognition and the green transition reflects the latest demands of the Tory press, not some cunning ploy to outflank Labour.

The prime objective of the party of the people is to restrain the people's enthusiasm, hence Labour's response to public opinion is a mixture of careful curation - for example, using focus groups to steer the media framing of that opinion - and straightforward gaslighting - for example, the insistence that public support for the nationalisation of utilities is naive, or that the NHS cannot be improved by more money alone. The media myth of the Tories is that they are constantly changing to meet the demands of the moment. Paradoxically, that this quintessentially regressive party, whose only persistent concern is the defence of private wealth, is mercurial and volatile. The contrasting paradox of Labour is that it is the party of change (even if only a change in management) but that its progressivism is limited to the retooling of the state and that it can thus be relied upon to minimise or divert the often radical changes demanded by the public. Is the Conservative Party about to change? No. It is simply going to hand the baton of fiscal responsibility and caution to an establishment-endorsed Labour Party. At some point, Labour's authoritarianism will alienate voters and the Tories will reappear offering the prospect of personal freedom. Nothing will change.