Can the Conservatives master the two-step?

Copilot’s idea of a two-step. Copilot has become very chatty all of a sudden, but much slower at generating images. Is this a portent for the development of AI?

I’m not a dancer. I have no idea whether the two-step really is the appropriate metaphor for what I want to describe – and a quick online search doesn’t really help. But in my survey of the state of Britain’s political parties I have come to the Conservatives. What they need to achieve requires two distinct steps. The question is whether their leadership has the skill to do this, or whether it will tumble in the process of trying.

The Conservatives suffered an unmitigated electoral disaster in July: both in terms of share of vote and in seats won it was their worst performance in living memory… and considerably beyond that. They lost votes in three directions, to Labour, to the Liberal Democrats and to Reform UK. This is all the more remarkable because in 2019 they achieved a landslide victory and it was widely assumed that they would stay in power for the foreseeable future. But this dramatic reversal contains the seeds of hope: politics has become so volatile that even a disaster on this scale can surely be reversed in less than five years? The party now has a new leader, Kemi Badenoch, who is bringing a fresh approach to the leadership. For reasons that I have explained in my earlier post on Labour, incumbency is a tough gig in a world where economic growth has suddenly become much harder to achieve. And Labour’s vote share makes it look vulnerable. Recent opinion polls already show the Conservatives with a small lead, albeit with a still dismal share of the vote.

With rather touching naivety the Financial Times political columnist Stephen Bush suggested a short while ago that what the party needed to next was to grapple with the new economic reality (though he does not frame that reality in quite the same way as I do) and come up with a policy framework that addresses it. Oh dear! Success in current politics comes with magical thinking. Look at the impossible policy programme put forward by Boris Johnson to allow the Conservatives to win big in 2019. Look at Donald Trump’s winning formula in this year’s US election. There is no reward for presenting voters with tough choices, and especially not in a very competitive political market. The party has no need to grapple with the awkward realities of public policy. But that is not as easy as it sounds. Any old magical thinking will not do. After all Labour under Jeremy Corbyn also indulged in magical thinking in 2019, and that was disastrous. The party has to create a narrative which resonates across a wide audience.

Successful politics is about coalition-building: aligning support from disparate groups of voters. Mr Johnson successfully built one that embraced working class voters in Northern, Midland and Welsh constituencies, alongside professional voters in prosperous suburbs, and traditionally conservative rural voters. Mr Trump has done something very similar. This is not easy. Matt Goodwin, the radical-right political commentator, correctly identifies that just such a coalition ensured the Conservative victory in 2019, and the party’s betrayal of the working-class element sealed its defeat. But he then goes on to excoriate those suburban and metropolitan voters (“elites”) that were part of the coalition as being the scum of the earth. How do you rebuild the coalition then? Political activists like Mr Goodwin actually aren’t that interested. They want to promote the interests of one part of a winning coalition, and are uninterested in any compromises that might be needed to bring about ultimate success.

That sounds unhelpful to a Conservative leader, but he isn’t entirely wrong. That seems to be the lesson from America. Mr Trump, while building his successful campaigns (as opposed to what he actually did in office) never compromised with his “base”. This consisted of two distinct, though overlapping groups. These were working class voters with lower educational attainment, who are often looked down on by governing elites, and conservative religious communities, who have their own policy agenda, and dislike of irreligious liberals. Once these groups were secure and enthusiastic, he could work on less committed groups, and persuade them to suspend judgement on issues that they were less comfortable with, and indulge in magical thinking in others. These people were persuaded that it was time for a shake-up, and that the Republicans would surely not be as bad as they sounded. This is what I am describing as the two-step. Secure the radicals first, then move onto the moderates.

It is not the only possible two-step. The more traditional one is to make a strong bid for the “centre ground”, and then turn to the radicals to say that “this is the best you are going to get”. This is the Tony Blair version of the two-step, which secured him three electoral victories for Labour. It is also what Sir Keir Starmer is doing for Labour currently. The radicals-first two-step does seem to be easier to do from the political right. Mr Corbyn did make a valiant attempt with this strategy for Labour, and it came much closer to success in 2017 that most people expected. But he did not understand how to keep the more sceptical voters on board. He was no match for Mr Johnson.

Both versions of the two-step are open to Mrs Badenoch. In the radicals-first version, she would move her tanks onto Reform UK’s lawn, and use the party’s superior resources and organisation to crush it. She needs to lean in to the sort rabid ranting indulged by Mr Goodwin, and weather the criticism from her own side. And then, in about 2027, she needs to start promoting scepticism for Labour, and getting more moderate Conservatives to suggest that she isn’t so bad, and that Labour are truly awful – in the way that so many less extreme Republicans have done for Mr Trump. The centre-first option would involve crafting an appeal to more professional voters first, and then crushing Reform. To be honest, this does sound much harder. Professional voters are much harder to woo with magical thinking, and that would indeed mean confronting some of the policy dilemmas that Stephen Bush was suggesting. Sir Keir understands this well, and would challenge her at every step.

Either way, it requires both political guile and forcefulness. There is no way through the middle with the two-step. Is Mrs Badenoch up to it? It is very early days, and it is hard to tell. The early signs are not encouraging (for her party – more encouraging for those who do not wish her well). It does indeed look as if she is trying to thread a middle way, a bit like the ill-fated Ed Miliband tried for Labour in 2010 to 2015. She enthusiastically attacks wokeness, but she is also trying to give her approach a bit of intellectual rigour, so as to dress it up for more professional types. That gets her into trouble. Is she, or is she not, in favour of maternity pay? She may find these early days bruising, but she may learn from them – much as Sir Keir did in his early days as Leader of the Opposition.

The jury is out. She is already attracting a heavy weight of sneering and criticism. If she does try to carry the battle to Reform as her first step, then a lot more of this is to be expected, and her ratings will dip in the population at large. But if the Reform ratings start to come under pressure we will know if she is winning. I don’t wish her well, but it will be interesting to watch.

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