Mike Phipps reviews The Party’s Over: The Rise and Fall of the Conservatives from Thatcher to Sunak, by Phil Burton-Cartledge, published by Verso.

This is a new updated version of Phil Burton-Cartledge’s Falling Down, which Verso published in 2021. At that time, the Conservative Party was still riding high and the scandals that would bring down Boris Johnson’s government were yet to break. Reviewing the book in October of that year, I wrote:

“Given the thumping majority the party got in the 2019 general election, and more importantly its breakthrough in seats that it had not held for decades, suggesting the addition to the Tory fold of a new coalition of voters, it might seem delusional to suggest that the party is suffering a long-term decline.  But that is the central argument of this book and one I agree with.”

Less than two years on, the idea that the Tories are in fundamental decline looks a lot less controversial. Liz Truss was not just the shortest-serving prime minister in British history: she was the fourth Tory prime minister to resign in six years.

What happened to Truss, and Johnson before her, Phil Burton-Cartledge points out, were ‘unforced errors’. But the political annihilation that threatens the Tories at the next general election is rooted not just in the flaws of the party’s recent leaders. There are structural demographic obstacles to the future success of the party too. Quite simply, “the young are anti-Tory and are unlikely to vote for the party as they age.”

This runs much deeper than the party’s recent embrace of ‘anti-woke’ attack lines. The growing lack of affordable housing has repelled a wide layer of middle class and graduate voters from the traditional party of property ownership. Ironically, that is unlikely to change until a Labour government tackles high property prices and the proliferation of renting, which the Conservatives cannot confront, given that to do so would strike at the heart of some of their core voters.

Johnson seemed able to extend the base of Tory support into the so-called ‘red wall’, on the basis of insular nationalism and the promise to build infrastructure in its constituencies. The appeal of both of these proved short-lived as any sense of unity and momentum created by the 2019 general election’s 80-seat majority was quickly frittered away by Johnson’s own dilatoriness and lack of focus. His inability to deliver – and lack of interest in – his ‘levelling up’ campaign promises were palpable, even before the pandemic struck.

The Tories’ wretched mis-handling of the Covid crisis, not to mention the blatant conflicts of interest and partying during lockdown, goes some way to explaining the government’s plummeting popularity. We can add to that a widespread ‘buyer’s remorse’ over Brexit, in particular Johnson’s botched version of it, with most voters now believing it was wrong to leave the EU and a narrow majority saying they would vote to rejoin it.

Johnson’s forced resignation in July 2022 ripped away the veneer of party unity to reveal the political fault lines beneath.  The subsequent leadership contest was unprecedently fractious, with the two main candidates’ tearing into each other’s records, undermining public confidence in their party’s economic governance, a problem that was infinitely magnified by Liz Truss’s short-lived car-crash administration.

Phil Burton-Cartledge takes us through the unravelling of Truss’ premiership – possibly the first serious book to do so – emphasising how damaging her Chancellor’s budget was, not just to the public in general, but to the fragile Tory voter coalition in particular. By late October Sunak was prime minister, offering an economic stabilisation package that took the country back to the failed austerity policies of a decade earlier. His attempts to look competent and clear up the mess left by his predecessors do not appear to have appreciably modified his party’s tumbling poll ratings.

The book ends with a bold prediction: “without a deep and genuine transformation that would increase their support among working-age people, the Conservative Party’s decline might be one it never recovers from.”

Yet it may be premature to write off one of the most enduring British institutions of the last two centuries. The Conservatives have recovered before after lengthy periods out of office and their current attempts to get a culture war going have certainly helped other right wing parties elsewhere to mount a serious challenge.

Given the recent climbdowns and vacillations perpetrated by the Labour leadership, it’s not unlikely that its performance in office, should it win the next general election, will be profoundly disappointing. The Tories’ ability to exploit Labour’s failings, using nationalism and division to win unlikely combinations of votes, cannot be written off just yet.

Read Labour Hub’s interview with Phil Burton-Cartledge here.

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.