Tory politicians who cut their teeth on the 1997 general election campaign have a story they like to tell. They watched John Major get up every day and suggest to his team that the Tories could win, and then fight – despite all the polls suggesting otherwise. It convinced the then young aides that Major might know something no one else did – that there was hope. Then, on polling day, they went up to the Downing Street flat to find everything packed to move out. It turned out that in the weeks before, Major’s wife, Norma, had been quietly moving out most of her clothes so there was less to do after the result.
The point is that even a prime minister aware it would take a miracle to stop a landslide defeat could not say so out loud. While there have been plenty – perhaps too many – Major-Sunak comparisons over the past two years, this is something both politicians will now understand. No leader has called an election from 20 points behind and won, and the polls so far suggest Sunak has made little visible progress. An Observer poll suggests that rather than close the gap, Labour has opened its biggest lead since Liz Truss was prime minister.
More than a week after the election was announced, Sunak is not the only one having to grapple with the unsayable. While the Conservative candidate Robert Largan, in the marginal seat of High Peak in Derbyshire, has been accused of not wanting to even say he is a Conservative, for most the problem is what they want to say but can’t. “The message we need to land is that we’re stuffed – but Labour don’t deserve a huge majority and can’t be trusted with one. But we can’t say the first bit out loud,” says a senior minister.
Yet the campaign so far tells its own story about the calculations being made. This weekend, Jeremy Hunt unveiled another policy aimed at winning over the grey vote. In an interview in which he warned that Labour would betray pensioners, he promised a new “pensions tax guarantee” – that a Tory government would not raise any taxes on pensions in the next parliament. On the back of the mandatory national service and “triple lock plus” announcements, it forms a pattern – with the campaign prioritising trying to shore up their core vote, the over-55s, rather than opt for a wider message that could appeal to younger voters. It’s one of the reasons there is a focus on trying to squeeze the Reform vote – the party has been making inroads with elderly people.
It means MPs are starting to see a logic to the campaign, albeit one that is seeking to reduce losses. Senior Tories believe Sunak chose a summer election for fear things could get worse if he waited – particularly on Rwanda, where more Tory splits could have emerged in the face of any orders from the European court of human rights. Now the campaign focus is on making the best of a bad hand and avoiding a historic wipeout.
In what has been called the “Dunkirk strategy” by one pollster, MPs and some close to the campaign see a result that would bring home 200 or more Tory MPs come polling day as a sign that things have improved. An Electoral Calculus MRP poll – which some pollsters questioned the methodology of – suggested on Friday night that the Tories would currently be left with only 66 MPs, but most in the party think the polling suggests they would get a little more than 100 MPs on current trends.
If the Tories can win 200 seats or more, they would be in a similar position to Labour in 2019. While many people wrote Labour off as out for two terms, it was able to recover. “If we can hit 200, that is where we can have Tory renewal and hopefully be back within one term,” says a cabinet minister. MPs are watching the polls nervously: “We’re not at panic stations but we do want to see some progress,” says a former minister.
So, if Sunak has his mission, how many of the party’s candidates or grassroots members are on board to help make it happen? The timing of the election has not helped with morale. It initially went down like a cup of cold sick with many Tory ministers and MPs. Several feel as though they have been put up as sacrificial lambs. One MP with a majority of more than 10,000 views the difference between going now or waiting until the autumn as winning or losing. The reason? The latter would have given them time to build up a ground game.
“A lot of the usual activists are on holiday or just unenthusiastic, coming straight from tricky locals into an election no one wants,” says one MP. It means that an extra aggravating factor in party efforts is the problems getting the ground game going. “The party machinery is very rusty,” complains one minister. “It just feels like the car is stalling.”
As for Sunak’s potential successors, most are keen for him to own this campaign – viewing it as a poisoned chalice. “By picking a summer election, the blame will all be on him if it’s worse than 1997,” says a senior Tory. But there is still a hunger among some Tory candidates to pull out the stops and fight – not so much to help Sunak. Instead, there is a desire to get to the other side for whatever faces the Tory party then. Some older MPs are staying on in a bid to keep the party from veering to the right in defeat.
Polling suggests Sunak’s premiership may not be long for this world, but Sunakism could live on. While last week was dominated by rows on Labour selections, both parties face the same deadline to finalise their candidates. Former cabinet ministers are on high alert for Sunak’s team getting “their mates” into the few remaining safe retirement seats. Late last week, Sunak’s former aide David Goss was picked for Wellingborough and Rushden, and more could follow. The Sunakites who make it could be key to shaping where the party goes next.
Katy Balls is political editor of the Spectator
