A Defeated Conservative Offers a Truthful Assessment of the Collapse of the Tories

The defeat of the British Conservative party, though perhaps not quite as decimating as feared, did undoubtedly represent a decisive indictment by Tory voters of the past five years of Tory governance, whether on immigration, law and order, housing, the healthcare service, lockdown and vaccine mandates, “net zero” policies, or hate speech laws and policies. Some commentators have tried to blame the Conservative defeat on the fact that Reform “stole” some of their votes or split the conservative vote. But this is a fundamentally dishonest and self-serving interpretation.

While it is true that the overwhelming electoral defeat of the Tories was facilitated by the split of the conservative vote between the Conservatives and Reform, and things would have gone better for the Conservatives without competition from Reform, this is not the root cause of the Tory defeat.

To blame their defeat on Reform is as absurd as an athlete blaming his defeat on the fact that a stronger individual joined the race. The reason the Reform party took votes away from the Conservatives is because the Conservative party let their own voters down, badly.

It was quite patently obvious, under a first-past-the-post system, that a vote for Reform would very likely hurt the Conservatives. And traditional Conservative voters who switched their allegiances to Reform knew this very well. But they were so disillusioned with the Conservatives that they voted for Reform anyway. That means the Conservatives were the ones who lost their own voters and drove them into the arms of Nigel Farage.

There is nothing like a stinging defeat to focus the mind. While many Conservatives may continue to disingenuously blame Reform for their defeat, some are seeing things more clearly. For example, former Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg offered this post-election analysis after losing his seat for North-East Somerset after fourteen consecutive years in office:

I was not entitled to the votes of the seven thousand people who voted for Reform in North-East Somerset. I had to win their votes. And I had to win their votes, wearing a blue rosette and supporting a Conservative government that had simply failed to do conservative things. That is not Nigel Farage’s fault. That is, to some degree, my fault, and the fault of others within the Conservative party….I will confess to you that it was getting increasingly frustrating during the election campaign, on doorsteps, when constituents (pointed out that we had) the highest taxation in 70 years, immigration out of control, a lunatic Green policy, and you still want me to vote Conservative? And I agreed with them on all three points….You have to win over voters, you can’t take them for granted. And we ignored our base.

It is true that the massive scale of the Conservative defeat does not reflect their share of the votes, due to Britain’s first-past-the-post system. However, it does reflect the fact that many traditional Conservative voters no longer even see the point of voting Conservative. Mr Rees-Mogg’s frank assessment of the situation is a voice emerging from the ashes of defeat that the Conservatives would do well to heed, if they value their political future.