Should I vote Conservative at the next general election?
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What do I do? I feel almost paralysed. This is going to be one of the most important elections in my lifetime and I’ve absolutely no idea how to vote. Imagine it’s November, now: I’m in the booth, my little pencil hovering over the ballot paper, playing 3D chess in my head. I hate the Tories. I fear Labour. I don’t have faith in Reform.
What I really want - what millions of small-c conservatives want - is the Tories punished; a one-term Labour government; then a landslide victory for a proper right-wing party that shakes the country back to sense. We’d like to go from Heath to Thatcher with as little Wilson and Callaghan in the middle as possible.
It’s a narrow path but Reform says it can get there. Richard Tice argues that the Tories are beyond redemption, that all their mistakes over 14 years - wokery, open borders, crazy spending - weren’t an error but who they are. Indeed, lived experience tells me that Labour and Tory elites largely agree on what they want, they just move at different speeds.
Conservatives will effect the odd pause (trans stuff); the occasional detour (Brexit). But had Gordon Brown won in 2010, Britain would look much like it does now: poor and self-loathing.
So, screw ‘em. Let’s burn the Tories down and maybe a beautiful rightwing phoenix will arise from the ashes. My pencil dives towards the Reform box...
Ah, but, what are the chances of Tice actually becoming an MP, let alone PM? He’s not the only one dreaming of high office. Dominic Cummings and the pollster Matt Goodwin have both indicated they’d like to start a new party, and the sheer ego of their ambition is instantly off-putting. New parties face the obstacles of first-past-the-post, organisation-building, the infiltration of nutcases, or competing for attention from a media that will hate you and a public that doesn’t care. My mum’s hairdresser doesn’t know who Keir Starmer is.
I’m sure she has heard of Nigel Farage - who hasn’t?! - yet even the former leader of Reform seems reluctant to lend the party much publicity. Why? Is he in the booth next to mine making the same mental calculations? He does live near me...
Nigel must have noticed that, absent a defining issue, Reform isn’t doing as well as Ukip or the Brexit Party did, that its national poll figures have yet to translate into by-election wins even in areas that voted Leave. Its campaign in the West Midlands had the sole, sobering effect of costing Andy Street the mayoralty, which will have felt good for all of two seconds. I visited Birmingham that week; my host pointed out the overflowing bins. Street was competitive in Brum because the locals have experience of life under a Labour city council.
My pencil orbits Labour. Would it be so bad if they won? I agree with their message that Britain needs to drop the Rwanda-style gimmickry and get back to running things well. As they say in Glasgow, “fun’s fun, but to hell with nonsense”.
Yet I detect in Starmer a quality of the Trojan Horse, and not just in the sense that both are made of wood. What does this man actually believe? It’s a mystery. I do know what his far-Left backbenchers think - and if Labour gets a landslide, you can multiply their number by three and turn their volume up to 11. Labour’s psychodrama will become your psychodrama, and as its passions on, say, net zero or identity politics are unleashed, expect the UK to hit fast forward on legislative change. Labour governments always leave a country significantly different to how they found it; the last bunch bequeathed us devolution and equalities legislation.
Trembling, my hand considers the Tories. The Tories. It’s hard even to say the name without spitting. Do I really have such low self-esteem as to vote for this hot mess again, even after they’ve betrayed and robbed me blind?
Then again, if there is anyone I do like in Parliament, it’s on the Conservative benches that you’ll find them - and if we lose Miriam and Jacob and Suella and Kemi in some Reform-enabled tsunami, then when the next vote comes up on something I really care about, such as abortion or assisted dying, I know exactly how a Labour majority will go.
Though the Conservative Party has failed to stop “progress”, it remains the only plausible platform for critics and Cassandras. As for what it’ll do in opposition, my suspicion is that the more MPs it loses, the more likely it is to misinterpret the result. The party is institutionally stupid. Its grandees will declare that Rishi Sunak was too right-wing and the party must return to the centre, even though the centre (ie the public) is probably to the right of Rishi on several key issues.
No, if you want to rescue conservatism, my gut tells me that the future lies not in walking away from this ghastly party but getting more involved - to infiltrate, occupy and re-launch a revived party, our party, in five years’ time.
As for this election, endure it or enjoy it depending on your mood - the sooner it’s over, the better. I still have no clue which box to tick. It might not matter. Perhaps I shall continue my tradition of writing bizarre demands across the ballot paper that I hope has brightened up many a count here in Sevenoaks. To anyone wondering who it was who demanded “Free Deidre Rachid!” in the last local elections, now you know.
