Doomscrolling Aeslop
The Tortoise, the Hare, and the comfortable lies we tell children (and parliamentarians)
Slow and steady wins the race, so goes Aesop’s fable. It’s up there with Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy for being just one of those things we tell children. And much like fat magic presents man and enamel obsessive tinkerbell, the Tortoise and the Hare is another terrible lie.
A terrible lie swallowed whole by the Leader of His Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition.
Slow and steady was not the tactic adopted by Roger Bannister as he became the first recorded man to run a four minute mile. Slow and steady was not the approach of the Apollo programme as NASA raced the Soviets for the Moon. And slow and steady cannot be the attitude of a once great political party battling for its very existence.
On Sunday the respected polling organisation Ipsos released their first poll since last year’s general election. They found a record 9-point lead over Labour for the Reform Party. The same poll put the Conservatives on just 15%. The lowest share Ipsos has ever recorded for the oldest and most successful political party in history, since they began polling under the premiership of Harold Wilson.
And just today YouGov has published their first MRP seat-by-seat megapoll since the last July, showing the Tories collapsing to fourth (almost fifth) place, and Reform storming the map, a hundred seats ahead of Labour.
It has been swiftly memory-holed by some that under Rishi Sunak’s caretaker leadership, while the Tories were rudderless, the party briefly regained a polling lead. Post-election fortunes for the Conservative Party peaked in November, and since then the rollercoaster has been on an exhilarating journey south.
You have to go back to April to find a single poll where Reform has not been ahead of the pack. And then back weeks more to find one where Reform was not joint first.
But is this registering with Parliamentarians? Perhaps with Labour - whose party discipline has been shot to bits now around a quarter of their MPs have decided they’re on course to lose their seats and are acting disloyally as a result.
Now what of the party not just facing losing office, but losing any relevance at all?
Last week I found myself at a reception with the Leader of His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition. Kemi Badenoch told the assembled journalists, politicians, and one Margaret Thatcher impersonator1 that the previous day Jeffrey Archer gave her encouragement. The former Tory big beast was telling her of Margaret Thatcher’s time in opposition, saying “The first two years were hellish. Just keep going. Just keep going.”
Now those years may well have been hellish. But did they risk a political extinction event?
When Margaret Thatcher became Leader of the Opposition in February 1975, the polls did not sink, for the Tory Party - they rose. Comforting stories about how tough it was for the opposition in the mid 1970s bear zero resemblance to the existential crisis the Conservative Party finds itself in today.
Sometimes in politics, you have space to ponder. To launch policy reviews. To obfuscate at legitimate media questions with the ever irritating “come back to us in four years’ time”. This is not one of those times.
Despite the Labour Party’s spectacular 11 month implosion act, and Sir Keir Starmer’s unique ability to turn a 174 seat majority into a u-turning chaotic impression of a hung parliament, the official opposition cannot simply sit by and wait for the government to self immolate.
It is true that overwhelmingly oppositions do not win elections, governing parties lose them. But while Labour is losing, the Tories aren’t winning. It is also the case that when a governing party is haemorrhaging authority, credibility, and votes - those votes do not by default migrate to His Majesty’s official opposition.
Kemi Badenoch cannot take this challenge slow and steady, nor can she spend hours doomscrolling on her iPhone - as one unkind briefing to the Sunday Times alleged she had done in the wake of the local election results. Perhaps she was doomscrolling Aesops fables. Or internet slop. Or something in between. In any case modern politics is not a time for slow steady plodding. It is sprint after sprint after sprint.
This is not a simple Tortoise and the Hare race. It’s a Tortoise and Hare obstacle course. An Aesopian Total Wipeout, if you will. Participants must sprint from island to island, or they miss the boat.2
There are staging posts in every Parliament. The Tories were hit especially badly at the first one - this year’s local elections - losing 674 councillors and control of sixteen councils.
Each councillor loss is more than a data point or a blip. It is the loss of a funded foot soldier. The hollowing out of the voluntary party. Doing worse at a local election precipitates doing worse at a general election. Conversely winning control of councils can sow the seeds for Parliamentary gains.
In just over ten months’ time, this will matter more than at any other point in this Parliament.
Up for grabs: thousands of council seats (including all seats in big cities like London, Birmingham, and Newcastle), six new metro mayors, plus legislative elections in Scotland and Wales.
This, again, is where “the next election is four years away” implodes as an argument. Polls don’t only matter on the day of the vote. Polls matter today. Elections happen throughout the Parliament. And looking at the state of play in Wales and Scotland, Reform is about to be gifted a huge amount more state funded party infrastructure.
So no, the Tories don’t have years to sit and ponder. They do not have the luxury of taking things step by step. Of being quite so public about their blank slate policy approach. Which makes the proudly policy free rhetoric of the Leader of the Opposition all the more curious.
Of course it would be silly to write the entirety of the next manifesto today. But sillier still is to be to be so brazen about not knowing what to put in it.
Most voters are not news addicts. Most pay little attention to the day to day. They do not have time for long complicated answers. Most will not even want to tune in to the short answers. What voters need most of all is vibes.
Today, the Tories aren’t giving us answers, details, pretend details, or even vibes. Shadow Ministers are left flailing in media rounds when asked what they would in place of the government. They’ve been given no policy crutches. Not even concepts of a plan. Anyone half listening simply thinks these people don’t have a clue.
When the Tories won the 2015 election with their “long term economic plan” did they have a real document called “the long term economic plan” with a detailed prospectus on how they will manage the economy? Did they heck. They just wanted people to hear that they had a plan.
Of course there were always some policies and principles up their sleeves in case tricksy interviewers ever backed them into a corner. But mostly, Tory politicians simply repeated the words “long term economic plan”.
Most voters are too busy with life to catch more than the headline of a BBC news alert, or a half listen to a one minute news summary on a pop music radio station. Good campaigns have one message and hammer it relentlessly in the hope that some people might faintly pick it up.
So what do the Tories need to do? Stop telling themselves fairy stories about being slow or being steady. Believe the polls. Internalise what the numbers say. Stare at the abyss. Recognise they are in a fight for their lives. Show hunger for power. Don’t down tools. Don’t admit the policy vacuum. Be guerrilla. Be on permanent campaign footing.
Be the hare, not the tortoise.
It is strange that after the leadership election, the losing candidate appeared to continue his campaign while the winning candidate appeared to down tools and give hers up. Ordinarily it’s the other way around.
This was, after all, the book launch of LBC presenter Iain Dale’s new book on the late Prime Minister.
Hopefully this explains the image at the top of this article.