Sunak’s ineptness on immigration has forced Leave voters out the door
Twelve months ago, I wrote for The Telegraph that Rishi Sunak had a narrow but viable path to victory. That path has all but vanished. The poll released today predicts an electoral wipeout for the Conservatives, putting them on just 169 seats. The detail beneath is even more damning.
The Tory vote share is down 18 points in England and Wales. The Conservatives are bleeding on all sides to Labour, the Lib Dems and Reform UK. Hundreds of thousands simply say they will not turn out. Those who voted Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum are a crucial driver of the nationwide collapse for the Tories.
Leave voters – the bastion of the 2019 election victory – have fled the
Conservatives, comprising eight in 10 of those past Conservative voters who now will not support the party. Never mind narratives about red and blue walls – the party is losing everywhere because it is losing Leave voters everywhere.
The picture is made more serious by how Yougov is treating undecided voters. In most polls, undecided voters, who skew heavily Tory, are filtered out. This poll keeps them in, assuming they will vote in the same way that people like them intend to.
History tells us that the polls are likely to narrow further by the time of the next election. But with these numbers as the starting point, Sir Keir Starmer is heading for 10 Downing Street and the Tories for opposition.
One of the primary reasons for this is that the PM’S strategy on legal and illegal immigration is wrong. Both the number of migrants coming into the country legally and those entering via small boats are seminal issues for voters who have abandoned the Tories. Three in four Tory defectors say levels of legal immigration should be lower. Fury about small boat crossings almost blows the roof off focus group venues.
It unites the country. More than seven in 10 of defectors in the North and South alike voted Leave in the Brexit referendum, and 75 per cent of Tory defectors in the South want migration to be lower, close to the 79 per cent in the North who say the same.
Southern Tory MPS in Lib Dem seats who are squeamish about going hard on immigration need to wake up to electoral reality. Home County or Red Wall voters will punish the Conservatives if they do not get tough on migration – fast.
Mr Sunak made stopping boats one of his five promises, and he cannot go back on it now. Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman, who both resigned over the compromise legislation the Prime Minister put forward, are right – to abandon the priority would be devastating for both public trust and Tory fortunes.
That is why ruling out leaving the ECHR, as some briefings suggest, is a serious error. Efforts to reduce legal immigration might not show up in the statistics by the next election, but bold measures will be rewarded. The leader of the Canadian Conservative Party has said new immigrants should match the availability of housing stock. A “net zero” brake on legal immigrants, with exceptions for key sectors, is also an option. These are the sorts of measures that speak directly to the voters Sunak must win back.
But briefings from No10 suggest that Sunak wants to pivot to an economic message, and that he believes preelection tax cuts will gift him victory.
He is wrong. Tax cuts that people are not feeling, and that savvy voters view as bribes, will fall flat. Re-heated Cameronism is the wrong politics for the wrong era and the wrong voter coalition. Bold change on issues close to people’s deep concerns about their lives and the nature of their communities is needed.
There is another reason why 2024 is different from 2015. Today, voters prioritise strength and plain speaking in their politicians more than dry competence. The PM’S failure to emit these qualities is a major reason for the collapse in the polls.
Voters have decided he is weak. In our latest focus group, people derided him as “limp” and “spineless”. They also believe he is “out of touch”, “full of himself ”, “cringe” and “false”.
Yet he continues to act as if he is at the levels of popularity he enjoyed during the pandemic. He posts jovial Christmas clips, plays bowls, laughs away on visits. These displays are simply exacerbating the flaws that voters see in him and failing to project the seriousness and strength they want. Rather than pretending he is a rock star, No10 would do better by banning him from smiling. It is now more important to hide this side of the PM from voters than it ever was under Theresa May.
What makes the developments of the last year even more painful for Conservatives is that the next election was so winnable. Labour have only improved their vote share by four percentage points in constituencies in England and Wales on their dismal 2019 performance. Sir Keir is strongly disliked by the voters he needs.
One user of X, formerly Twitter, was right to recently describe the election as a meeting of an eminently stoppable train in Mr Sunak meeting a highly movable object in Sir Keir.
Mr Sunak needs to change, big time – on immigration, on his strategy on his style. If he does not, he will be remembered as the man who took a weakened Conservative Party and, rather than launching into a repair job, let it sink into the depths of defeat.
‘Re-heated Cameronism is the wrong politics for the wrong era. Bold change on serious issues is needed’