Forget the landslide, Tory sights are set on nine seats for victory
Behind the door of No10, it is the campaign mantra that is uttered as frequently as Boris Johnson’s catchphrase about voting Conservative being the only way to “get Brexit done”.
While political pollsters and commentators obsess over the size of a potential Tory majority, the party’s general election ambitions are actually far more modest than many might imagine.
“What we are saying to the country is we only need nine more seats to get a working majority government,” the Prime Minister said in an interview on Remembrance Sunday.
The phrase popped up again during Mr Johnson’s speech in Coventry on Wednesday, and in a campaign email sent a day later which read: “The Conservatives only need to win nine more seats than in 2017 to unblock Parliament and get it working again – and our campaigns in key seats across the United Kingdom are going to be critical to making that happen.”
Far from pushing for a major political realignment, as in 2017, the Tories are campaigning more like they did in 2015, when David Cameron confounded expectations by winning a small majority after five years in coalition government.
Despite all the pollsters predicting another hung Parliament, he won an outright majority of 330, taking 27 seats off the Liberal Democrats and eight from Labour.
Two years later, Theresa May famously squandered that majority, losing 13 seats to take her total down to 317 (excluding then Tory Speaker John Bercow, who was politically neutral).
So, with 326 MPS needed to form a majority government, the Tories do just need to win nine more seats. According to No10 insiders, the focus is not on winning “unicorn” constituencies such as Workington which only briefly turned blue in 1976 – but on retaining the seats they have. “The strategy is 50 per cent offence, 50 per cent defence,” said one Tory campaign source. “One of the mistakes Mrs May made in 2017 is that she went after seats the Tories were never likely to win while neglecting the ones it was assumed they’d hold on to. This campaign is going to be largely about defending Conservative constituencies and then building modest gains in the Midlands and the North.”
Isaac Levido, an Australian political strategist and protégé of Sir Lynton Crosby, is spearheading the strategy.
Sir Lynton managed Mr Johnson’s 2008 and 2012 London mayoral campaigns as well as the less successful 2017 Tory campaign so, according to one well-placed source: “There is a sense of wanting to right the wrongs.”
According to one Downing Street insider: “There has been a misreading of how things are and the challenges the Tories face. We want to avoid people thinking there is going to be a Tory majority of massive proportions. This is 2015, not 2017, when Mrs May started 40 points ahead.
“The Prime Minister is not saying I need 30 to 40 seats – just that he needs a majority to get Parliament working again. No one thinks a strong majority is on the cards.”
While expectation management is clearly at play, Sir John Curtice, the polling guru, reminded journalists on Thursday: “Just because the Tories are ahead in the polls, it doesn’t mean Boris Johnson is going to get a majority.”
While the Tories are “highly likely” to win a majority if they retain their current polling lead, he cautioned: “Given that the Tories are likely to lose a fair chunk of seats in Scotland [and] they’re going to lose at least some seats to the Lib Dems, the target lead for the Conservative Party is about six or seven points. If it gets below that, the odds are beginning to swing in favour of a hung Parliament rather.”
Last night, the Tories’ chances of securing a majority increased as it emerged the Brexit Party has only fielded 274 candidates - leaving the Conservatives a straight run at 16 Labour-held seats and 11 where the opposition has a majority of less than 10 per cent.
The Daily Telegraph has identified a shortlist of marginal constituencies that the Conservatives are hoping to take from Labour, including Lincoln, Derby North and High Peak in north Derbyshire.
In Yorkshire and the Humber, they have set their sights on Keighley and Colne Valley, while in the North West they have got their eye on Crewe and Nantwich, Warrington South, Weaver Vale and Bury North. Stockton South is a target seat in the
North East while Dudley North is now high on the agenda after Rupert Lowe, the Brexit Party candidate, pulled out at the last minute.
Ipswich and the Vale of Clwyd remain potentially good targets for the Tories, as well as winning back former party strongholds like Kensington and Canterbury. Warwick and Leamington and Stroud are also on the party’s radar, even though they voted Remain in the 2016 referendum, along with Bedford, Portsmouth South and Croydon Central.
As Robbie Gibb, the former Downing Street director of communications, pointed out earlier this month, the task ahead for the Tories is not “Herculean”.
But having lost the safety net of a possible coalition with the Lib Dems or another confidence and supply arrangement with the DUP, as Mr Levido frequently likes to remind colleagues – Mr Johnson’s path to victory is “steep and narrow”.
‘Just because the Tories are ahead in the polls, it doesn’t mean Boris Johnson is going to get a majority’