The image that proves Tories must move to the right to save themselves from annihilation

Politics is often described as “a battle of ideas” but in its modern form, it is more often than not a calculation based on data.

It was data gathered from polling which led David Cameron to go into the 2010 election offering very little in specific policies and moving the Tories to the centre in what is often described as “triangulation”. It is data gathering which has led Sir Keir Starmer to essentially repeat the Cameron strategy of moving to the centre with a blank policy sheet for this election after flirting with destruction with the far-left ideals of the Jeremy Corbyn era.

Rishi Sunak’s five priorities (halving inflation, cutting waiting lists, growing the economy, stopping the small boats and cutting debt) were based on the data gathered by his election strategist Isaac Levido – who no doubt is recruiting Labour people to his Fleetwood firm because the data tells him Starmer will form the next government (Professor John Curtice puts the likelihood at 99%).

But the data now suggests that the Tories need to follow a radically different strategy than the conventional wisdom of the last two decades since Cameron became Tory leader in 2005.

An image produced by Electoral Calculus based on the number crunching of hundreds of polls proves that instead of moving to the centre the Conservative Party actually needs to move to the right.

What the data tells us

The image gives each main party one figure for each 1% they got in the 2019 election and then tracks what happened to that vote.

In the centre, the Tories have 45 figures for 45% in 2019 when Boris Johnson led them to an historic 80-seat majority. Under Sunak now the party now only has 21 of those figures left with 24 gone elsewhere appearing to confirm that well over half the Conservative 2019 vote has abandoned him.

Of the 24 departures, seven go to parties of the left (one Lib Dem, five Labour and one Green). However, eight to Reform UK on the right, more than all the desertions to the parties of the left combined. That means 18% of 2019 Tories now support Refom.

Added to that nine figures from the Tory voters have said they will not vote – essentially they are on strike. the findings of the mega poll by Whitestone paid for by Tory donor Lady McAlpine in January suggested that the vast majority of these Tory voters sitting on their hands are doing so because they think the Conservative Party is not conservative enough with anger over high taxes, a failure to tackle woke issues and high immigration (both legal and illegal).

The image confirms the findings by Techne UK last week in their tracker poll which showed that 60% of Tory voters from 2019 have abandoned the party.

What Electoral Calculus has shown is that by moving to the right the Tories are potentially able to get 17 of their 2019 45% vote back which would have them back up to 38%.

The consequences of not changing

Electoral Calculus also today published its seat predictions based on the latest poll of polls which tells a similar tale of woe for the Tories.

Stunningly, Reform UK could with a full Tory collapse now win up to 22 seats in a best-case scenario. While the main prediction for Richard Tice’s party is still zero many believe that former Conservative MP Lee Anderson stands a good chance of winning Ashfield for them and if Nigel Farage stands then Clacton will also be a soft target.

Meanwhile, the Tory worst-case scenario is a mere 32, a virtual wipeout. Even the main prediction is 90 under 100 which could finish the party as an electoral force. The best-case scenario of 214 is almost as bad as Corbyn achieved for Labour.

To put this in context, the Tories are the world’s original and oldest political party with 346 years of history. Their worst-ever result was in 1906 with 156, narrowly followed by 1997 with 165. Currently, those two disasters would look like enormous successes.

A tale of two parties

One senior MP who understands the problem for the Tories is Robert Jenrick, who has been on a journey to the right of the party and resigned as a Hoem Office minister in December because of the softness of the Rwanda Bill to allow the deportation of illegal migrants.

He said that the need to move to the right “was clear this time last year, and certainly when I resigned and made this case to No10.”

But while Jenrick has friends and allies in groups like the Brexiteer European Research Group or the Common Sense Group and New Conservatives on the right, he is in a minority among Tory MPs.

The biggest group by far is the One Nation Group of centrists on the left of the party. They dominate Sunak’s government in terms of ministerial positions and his policies. Only a smattering of rightwings like Common Sense minister Esther McVey and Deputy Chairman Jonathan Gullis get a look in and critics on the right see them as fig leaves with no real power.

Meanwhile, there are concerns that Sunak’s chief whip Simon Hart is one of a number of senior Tories on the left attempting to purge the right. This led to the decision to suspend Lee Anderson over his comments about Sadiq Khan. Sunak chose to ignore the pleas of MPs on the right and instead back his chief whip’s assertion Anderson was “Islamophobic”.

Since Anderson joined Reform the number of Tory defectors among voters (going back to the Electoral Calculus image) has increased, perhaps particularly most of all in the Red Wall seats of the north and midlands. The damage has been done.

The problem though is that Conservative Party members are much more likely to agree with Jenrick and Anderson than they are with the One Nation Tories. And many of them are going now or rebelling.

It is not surprising that the Conservative Post, which has replaced Conservative Home as the voice of the Tory membership, is now running a campaign to use the rules to deselect leading Tory MPs on the left of the party including a cabinet minister Laura Trott.

The case for a new leader

What the Electoral Calculus image shows is that the party needs a change of direction. Many Tory MPs, including some on the right, think a fourth leader in a parliamentary term would make the party look even more ridiculous. But there is an appetite now for a leadership vote if, as expected, the local elections on May 2 are a disaster.

If Sunak is replaced then it would need to be for a leader who can win back 2019 Tory voters and give the party a fighting chance at the general election or at least minimise the damage allowing for a potential comeback in five years time.

While Penny Mordaunt has been mooted she would be the candidate of the left of the party and, even if inclined to do more right-wing things, would in effect be a prisoner of a centrist perspective.

The Electoral Calculus data suggests that the only point in changing leader is to install someone who can get those votes back off Reform UK and persuade voters planning to stay at home to vote Conservative again. That means it has to be a candidate of the right with conservative values someone like Jenrick, Suella Braverman or Priti Patel.

There are examples of this working elsewhere even though it breaks the conventional wisdom of holding the centre ground. Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and the US with Trump in 2016 and maybe this year, have shown that a move to the right has received huge support largely as a result of the culture wars.

The Tories do not need to go as rightwing as those countries by any means – and they should not – but by tackling the woke issues in the state, cutting taxes and finally being willing to sort immigration perhaps by leaving the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), they could have a winning formula under a proper centre right leader as opposed to a centrist one.

Most of all a new leader needs to be able to reunite the centre right by making a credible offer to Reform UK and Nigel Farage, who has been flirting with the Tories since October last year.

The issue facing the Tories now is do they follow the One Nation centrist path, stay the same and keep their fingers crossed that things will not be as bad as they seem or do they follow the data and try to save themselves from annihilation?

The answer to that question could be just weeks away and could have a profound effect on British politics.