The Long Road Back - The Election Was Tough for the Conservatives but the Past Holds Clues on How Parties Can Return From the Brink

It’s election night 1997, and Jeremy Paxman is grilling Tory grandee Cecil Parkinson. “You’re the chairman of a fertiliser firm,” the famously pugnacious broadcaster asked Parkinson. “How deep is the mess you’re in?” Twenty-seven years later, as the Conservative party comes to terms with another landslide defeat, it’s worth applying the same question to the present day. How does this result compare with previous devastating losses – not only those suffered by the Tories themselves, but also those experienced by the other major parties? And what can history teach us about the tools that politicians use to dig themselves out of the dung heap and set themselves back on the road to power?

- By Richard Toye

It’s election night 1997, and Jeremy Paxman is grilling Tory grandee Cecil Parkinson. “You’re the chairman of a fertiliser firm,” the famously pugnacious broadcaster asked Parkinson. “How deep is the mess you’re in?” Twenty-seven years later, as the Conservative party comes to terms with another landslide defeat, it’s worth applying the same question to the present day. How does this result compare with previous devastating losses – not only those suffered by the Tories themselves, but also those experienced by the other major parties? And what can history teach us about the tools that politicians use to dig themselves out of the dung heap and set themselves back on the road to power?

First, let us look at how 2024 compares with historical low points experienced by the Conservatives. The Tories won 121 seats on the basis of a 24 per cent vote share. That’s better than the more drastic predictions made during the campaign: some thought that the Liberal Democrats might even replace the Conservatives as the official opposition. But even measured against previous Tory disasters, the picture is stark.

In 1906, Arthur Balfour’s Conservatives were smashed by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s resurgent Liberals, and were reduced to 156 seats. But this was on the basis of a 43.4 per cent share of the vote – a figure out of reach for Rishi Sunak’s party.