Well, folks, there is no getting round it. Our worst fears have been realised. Unless you have been living in a jungle in the Philippines you will by now have heard of the atomic bomb that has detonated over the British political landscape.
Matters have developed, in the immortal phrase of Hirohito after Nagasaki, not necessarily according to the advantage of the Conservative Party; and you will by now be familiar with the recitation of appalling superlatives.
We Tories have turned in the worst electoral performance since the birth of our party almost two centuries ago.
We have allowed Keir Starmer, a glottaly challenged North London lawyer, to lead Labour to one of their biggest victories ever – bigger even than Labour’s post-war victory in 1945.
Sir Keir Starmer, a glottaly challenged North London lawyer, and his wife Lady Victoria outside 10 Downing Street this morning
A record number of Cabinet Ministers have lost their seats.
The media are treating this election as the political equivalent of the asteroid that landed in the Yucatan Peninsula and killed off the dinosaurs, and, frankly, I can see why. Too many good former colleagues have lost their seats in a cull that has been in many ways unjust, even absurd.
It has been miserable to watch, and it has taken me some time to rouse myself from the sofa and get to the keyboard to compose my thoughts. Like everyone else, my congratulations go to the victors, my sympathies to the defeated – but the people who really need our prayers are the Tory survivors: the 121 bedraggled remnants of the explosion.
They are about to fulfil a vital function on behalf of the entire British public, namely to hold this Starmergeddon majority to account, and it is vital that we give them every possible encouragement.
Dig into the figures, and you find that Starmer’s landslide is not all it seems.
He got fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn did in 2017 and 2019. His own majority in Holborn and St Pancras was cut in half. He lost two members of the Shadow Cabinet.
As for his share of the vote, it is one of the lowest winning shares in modern memory – about 34 per cent, or almost ten points lower than the Conservatives’ winning share in 2019.
There is a mystery about this landslide – and that is, how on earth did the Tories sustain such losses, when support for Labour was so tepid. The answer is complex, as with the extinction of the dinosaurs. But the Yucatan asteroid in this catastrophe was obvious: it was Reform.
I have just got off the phone to an old friend and colleague who had fully expected to win – he had a very big majority – until he realised at the 11th hour that thousands of good Tory voters were going for Reform, and the deduction from his total was enough to put Labour ahead.
Repeat that phenomenon across the political landscape, and you begin to grasp the cause of the landslide.
I am afraid that the cheroot-puffing Pied Piper of Clacton has played a significant part – as he no doubt intended – in the destruction of the Tory government. The question now for the 121 Tories, as they limp back from the guns of Balaclava, is how they respond.
How do we rebuild? How do we come back? Can we come back?
Of course we can – and we will, faster than you think. My friends, this is not as bad as 1997, even if statistically it seems even worse.
Labour’s majority is built on sand; it is a mile wide and an inch deep; and if the experience of the past five years proves anything, it is that the electorate can flip over a seemingly impregnable position, as a child demolishes a fortress of Lego.
I say to my fellow Conservatives, we are the oldest, most successful political party in British history. We are capable of endless regeneration. We don’t need to try to absorb other parties, to try to acquire their vitality like a transfusion of monkey glands.
We need to occupy the space ourselves – and my humble suggestion to the 121 is that they need to rebuild that giant coalition of 2019, get back to some of the big themes that proved so successful that we won seats across the country.
Boris Johnson rallies the Tory faithful at a campaign event in London on Tuesday
I don’t know who will be the leader of the Opposition, but here is my ten-point starter plan: how to bash Labour and return to government as soon as possible.
1. Immigration: Starmer is foolishly going to scrap the Rwanda plan, the only scheme yet devised to beat the cross-Channel gangs. Pound him on this.
2. Housing: Labour governments always build fewer homes than Tory governments – because they don’t like private property and prefer social housing. Hammer away at this, and give young people the hope of a home, and the most important single reason for voting Tory.
3. Brexit: Starmer is going to try to sneak back into the EU, and turn this country into a satrapy of Brussels. He will try to make this country subject to EU rules, but with no say in making those rules – an anti-democratic abomination. Go critical on this from the outset.
4. Levelling up: Starmer now claims this campaign – but it was our idea, and our plan. It’s the right thing for the country, and Labour needs to be held remorselessly to account over everything from high-speed rail (where we should revert to our 2019 policy) to reversing Labour’s shameful anti-nuclear policy.
5. Crime: Starmer believes in cutting prison sentences and he sides with Sadiq Khan in opposing stop and search. He’s soft. We’re tough – and we back the police. We must say so.
6. Net zero: It’s the right idea – provided we use it to promote UK green technology, and millions of UK private-sector jobs. Starmer just seems interested in state control and regulation. Our approach is better.
7. Tax and growth: Starmer is obviously about to put taxes up, when they are already at very high levels, and when the state does not always spend our money well. Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves think they can just get away with these unnecessary tax hikes. Don’t let them.
They also want to impose all sorts of crazy new employment rules, such as ethnic pay gap reporting and a ban on contacting colleagues after hours – furthering hindering UK productivity. Oppose this stuff ferociously.
8. Public services: Starmer is viscerally opposed to extra private money going into our services. He seems to hate both private education and private healthcare. His position is grossly illiberal and economically nonsensical. He is also likely to cave in to unreasonable union-driven pay demands. Say no.
9. Wokery: Starmer wants more mandatory wokery. It is important to be sensitive to people’s feelings, but some of this stuff is bonkers and needs to be opposed.
10. Global Britain: There is a real danger that traditional pro-Moscow sentiment in the Labour Party will lead to a softening of the UK position on Ukraine. That would be a tragedy.
Last thought – when we get back in, don’t be too hasty to get rid of successful election-winning leaders. As I never tire of telling people, some polls put us only two or three points behind, in the days before I was forced to resign in what was really a media-driven hoo-ha. As for Reform, it was regularly polling zero. Only pointing it out…
