The next election is looking every bit as bad for the Tories as 1997

Tom Tugendhat claimed recently that the Conservatives “are going to win in two years’ time and… win it well”. That is as deluded as when Jo Swinson said she could become prime minister (losing her seat the next month) and Lord Saatchi’s 2004 forecast of a hung parliament before Tony Blair won a 66-seat majority.

Tugendhat’s colleagues Dehenna

Davison (age 29) and William Wragg (age 34) clearly don’t believe him and have decided not to spend the next five to 10 years on the Opposition benches. No seat is safe when you are more than 20 points behind in the polls and, if youngsters like Davison and Wragg are taking the hint, why would any of the 47 per cent of Tory MPs aged over 50 want to hang around?

Having polled for the Tory party in the mid-1990s, I believe comparisons with 1997 are well made. The party is self-delusional, bereft of ideas and divided. The electoral maths are ominously similar too. On May 1, 1997 the Con/Lab ratio of 42 per cent to 31 per cent, which John Major had won in 1992, was flipped to 43 per cent to 31 per cent in Labour’s favour. The Con/ Lab ratio in 2019 was 44 to 32, yet the current average polling is around 45 to 29 in Labour’s favour.

The 1997 political tsunami overwhelmed the Conservatives. Huntingdon, John Major’s own constituency, emerged as the safest Tory seat. The electoral flood waters so engulfed them that a whopping 194 Labour seats were safer than Huntingdon. That is why it took 13 years for Tory fortunes to be restored.

The most potent phrase in the political lexicon is “it’s time for a change”. To counter that, you can either try to persuade voters not to let the other lot mess it up or ask for the chance to finish what you started.

Keir Starmer is saying all the things needed to reassure voters that Jeremy Corbyn’s influence has been purged. He is talking about tax cuts for “working people”, of not reversing Brexit, and even risks upsetting his union paymasters by discouraging MPs from joining picket lines. If he can prove he knows what a woman is, his job will be done.

One former Tory leader confided in me this week that he believes voters will come to their senses once inflation and interest rates start to fall. Really? The highest taxes in 70 years, nearrecord immigration, a divided party, a failing NHS, a Britain where nothing works anymore and every part of the public sector seems on strike. “Let us finish what we started” sounds more like a threat than a campaign slogan.

Even before this week’s news from Nigel Farage that Reform candidates would stand in every seat, the Tories had lost four in 10 of their 2019 voters, with more than half of them to Labour.

The Conservatives poll under 30 per cent across every social group and all ages are affected. In 1992 the Conservatives polled 41 among 18 to 29 year olds but lost in 1997 by 56 to 22. They now often poll in single figures. Even among those aged 65 and over, 44 per cent of whom voted Tory in 1997, they are down to 30 per cent.

What of the impact of boundary changes? The Tories are on course to lose more than 170 seats in 2025. At that scale of defeat, boundary changes may even work against them and mean they lose more seats.

Unlike 1997, the Conservatives will go into an election with a big majority. But they seem as tired of office as they were then when the swing to Labour was 10.2 per cent. The current average poll swing is around 14. Nothing short of a miracle can save them.