The resounding Conservative defeat in last week’s byelection in Chesham and Amersham should ring alarm bells for Boris Johnson. There are many ways to dismiss this result as an anomaly: opposition to HS2 and planning reforms; a strong local campaign by the Liberal Democrats; a lacklustre Tory candidate. All of these were factors, but this huge swing against a government that won an overwhelming majority just 18 months ago – in one of its heartland seats – hints at the electoral consequences of substituting empty rhetoric and divisive culture wars for competent governance in a national crisis. It suggests that Johnson’s appeal may not be as universal as his backers believe.
The byelection result is further evidence of the long-term realignment in English politics. Just as Labour has been losing support among alienated Leave voters in its heartland seats, last month’s local election results highlight how the Conservatives are losing support among working-age graduates, many of whom voted Remain, in what were traditionally Conservative strongholds in affluent areas of London and the south-east. This has become more noticeable since the 2019 election, when many socially liberal Conservative voters who backed Remain supported Boris Johnson because they could not countenance the idea of Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister and, despite their pro-European sentiments, just wanted to see Brexit done.
While the Liberal Democrats capitalised on strong opposition to HS2 and the liberalisation of planning rules to achieve their victory, these issues cannot be divorced from Johnson’s failure to build national support for the reforms required to make headway on his “levelling-up” agenda. The byelection defeat speaks to the flaws in Johnson’s approach. He can only achieve long-term electoral success if he holds together a coalition of socially liberal, university-educated voters in Tory heartland seats with the so-called “red wall” seats the Conservatives won from Labour in 2019.
Many Conservative MPs backed Johnson for prime minister despite concerns about his competence because they believed he was uniquely placed to do this. But Conservative losses in areas like Surrey, Kent and Cambridgeshire in the local elections suggest that Johnson’s resort to populist rhetoric is not enough to keep this coalition together.
Dangers are looming for the Conservatives that mean they should adjust course. First, Johnson has used promises to reduce regional inequality and even out economic growth across the country to continue to appeal to Leave voters who once voted Labour. But so far this is just rhetoric, while Conservative policies of the past decade continue to make people’s lives much harder, from cuts to public services that have disproportionately affected less affluent parts of the country, to reducing financial support for lower-paid parents, in some cases by thousands of pounds a year. The costs of Brexit will only make reducing regional inequalities even harder. And the government seems set to inflict further hardship on lower-income families with plans to cut universal credit by £20 a week from September.
Perhaps because the Conservatives realise their levelling-up agenda lacks any substance, there has been a relentless focus on culture wars issues: ministers picking fights with anti-racism protesters over statues, with student societies over their decisions about which portraits to display, and with the BBC over whether the audience should sing lyrics at the last night of the Proms. Fomenting the culture wars may deliver cheap press hits, but trying to win votes by sowing the seeds of division and turning citizens against each other is not only morally deplorable, but of limited benefit electorally. On a subject such as immigration, for example, the views of the British public are pragmatic rather than fuelled by prejudice and hostility; 90% of voters believe immigration is essential so long as its levels are determined by economic need. Yet the government continues to maintain breathtakingly cruel immigration policies under the guise of the hostile environment – which means young people who have grown up in Britain face thousands of pounds of fees and a Kafkaesque bureaucracy to regularise their status – situating it far to the right of the public.
The culture wars strategy is the sign of a prime minister whose only mission was to deliver a hard Brexit. Completely lacking in a constructive vision, he is using these tactics to distract from the rank incompetence of his government. His terrible judgment has directly contributed to the lethality of the second wave of the pandemic, and the avoidable deaths of countless people. His commitment to delivering the hardest of Brexits regardless of its costs has contributed to instability in Northern Ireland and boosted support for Scottish independence. He is running the country as he ran the Vote Leave campaign: using the classically populist tactics of misinformation – such as lying about the implications of the Northern Ireland protocol for border checks in the Irish Sea – and privileging rhetoric over substance.
It is an unsustainable way to govern, and voters will eventually, on balance, turn against him. How quickly this happens will also depend on whether opposition parties are able to articulate an alternative vision for Britain as the Conservatives’ failures become more evident. But the Chesham and Amersham result is a reminder that Boris Johnson is not coated in political Teflon; that he will at some point suffer the consequences of his incompetence; and that borrowing from the populist playbook can end in failure.
